Did an ironman in September, then sat on my butt for a full month with no exercise whatsoever. It wasn't intentional. I was hurt for a week, and then I was sick for a week, and then it was time for my taper so I thought I'd cut back :) So I went into this after 4 weeks of inactivity.

I didn't really have a goal. I already had my BQ, and my racing season had ended. I only ran this race because my friend was doing it, but then she dropped out so I had to run on my own. I knew I wouldn't get a PR, so I decided to instead set an arbitrary goal of sub-3, because I only have one sub-3 marathon so far. Plus I could join a pace group and run all lazily while they set the pace.

So I started out with the 3-hour Nike pace group. They went straight to the pace right away, but I lagged a little bit because I was planning a negative split. I intentionally made sure the pace was easy. After 10K I was a minute off pace. Whatever, I didn't care. I crossed the half marathon mark in 1:32:30, so I was on pace for 3:05. Still had a chance to negative split it down to 3 if I wanted. But, unfortunately I wasn't feeling too well after that. My hamstrings had been doing a lot of work because they were so detrained from my time off, and my lower back hurt quite a bit. The thing with Chicago is that it's completely flat, so if one muscle group is getting tired you don't have a chance to switch it up on a hill or something. The flat course had taken its toll by now and I knew I would be in trouble.

At mile 15 I finally stopped to try to stretch my back. It was super tight by then, along with my legs. Unfortunately that was the beginning of the end. My legs tightened up even more as a result of stopping, and once I was running again I felt like stopping right away. My legs were just torn to shreds and were spazzing out on me. Whelp, there goes 3:00, or 3:05, or whatever I was doing at the time. I did one or two more respectable miles and then I was straight walking it in. I thought about dropping out, because I had nothing to prove. Turns out I was only trained for 15 miles, I guess. And I had a really long walk ahead of me. Somehow I managed to snap out of that train of thought and proceeded with a jogging/walking strategy the rest of the way. I walked for huge chunks of the remaining race.

I had to force myself to eat and drink the rest of the race. See, I wasn't running hard, so I don't think I needed any of that stuff. Except for all the pain in my legs, I felt fine. However, I didn't want anything else to go wrong so I kept choking down gatorade.

Since I went from 7-minute miles to 9- or 10-minute miles, people were whizzing by me. Many of them ran into me, because there was no time to react to the slow guy lumbering along. The 3:10, 3:20, and 3:30 pace groups passed me like tidal waves.

I fake ran the last mile or two just because I thought it was crappy of me to walk so near the race. Cruised in with a time much slower than my training pace and probably my worst marathon performance considering the flat course. But then again, I don't care :)

Never ever stop if you're feeling bad. It makes starting again much harder.

The heat actually made me really tired. It was 80-something when I finished. So I chilled out for a while with some ice and some beers. My legs felt amazingly better after a 3 hour nap back at the hotel.


No training.


It's a good race. Lives up to its reputation.