Chicago Marathon

I left downtown Chicago this morning for O'Hare airport; finally seasonable temperatures arrived with a front that came through last night. I wore long sleeves and a light jacket walking to the CTA station in temps that were in the mid 50s. The rest of the weekend trip was spent in short sleeves. It turned out to be a great trip and race despite the above average temperatures.

Pre race forecast/taper/global market meltdown....

I've heard that taper jitters can cause one to imagine things but the week leading up to the Chicago marathon was anything but normal. What started as an ideal race forecast 1o days out ended up with summer like race day conditions. The daily increases in the forecast temperatures were a mirror reflection of the tumble that started in US markets and soon hit global markets.
I controlled the part of the race week equation that I could for the most part. I ran scheduled 3 and 4 miles run here in The Woodlands before heading to Chicago. Saturday morning in Chicago I planned to run 2 miles but that turned into almost 3 as I went out farther than I planned. My Saturday run was around 8:30, right about the time that I would be starting the marathon the next day. The sun was very much out by that time and I got the sense that it was going to be warm Sunday.
As far as the weather forecast, I knew exactly what should have been done. Given less than ideal race conditions, you must adjust your race plan to take into account the weather conditions. In practice, it just isn't so easy to do that. What I kept coming back to leading up to race day was that I put in 18 weeks of training and wasn't going to let warmer than ideal weather stand in the way of all that training. I finally decided that I was going to attempt a slower race due to the weather while watching the 10 pm local weather forecast Saturday evening. That ended up working well for 3 or so miles.


Race morning.....

My only other 2 marathon experiences were for the Disneyworld and New York City marathons. Both of those marathons have remote start areas where I was bussed to a start village and had to wait hours before the races actually began. Chicago is much more runner friendly in this regard. It definetely was for me as I stayed at the Chicago Hilton, which was the host hotel that is located less than a mile from both the start and finish lines. This would have even been nicer if race morning temps had been cooler as initially predicted. I left the hotel around 7 am and walked through Grant Park to get to Lakeshore Drive in order to access my corral for the race. While there were lots of people moving around, it never felt really crowded. I was very comfortable in a sleeveless shirt and race shorts before the race started; that's never a good sign for me. I find it always better to be cold waiting for the race to start; either way I'm usually sweating by the end of the first mile.
As I was sitting on the curb in my corral, I saw the pace groups enter and decided that I would start behind the 3:45 group and attempt to follow them. My right quad had been bothering me all week and I didn't want to push it if I wasn't going to BQ in Chicago anyway.
I felt good when the race started. I followed the 3:45 group for the first mile as planned. I ended up running an 8:15 mile 1 and felt fine. Somewhere between miles 2 and 3 I ran closer to the 3:45 group; the pace group seemed way crowded and I found it difficult to keep any kind of rhythm going with that many people all trying run together. At the 5k point I decided to get ahead of the group to see if it would be less crowded. It was and I ended up just running what felt comfortable for the next 10 miles or so. Comfortable turned out to be 7:20s, 7:30s, and 7: 40s up to the 1/2 marathon point. This part of the race was more shaded than not as alot of it was downtown with building shadows.
At the 1/2 marathon point, I checked the total time on my watch and it looked like I was on pace for a 3:30 marathon. That was later confirmed by my 1/2 email confirmation that I received with a 1/2 pace of 7:56. The next 4 miles were run at the same pace although I found that I had to work somewhat at keeping the pace. I remembered thinking at mile 16 that there was no way that I could run 10 more miles at this pace. By that time there was little shade and lots of direct sunlight. My right quad felt a little sore by then; it had been fine up to that point which was somewhat surprising given that it felt sore all week.
Looking at my splits, I thought I had slowed alot sooner and alot worse than I actually did. I had 2 11 minute miles after mile 20. One has a porta potty stop and the other was me walking while eating sport beans. I ran/walked the last 1 1/2 miles with someone that was also struggling. We would run 2 minutes and then walk 1. By this point, the mile markers seemed so far apart. Once we got to mile 26 I just kept going as I felt a slight rush knowing that I only had .2 miles to go. I ended up finishing right under 3:47.

Various notables from Chicago......

I didn't really notice looking at the course map but probably should have but there were way too many turns on the course. I'm surprised my Garmin only registered 26.68 miles as there was no way that I could possibly run the tangents given all the runners and all the turns.

Pace groups are a good idea but they were way too crowded at the start. Once I decided to run ahead of the 3:45 group, I ended up running through the 3:40 group around mile 5. Both groups took up almost the whole width of the course making it difficult to pass. Both groups passed me again in the last 10k of the race. However, by that time the groups had really thinned out. I think alot of those people also tried to go for their original marathon goals.

The crowd support for Chicago equaled NYC in places but was not consistent the entire course. Its always great to have people out there supporting you and the crowd really was an uplift in places.

I had read alot on the Chicago message boards about Garmins not being reliable downtown. I didn't have much of a problem with mine.
My Garmin results:
Date:10/12/2008 8:02 AM

Garmin
Mile Distance Time Total Time Pace
1 1.07 Mi 8:15 8:15 7:43
2-3 1.94 Mi 16:43 24:58 8:38
4 1.07 Mi 7:56 32:54 7:25
5 1.01 Mi 7:49 40:43 7:45
6 1.02 Mi 7:55 48:38 7:46
7 1 Mi 7:40 56:18 7:40
8 1.02 Mi 7:47 1:04:05 7:38
9 1.01 Mi 7:45 1:11:50 7:41
10 1.01 Mi 7:48 1:19:38 7:44
11 1.01 Mi 7:52 1:27:30 7:48
12 1.02 Mi 7:51 1:35:21 7:42
13 1.04 Mi 7:55 1:43:16 7:37
14 1.02 Mi 8:06 1:51:22 7:57
15 1.01 Mi 7:46 1:59:08 7:42
16 1 Mi 7:59 2:07:07 7:59
17 1.02 Mi 8:07 2:15:14 7:58
18 1.01 Mi 8:47 2:24:01 8:42
19 1.02 Mi 8:33 2:32:34 8:23
20 1.03 Mi 8:55 2:41:29 8:40
21 1.03 Mi 11:28 2:52:57 11:08
22 1.03 Mi 9:20 3:02:17 9:04
23 1.01 Mi 10:34 3:12:51 10:28
24 1.03 Mi 10:51 3:23:42 10:33
25 1.01 Mi 11:08 3:34:50 11:02
26 1.02 Mi 10:12 3:45:02 10:00
26.2 0.23 Mi 1:51 3:46:53 8:03