The Marathon

First off, sorry for not getting around to posting this sooner. I've been busy catching up with everything else! Also, as you read along in my posting, I think you'll understand why it took so long for me to write up. Reliving the experience was ... interesting.

The morning of the marathon, Pradeep and I were in charge of waking each other up. This was a good plan - somehow I had screwed up my alarm, so Pradeep saved me from the utter embarassment of sleeping through the start. All of the CRCers in the Chinatown Hotel hopped on the L to downtown. We were ready for the morning. We were refreshed, well nourished, and ready to go. We deposited our bags at the bag check, took care of last minute details, stretched, and crammed into the start corrals. Before I knew it, I had said goodbye to Pradeep and Jonathan, and took my place in the corral.



Shortly thereafter, we were off; all 36,000 runners making their way through the course. It was unlike any other race I'd been in, for numerous reasons. As you'll notice on the course map, the first three miles weave through the heart of downtown Chicago, including a section in a tunnel. These conditions, combined with a high density of runners, created this bizarre scenario where the heat of the runners in front of me wasn't ventilating upwards; instead it swarmed through the crowd of runners as they moved. Imagine jogging on a treadmill in the middle of a wind tunnel. Now, imagine there's an oven set to 'bake' about ten feet in front of you, whose door is wide open. That is how it felt for the first three miles. I'm glad I was in a start corral, and not in the open start - that would have been even worse.

No matter how reserved you are, you tend to start out harder at the beginning of the race, because you have that extra kick of adrenaline when the start gun goes off! As you and the runners around you get into their groove, the initial start line congestion will resolve itself, and people will trend to space themselves out a bit. This helped to resolve the sauna situation of the first three miles.

The whole time I was running with my trusty Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS watch, which faithfully informed me of my pace. It was all I could do not to run faster than my pace goal of 8 minutes per mile. I reasoned with myself, "if 8 minutes per mile feels like I'm running too slow, that means I'm saving up energy for later." As the runners continued to space out and I had a little breathing room, I started taking in the surroundings. By now I've been running for more than 3 or 4 miles. I start noticing how awesome the crowds of spectators are. They're more than three deep, holding up signs and cheering loudly.

Before the race I had slapped "ANDY" tags on the front and back of my racing singlet, in the hopes that spectators would cheer for me as I ran. Indeed they did. The next time I race I will put slightly more permanent tags on my gear, because I sweated the signs off around miles six and ten. Whoops!

The spectators were awesome. However I've learned my lesson and I will not take water from random spectators again. A little girl was pouring water, with help from her mom. She wasn't pouring fast (or accurately) enough to keep up with the demand, so a few runners ended up gathering around her. One of those runners bolted out of the line and we cracked skulls. OWWW! I shook it off and proceeded onwards.. no water for me.

The first ten miles went by otherwise uneventfully. I kept to my 8 minute pace without any problems. But around ten miles in, I started to lag a bit, and ended up switching to a 9 minute pace. "Given the heat, you're being responsible by backing off slightly," I thought. realistically I should have backed off from the beginning, but I didn't think that through. This would come back to bite me later..

At various spots in the course, I noticed huge signs proudly declaring members of "Liz P.'s midwest fan club." This made me smile. Liz P. is a friend of mine from CRC, who it turns out also went to CMU. We have several mutual friends from CMU.

All along the course there were bands playing. This musical element added to the already festive atmosphere around the spectators. Soon enough though, festivities were pushed out of my mind. 13 miles in, just half way, I realized that I was starting to fatigue. I had been taking in water, and had taken the recommended amount of energy gel at the appropriate times, but given the heat of the course, it just wasn't enough to keep me running even at a 9 minute pace. Thus began my slow pace descent that would last for the remainder of my race.

The heat of the day was now in full swing. At one point during the race, as Jonathan would later tell me, he observed a bank whose front sign read a temperature of 93 degrees. Perhaps that was an in-the-sun reading, but hey -- we were in the sun too! Over the course of the second half of the marathon, my pace would slow down gradually, and while dealing with the decline, my muscles started cramping up and I found myself adding in more and more walking moments. Determination drove me onwards anyway.

