Running a marathon is a piece of cake. You just need to survive the last 10 miles of it.
I slept past midnight the night before the run. Bought my cofee at the local Starbucks before taking the L train to Jackson just shy after 6.00 am. There were ten of us runners in the Chicago station. The trip just took five minutes. No words were exchanged, just meaningful glances, good luck.
6.30 am I met Catherine in an overcrowded (yet another) Starbucks down the loop, the place was buzzing with chattering would be marathoners, with their outfits and temporary tatooes on their arms (”Go LiZ”, “Don't stop John”, “Keep Running Bob”, you get the idea).
I had no idea that Catherine would be my running partner until the dinner the previous night before. See, I don't run under my name in this marathon. A friend of mine dropped out of the race because she felt she didnt' train enough for the run. She told me that about 4 weeks before the race. Ouch. So I took her slot and started my flash marathon training. Well, for better or worse, Catherine got a new, quite unexpected running partner. I was assuming I would be running alone this marathon.
The wheather goddes blessed us with a mild wheather this early in the morning, bucking the trend of Chicago fall temperature(which lies between cold to very very cold)
We left to Grand Park, a couple blocks to the East, where the racers assembled. It was not unlike a carnival actually, with white tents erected everywhere you can see, dotted with throngs of portable toilets (quite busy).
The main concern before the race is emptying your bladder. See, before the race, you want to hydrate your body as much as possible. The problem with that is out in the open in the early morning, is very conducive to peeing, and there are very limited toilets available compared to the number of participants.
There were around 40 thousands people participating in this race. A select few will be running under competitive categories. Those people can complete the marathon around 2 hours mark. Chicago marathon is known as the fastest in the world. For the rest of us, “civilians“, we can self select to a group of “pace team“. A Pace Team is a group of runners who determine to finish the run under a certain amount of time. So you'll have 3:50 pace team, 4:00, 4:20 etc.
We picked 4:30 pace team.
40 thousands people is a lot of people. The race started at exactly 8.00 am in the morning, at the sound of the gun. Our section passed the starting line about 15 minutes later.
We took our first potty stop at the first mile. It was a decision which turns out later to be a good one. The line to these rows of portable toilets were short. It was our first and last potty stop in the race.
When we passed the 4 miles mark, there were another rows of portable toilets section available and the lines were twice as long.
The first 10 miles of the run is uneventful. Piece of cake. It was fun running amidst the encouragements and funny signs from the spectators on the route. Man, you get so much buzz from the spectators. What an amazing sights. It was the funnest 10 miles I've ever had.
I was in the lookout for friends that promise to be on the sidewalk cheering for us. To no avail, we saw nobody until the finish of the race (they were there, but they couldn't see us, neither do we)
Keep running, hoping your knee won't buckle under the stress of pounding hard surface.
Then we hit half way, 13.1 miles. It started to get hard, but manageable.
The hell of that race started at 16 miles mark, the realization that you still have 10 MORE MILES to cover, while your feet started to ache and your energy reserve started to drain away.
16-19 miles was the make or break miles for me. There were so many times in those miles where I was tempted to stop running and walk. Your mind started to play tricks on you, c'mon, stop running and the pain will go away. 16 was the miles where I put on my mp3 player and started blasting “thunder road“ through the earpieces.
At this point, every water stop was a blessing because it allows 10 seconds or so rest on your throbbing legs. Each water stop is a garbage dump, thanks to thousands of paper cup thrown to the road by the races and the road around it was always sticky due to the spilled Gatorades.
At the end of miles 19, I told Catherine we were going to make it, having a perfect run where you run the whole 26.2 miles without having to resort to walking some part of the race.
Wohoo.
Something magical happened at mark 20. Our pace actually increased. The post 20 miles mark is the danger zone where many runners hits the WALL (it's the endurance limit of many runners, where you cannot continue running anymore and must walk to finish the marathon). Not to us. We were zig zaging runners who have started to walk.
Our fastest miles were our last 6 miles. I still had no idea who that could have happened.
We got separated in our last 200 feet to the finish line as at this point, we were entering a crowded zone with finishing runners. She finished 4 minutes earlier that I did.
So yeah, it was worth it. We had a perfect 26.2 miles run and the 4:47:10 finish ain't that bad.
I'm still recovering today, limping around with knees that hurt like a motherfucker.
It's still worth it. One item crossed from my “things to do before I die” list.