Marathon on a Whim

I realize I still need to post my almost-Ironman race reports so you can get a feel of what I've been through to get to this point, but in the meanwhile.... Last month there was the Chicago Marathon.

A few weeks before Ironman I was given the opportunity to run the Chicago Marathon. I knew that doing a marathon only 4 weeks after Ironman isn't the best of ideas, but sometimes when something falls into your lap it feels like it was meant to be. Anyway, that's what I told myself so I'd let myself pull the trigger... Plus, hey FREE! Races, especially big city marathons, aren't cheap. I had wanted to do the Chicago marathon ever since I watched "Spirit of the Marathon" a few years ago. Actually, I remember coming out of the theater and saying to my husband... "that was so very cool, but I'm not sure I could ever do one", but secretly it had sparked the desire in me. So, I grasped the opportunity on the spur of the moment. I figured as long as I recovered smartly that I could avoid injury, and while it wasn't an ideal situation it could still work. It knew it wasn't going to be pretty though.

So, Ironman came and went, and I didn't run as much as I had planned during recovery. I ran only a handful of times, and I lost fitness in the 4 weeks between Ironman and the Marathon. That's the frustrating thing about Ironman is you spend all this time getting really fit, then you have to taper for a few weeks and take a few weeks to recover and it feels like you lose tons of ground. I knew it wasn't a good situation, but I'm a bit stubborn and I figured I would walk what I could not run.

One would think that hey you just trained for Ironman and a Marathon is just the last part of Ironman, so what's the big deal? Well, my longest runs this year in Ironman training had only been 10 miles long give or take. My longer runs were split between days, which lead to the shorter training runs. (i.e. run at night and first thing in the morning on tired legs) I'm sure this method works fine for some people, but I found it a bit frustrating. The year prior I had been running nearly 3 hours straight in the peak of training. So you maybe think... "Wait, so that means you did Ironman never having run more then 10 miles this year? Are you Insane?" Well... no... I did do a half marathon earlier in May, but quite some time had passed since then so pretty much the answer is yes. Yes, I am that foolish to do a marathon pretty much not having trained for it specifically.

So... I "ran" the marathon. It was actually a very very cool experience. I'm not going to lie it was pretty damn hard though. I managed to run straight through for the first hour, and for the next two hours I did 10/1 run/walk, but stuck to it like clock work. Past the halfway point it degraded a bit into one of those run as much as you can convince your body to go, and walk in-between irregular intervals. By mile 15 I was starting to get worried, as I was starting to walk more then I really wanted to... but somewhere past mile 15 I decided to do "speed" walking. Surprisingly this method was actually working fairly well and ended up being faster then my actual running. I was even passing quite a few people now. At mile 18 where people normally run into "the wall" where your body doesn't want to move one more step... I found no wall! I finally did hit the wall but not until much later then most people do (mile 24). At that point I pretty much had to walk it in. This extra endurance and wall moving, I have to credit to my Ironman training. I also believe if I had taken in more calories I may not have hit a wall at all. (I only had about 600 for 6+ hours) but you can analyze these things to death after the fact.

Anyway, I loved it. It was an amazing experience overall, and of course the crowd support for such a mammoth city like Chicago is pretty much spectacular.  People lined the course and cheered us on pretty much the entire way. Must have been hundreds of thousands of people. Plus, you get to experience the different neighborhoods each represented by the various cultural music. The music helps perk you up. I especially liked the Chinese drum circles in Chinatown.

While running in Lincoln park down streets full of colorful fall leaves I felt lucky to be experiencing this. Never would I have imagined a few years ago running with 45 thousand other people through the streets of Chicago... on a rather toasty fall day. For 26 little miles.

While my time was slow in the end... I was still very pleased given all I had been through recently. Something about getting to cross that finish line helped take a small part of the sting out of the whole wrong-turn mess in Wisconsin. It's not how I envisioned my first marathon to be (I would have liked to RUN the entire way), but I still think it was worth taking a chance on, and hey... Holy Crap. I've finished a marathon! Who is this girl?