In a surreal way, I found myself craving the next water stop shortly after leaving the previous one. No amount of water, Gatorade, GU, or bananas would have keep me in peak shape, however. I just focused on the determination I had to finish my first marathon, make my running friends proud, and do right by my non-runner friends who were eagerly awaiting news of my split times over email/SMS from afar. This allowed me to get through the second ten miles, putting me up to the twenty mile mark. It was there, in my original race plan, that I had expected to possibly divert from my 8 minute/mile race pace, possibly even speeding up! Little did I know that I would be feeling the way I did when I got there.

Despite feeling not all that super, I knew that I was only a few miles away from the finish. The last six miles are the hardest, but little did I know how emotionally hard they would be - and not because of me! By the time I got to mile 22/23, my butt was really dragging, but I was getting there. Then, at mile 24 a few weird things happened...

Any runner who has raced in numerous road races knows that spectators (who are not runners), seem to think that misleading a runner is a Good, Helpful Idea. As in, you're running in a 5 mile race, and the spectator just after the mile 3 water stop says, "You've only got a mile to go!! GO GO GO" What do they think you're going to do? Pour on the speed for a mile and then... bonk? Yeah, thanks. No, seriously, this is OK - as a runner you get use to this first-time-spectator phenomenon and filter it out. Except, at exactly 24.2 miles into the race (according to my GPS watch), a runner yells at me: "They've shortened the course! You only have two miles to go!" What? Yes, I only have two miles to go. Also, you do not shorten a marathon. It is 26.2 miles. Not 26.1, not 26.3. Huh? Whatever.

Then, I notice a helicopter flying over the course. I think, "oh look, here comes some news helicopters to shoot footage of determined finishers of the marathon," or whatever sort of logic my feebly performing brain manages to squeak out. This is all well and good until the public address system strapped to the helicopter blurts out "HRRMRPMGRGHH MHPRMRHPPPPG FRRRRBLGRGBRGH!" I look up and notice that the underbelly of the helicopter says "CPD," which would be the Chicago Police Department.

I'm still not sure of what to make of this. Weird stuff happens during races. Maybe the police are saying "go runners go!" or "remember to hydrate!" or "you down there in the red Mazda Miata! If you don't put money in the meter we're going to nuke you from where we're hovering!" I mean, I don't know how this works. All I know is, they think they're telling the runners something important, but it's coming out sounding like the Swedish Chef yelling through a harmonica into a third-rate sound system.

Lastly, at the final water stop, some guy with a reflective vest that says "head waterstop volunteer" (yeah, okay) gets on a megaphone and says "attention everyone! The Chicago Marathon is now cancelled! You can start walking now. If you choose to keep running, you are running in the Chicago Fun Run."

WHAT?!?!!?!!?!!

News flash: Running about 25 miles of a 26.2 mile, standard issue marathon, only to be told that you are running/walking in a "fun run" is NOT FUN. A "fun run" is the kind of half-mile run they set up for kids, when their parents are running a 5K later that day.

Extra news flash: You don't tell someone who has willed themselves to run 25 miles of a 26.2 mile marathon that now would be a just dandy time to start walking!

Ok, fine, whatever. I'm going to keep running/walking my way to the finish line, despite the ultimate mind-fuck/excuse to punk out that was just dropped on everyone like a ton of bricks. Right? I mean, who or what's going to stop us before the finish line. There is going to be a finish line, right? I sure hope.

Keep in mind that beforehand I did not bother to study the race course. I figured it would be an exercise in futility. I have such a bad memory anyway, and besides, what good will it do? Probably no good. I'll just end up psyching myself out before the race. There's a video of the race course as driven by a volunteer with a camera strapped to their car. I neglected to watch this too. All I knew about the course was a short description of the one measly "hill" in the course, which happens to be at the end of the race. You're running all the way up Michigan Ave into the heart of downtown Chicago, and at the end there's a quick right turn, you go up a little hill/over a bridge, make a quick left, and you're less than 500 meters from the finish, in a straight shot.

Armed with the ridiculous "cancellation" of the Chicago "marathon", but still knowing that the race has to be over in less than 1.2 miles, I plod onward looking for this fabled right turn. Finally it arrives - but not all is as I imagined it. It turns out that runners are starting to pile up (not severely though), in an improvised cattle chute right before the right turn. Two policemen are bottlenecking the runners into a single file line. WHY on earth would you do this? If this had been anyone other than policemen, they would have been trampled for doing this. I give the policemen credit for being as ballsy as this. Their plan was to individually tell every runner at this point to STOP RUNNING and start walking, and that the race was over. Why you would tell people who have run 25.8 miles of a 26.2 mile race this NOW, boggles the mind.

