Illinois Marathon - RunMarathon

Ok.. Bear with me, this may be long.

My friend Shawna and I planned to start out together and stick together for 3-5 miles and then play it by ear. We are at about the same pace, ran 2 of the last long runs together, including a 26.2 one (yes, I made sure it had the .02 in it, the Wall had no chance with us! ), but we didn't know how the race would go, so we didn't make any plans past the very beginning.

We got separated before the start and couldn't connect-she tried calling me, then I tried calling her, no go.... I was bummed out, but figured I was all by myself, so 5 minutes before the official start, I decided to make a run for the port-a-potties one more time... So, i'm standing in line, and they announce that the 5K crowd hit a delay, so we have about 6 more minutes. All of us in line to the little blue house are cheering...I actually took a minute to read and update my mentor group forum on BT, and then I see Shawna!!! She was standing in line 4 port-a-potties down! It was awesome to find her. Turns out, her ipod broke and she had no music, couldn't find me, was bummed out, as well. So, we get back in the line up, make sure to stand in front of a bunch of ladies with walking sticks and some guys whose shirts read, "We started training yesterday." We both looked at each other and just moved ahead of them.

We started out doing 1-1s (1 min running, 1 min walking), figured we'd do that for 3 miles,get our legs happy, then reevaluate and at some point and switch up to 2-.30s. The miles kept rolling, we felt great, were talking to a bunch of people... The 1-1s felt awesome, we were keeping our pace (I wanted to stick to a 12 min mile for the first 13 miles), so we just decided to keep doing 1-1s.

The whole thing felt surreal.. we kept telling each other we are running a MARATHON, and it didn't seem real, because we were joking, and laughing, and chatting with people around us, and cheering the crowds and bands. As we started, we could see a ways down the road, and it was just a sea of people... now, i have seen that at big races, many times, but we were running a marathon, and somehow, it was just so majestic! Ok, did I just use the word "majestic" to describe a grueling race? if you are still reading, brownie points to you, my friend!

Anyhooo... I remember thinking before the race how much it would suck to have the half-marathoners break off at 11.5 miles and go to the finish, while we still had such a long way to go. I kind of dreaded the moment, because I thought it would just drag me down... What ended up happening was me telling Shawna that as soon as they would break off, it was THE real deal-it's just down to us, marathoners...and it felt awesome, instead of the expected horrible. That was a pretty cool moment.

I know the pace was right for me, because not only were we passing people the.whole.race, but we also had SO much fun! We danced, we laughed, we talked (yes, the whole 5.5 hours). There were lots of people sitting in chairs on their front lawns, and I would bug them to borrow their bikes or put the chip on their golden retriever, which got wierd looks followed by chuckles. I even asked a couple of police officers directing traffic if we could just take their car, but then i figured that if I kept it up, I'd come across one without a sense of humor and he'd arrest me, and I wouldn't get to finish. Any runner that had a name on his/her shirt got a shout from us. Serously, the gig was FUN. Who says that about a marathon?

When we were nearing the last .2, we were kind of (ok, not kind of, totally) spent and wanting to really sprint down the 50 yard finish line, we kept to our 1-1s, even though you just want to give it all you have at that point... that's when we saw some of our friends and family. Shawna had a couple of friends who did a Half, my MIL and her friends did a Half, my SIL and FIL did a 5K, Shawna's daughter did a 5K. We had a full house! And.. they were all there to cheer us in! It was the most amazing few minutes :) We sprinted on the football field and ran across the finish line holding hands (and then crying). It was almost spiritual.

Hey, I'm a MARATHONER!!!!!

Honesly.. i am not sure. I felt like we did everything right. The pace was right- we passed people the entire race, we never hit the wall, and now, 3 days later (i know, I'm a RR slacker) my soreness is pretty much gone!
I now am looking forward to jumping into speedwork and shaving time off of the next one :)

Walked around in a happy delirium, not even a lick hungry, but my good MIL told me i needed to eat something, so I had a banana and a slice of pizza... she also shoved some pretzels into me for salt hehe. Changing into flip flops was another spiritual moment. In all seriousness. My feet wanted to sing, I think. The warm down was rightfully completed with a Jack Daniels burger and fries at the nearby TGIFriday's.


I only had 4 months to train, which is not a lot with a good base, and i did nothing for almost a year and a half prior to that - having Lukas and then being blatantly lazy... I started off too much, too fast, overtrained 5 weeks into it, and my shin started getting crabby-so i had to slow it down and completely dropped speedwork. Obviously, hard to get faster without drills, but that was fine, my goal was a) to Finish and b) Not to Hate It. Both are done! And hey, it was a PR day as Shawna put it.


My only two complaints about the race would be the timing chip and the water stations. The timing chip design will hopefully be a bit more secure next year. The water stations were there, well stocked, but I did feel quite a few times that there should have been more of them, for sure. Another thing-the brochure said the port-a-potties would be available each mile, and they weren't. Not a huge deal, because I only ended up using it once, but still...