Tag Archives: running

Race Recap: Chicago Marathon ’18

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Chicago Marathon '18

So there I was, flat on the ground screaming in pain in the middle of Grant Park. It was not my best look.

I’d been doing the post-race shuffle towards bag check, when suddenly my calf buckled with the worst cramp of my life. As I began yelping and draped myself onto a lamp post, a bunch of people swooped in. Cramp? I nodded, eyes closed. Get her some salt. A runner quickly put my finger in a tube of salt and shoved it in my mouth, while a race volunteer stretched out my leg. This is gonna hurt. But hey, free massage! After what seemed like an eternity, the cramp finally subsided, everyone cleared out, and I was left holding an open beer. I was having an AWESOME day.

Let me back up a bit to explain how I got there, and how this is really my own damn fault.

Chicago Marathon has time qualification standards that are 15 min or so looser than the Boston Marathon standards. You can also get in through the lottery with decent odds (1 in 3). After running a BQ squeaker time last year in NYC, I knew I needed to shave off at least a couple more minutes and figured I’d do it in Chicago, known for being fast and flat. Plus, I lived in Chicago for 3 years, and still have free housing, I mean, friends in the area.

With a date in early Oct, this means a 4-month training cycle starts in early June. Here is how mine went:

  • June: Gradually recovering from the Dirty German 50K in May.
  • July: Man, it’s really hot in here…and Chicago’s still a long way off…
  • August: Trip on a highly technical sidewalk near Greenwood, bashes in right knee. Take a couple weeks off.
  • September: I deserve a break, let’s go on vacation for 2.5 weeks and eat lots of ice cream and drink lots of beer!
  • October: Oh *@$#, THON IS HERE.

So, while I love seeing everyone’s runs on Strava, Peer Pressure Track Club was making me feel pretty insecure and underprepared. I knew my weekly mileage had been on the low side for me, and my long runs hadn’t been all that long. (In fact, Strava sends you a video after big races, and it told me in cold numbers that I ran 38.9 mile weeks, with a longest run of 18 miles.) On the plus side, I was really well-rested and my knee was feeling 100% again. I also knew that in the spring, I’d been consistently cranking out really long runs and higher mileage. (Thank you, UMTG!) Time to repeat that adage that it’s better to be undertrained and at the start, than overtrained and injured?

In the days leading up to the race, the forecast got rainier and rainier. Fri night in Chicago, there were heavy thunderstorms, and I could see flash flooding in the streets. I checked 4 weather websites obsessively, then on Sat, the NYT told me close your weather app, there is nothing you can do to change the weather. Chagrined, I decided to focus on how much better rain is than 90 degree heat.

Race day, there was a little drizzle as I headed in at a leisurely 6:30 am for a 7:30 am start. (Take that, Staten Island!) The skyscrapers surrounding the park were cloaked with romantic, potentially chafe-inducing mist. But the rain held back, and soon enough, I’d stripped off my trash bag and we were off. It rained lightly during the race, but at that point, I wasn’t worried about staying warm.

The course takes you through 20 Chicago neighborhoods, and from drag queens in Boystown to the arches of Chinatown, it is a 26.2 mile block party the whole way. Zero complaints about scenery or crowd support. Shout-out to Carla and Jack who cheered at mile 8, I was really excited to see familiar faces! And to the other people who yelled “Go Prospect Park!” at me unexpectedly, I appreciate that too, I just couldn’t react in time.

I went out with a conservative goal and a negative split pace band, knowing that I’d be much happier if I finished strong rather than hanging on for dear life. However, Chicago skyscrapers are notorious for causing GPS drift, so I decided to turn auto-lap off on my Garmin, and manually split at every mile marker. I ignored instantaneous pace, instead relying on feel and I sang in my head to keep a steady cadence. I also knew that every block in Chicago is 1/8 mile, so I could roughly calculate my pace based on that. My breathing was steady, and the miles ticked off easily. It was the best I’ve ever felt during a race, which made me wonder if I was really racing.

Here’s the unorthodox part: I didn’t want to screw with my pacing, it wasn’t hot, and I never felt thirsty. So I didn’t drink anything on course. In general, I don’t need a lot of water or fuel while running, and I raced the Jersey City half last month on a sunny hot day with no water. And I brought fuel with me (I make my own) which has some water and salt in it. But basically, no stops, no water.