So I did what any other self-respecting runner would do. I merged into the pack, walked single file through Officer Tweedledee and Officer Tweedledum's bottleneck, and then took off running again. If you think that several thousand runners are going to just say, "you know, forget it, I'm going to kick my shoes off and lay in the sand when I could be finishing the last measly 800 meters of a marathon. What a delightful showing, ha ha ha. Muffy, ask Terrence to bring the golf cart around and we'll go for tea," then balls to you and the wonderful City of Chicago. Balls with a capital B.

I don't remember much about running the last 800 meters or so other than mentally pingponging between "AAAUUUAAAAUGH FINISH go GO go GO" and "I wonder if there IS a finish line?" When I got over the bridge and made the left turn, there was in fact a finish line, and I did see the ChampionChip timing mats, so my sole goal was getting my race time clocked. As soon as I passed over the racing mats I stopped cold. Well, I stopped smoking hot, not cold, but I sure did stop.

After all of that you would think I would be on top of the world, in some sort of post-marathon runner's high state of euphoria. Well, I look forward to having that at some other race, possibly a marathon. But it wasn't going to happen at this race. Hell no, there was still craziness yet to come. You see, 99% of the people running in the Chicago race were using race-provided loaner ChampionChip timing devices. As a racer, you are given zip-ties to affix the device to your shoe. At the end of the race, understandably, the last thing you want to do is figure out how to undo the device from your shoe. So, you're supposed to put your shoe up on a low bar, and volunteers will clip the zip-ties and take back your timing device.

Except, in this case put on your physics, fluid mechanics, or plumbers' hat and imagine that people finishing the race are like a certain amount of water running into, say, a pipe. And imagine the metal cage that holds the ChampionChip-clipping volunteers as a smaller, extremely sticky solid cylinder on the center/inside of that pipe, through which water cannot flow but is attracted. Immediately after finishing you are wedged into a backed-up finish line area in which everyone is trying to get their chips clipped, and no-one is moving forward. Now, instead of being able to walk, even at a very slow pace, through the finish chute, you are packed into a steaming hot pile of runners, standing straight up. You cannot move around, much less move your limbs. This is the most horrible feeling. You are baking, and your knees are screaming at you. You wish you could even just sit down, or even walk in a circle, but instead you cannot do anything.

On the right there was a huge tent marked "ICE TENT." Exciting! Except that the volunteers in there are just constantly yelling "Sorry we're out of ice!" Damn. In the meantime, volunteers up on raised platforms are equipped with megaphones. Instead of announcing "congrats on finishing the race! Please exit left for baggage claim, or right to meet up with your waiting family" or whatever, they have been reassigned to yelling "RUNNER DOWN" and pointing, trying to help emergency teams locate the runners who are passing out in the river of crammed runners. In the ten minutes it took to get through this crowd, I personally witnessed three runners pass out, one of whom I personally helped catch before they keeled over. Aaaaugh!

After I got out of that mess, I picked up my bag of stuff, and headed over to the "family/team greeting area" where I met up with Jonathan, Jonathan's wonderfully supportive sons, Pradeep, Tim, Stu, and Stu's wonderfully supportive sister. Jonathan, who is 57 and diabetic, finished in an astounding time of 4:08:51. He did it for himself, and he did it to prove to his sons how much of a badass he is (as if any of us had any doubt.) I am so proud of him. After I found the CRC group, I resigned myself to laying out on the ground, waiting for the inevitable cramping. Here's a bonus photo of Jonathan and I in our post-marathon passed out state:



How did I do? Well, "it ain't pretty but I'll take it."



Despite being upset about the race, I'm not too upset about my personal time. Sure, it wasn't my "goal" time of 3:30, but considering that I had to deal with a self-imposed sabotage of my training due to the tendinitis (15 of the last 25 days I did not run at all), and that the temperatures for the marathon were out of control, being a little over an hour behind my lofty goal was not entirely unreasonable. CRC elite runner Mike dropped out of the race, as did Suma, a very fast female runner in the group, and Erin another CRCer who had finished all five of her previous marathons. It seems like finishing itself was an accomplishment.

And that, my friends, is how I did at the Chicago Fun Run.

Side note: CRC's Mike went on to run a kickass Philadelphia marathon! Way to go Mike!