At the halfway mark, I slowly began speeding up. At mile 22, I decided I wasn’t suffering enough and it was time to really crank it up. At mile 25, I realized I could hit sub 3:25 if I sucked it up and ran hard up the course’s one inconveniently placed hill at mile 26. Final time: 3:24:53.

After the race, you get handed all the usual stuff, plus a Goose Island beer that is only available to marathon finishers. The can even has a spot where you can write in your time! Then you go to the post-race “Mile 27” party, where you redeem your drink ticket for ANOTHER beer. (NYRR, take note.) This no doubt contributed to my massive cramp, but hey, I have a story to tell.

I’ve been told that next time if I drink some water, I can probably shave off another 10 minutes. OH REALLY?

Conclusions: If you train consistently year-round, you can trust in your training, even if the last couple months were less than ideal. Drink something on the course, and don’t reach for the beer first post-race. And use a pace band with a negative split strategy.

Chicago Marathon Beer Can and Medal
Chicago Marathon Beer Can and Medal

A Marathon for Justice

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Disney Marathon

All right, here goes. On Nov. 5th, I am running the NYC Marathon for Legal Services NYC. A spot opened up last minute, and I decided to seize the opportunity to be the change I want to see in the world. That means I’m fundraising at least $3500 to fund legal defenses and advocacy for immigrants, tenants, women, students, workers, veterans, the tired, the poor, and the huddled masses. More

On Running, or How To Do Anything in Life

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Running NYC

“When you’re running… there’s a little person that talks to you and that little person says, ‘Oh, I’m tired. My lung’s about to pop. Oh, I’m so hurt; I’m so tired. There’s no way I can possibly continue.’ And you want to quit, right? That person… If you learn how to defeat that person when you’re running, you will learn how to not quit when things get hard in your life.”

– Will Smith

My general philosophy in life is to try to say yes, as much as possible (so long as it’s not something patently illegal or something I’ll obviously regret). Sometimes this leads me to faraway safaris in Sri Lanka. Sometimes this leads me to running in circles.

Back in late April, a friend said that he was going to sign up for a marathon, and asked if I wanted to do it too. Without thinking too much about it, I said yes. After all, I bike regularly, and go for a short run every week…er, month or so, how hard can running a marathon be? Step 1, you start running. Step 2…there is no step 2. Am I right??

So I logged into the Runkeeper account that I’d set up years ago and used once, and signed up for their beginner marathon training program. Four runs each week, with the first week starting with manageable 4 mile runs and a long run of 8 miles on Saturday. I added the next month’s running schedule to my Google calendar, highlighted in red, and tried really hard to either schedule activities on nights when I wasn’t running or shift runs to alternate days if I knew I’d be busy. Each week, I checked the weather and if conditions were challenging for running (thunderstorms), I would slot time in other parts of the day, like early mornings or late evenings. Sometimes I would end up skipping runs, but it would be anticipated and unavoidable, not due to poor planning.

In July, the furnaces hit New York, and running became a sluggish, molasses-paced crawl to the finish. I realized that switching my runs from late afternoons to early mornings would mean more tolerable running temperatures. The only problem was getting out of bed. I’d tried setting alarms in the past to get up early for a run, and had failed every time. This time though, I forced myself to go to bed earlier (10:30 pm at the latest) and when the alarm went off, I reminded myself that while getting up now was painful, running in the brutal summer heat would be even worse. So I’d best stop dawdling and get going.

By November, I had the opposite problem. Temperatures were dropping precipitously, and an ever-lengthening night meant that it was doubly difficult to pull myself out of bed when it was cold AND dark. I’d hit the snooze button once, sigh, then force myself into the chilly air, where no amount of layering could prevent my fingers from being numb after 120 minutes outside.

But I kept doing it. And every time, it got a little easier. Running a marathon, as it turns out, is less an accomplishment of physical training and more a feat of psychological endurance. While you can certainly push yourself to run until winded, for the most part, running a marathon requires a lot of long but slow runs, done at a comfortable pace where you can easily hold a conversation with someone. In other words, running is not the difficult part. The real challenge is the discipline to manage your schedule and get out of bed.
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