26.2

On Sunday, I ran through 29 of Chicago’s finest neighborhoods as part of my first marathon.

The boy and I entered the marathon lottery back in February, when we were much more naïve and when October seemed eons away. We had watched our good friend Rajveer cross the finish line at the Istanbul marathon and we were feeling the second-hand high from his great achievement. A few weeks later, we got the e-mails telling us congratulations, we had been selected. That’s when shit got real.

Fast forward to June and it was time to begin the official 16-week training program. I went with a coaching plan from my Nike running app. The schedule consisted of 4-5 runs a week and incorporated speed workouts, cross-training and of course, the long runs on the weekend. For the most part I stuck to the program pretty closely – the only time I fell off the bandwagon was during the two-week taper period when I was moving to Denver and everything in my life was literally a mess. Let's just say I tapered pretty hard.

There were certainly some memorable runs, most of them the long ones. I remember completing my 14-miler along the Chicago lakefront on a chilly afternoon and feeling exhilarated afterwards that I’d run that far, the farthest I’d ever gone to that point. I remember attempting to do my 18-miler in Whitehall, Michigan as the morning temperatures slowly crept up into the low-90’s. I ended up walking a third of that run in absolute misery. I remember getting up at four in the morning to run my 20 miles before going in to work and then boarding a flight to Iceland that evening. I remember running two 11-mile loops in Reykjavik, battling wind and rain, and when I completed them, telling myself that if I could run twenty two miles in Reykjavik, then I sure as hell could run twenty six in Chicago.

Before I knew it, October 11^th had arrived. I was a bundle of nerves the night before but I woke up feeling well rested and ready for the task at hand (or on foot, rather). I met up with my friend Patrick in our corral and focused on thinking positive thoughts, like what a beautiful day it was and how lucky I was to be healthy enough to be running a marathon. Then the horn sounded, and we were off!

The first half of the marathon flew by. Patrick and I ran most of it together with the 4:10 pace group as we went up through the North side neighborhoods where we passed by friendly faces who spurred us on. The energy of the crowds was absolutely infectious and made us want to run fast – at one point we had managed to get ahead of the pacers and I remember turning and asking him, “this probably isn’t a good sign, right?” 

Speaking of signs, we saw some really fun ones along the course:

“You’re running better than Donald Trump!”

“Where are you guys all going?”

“All this work…just for one banana?”

“This seemed like a better idea 4 months ago”

“Just don’t poop yourself.”

The real race started around mile 13, at which point the novelty and exhilaration of it all had worn off and all there was left to do was to hunker down and put some serious pavement behind me. I don’t recall too much between miles 13 to 20. I knew that this was when my body would naturally begin to protest and that I needed to keep going and to save the real pity party for the last few miles. I do remember letting myself feel a fleeting moment of joy at mile 18 – (“Hey, 18’s pretty close to the finish!”) – before realizing I was only about 2/3 of the way through, a depressing thought. After that I forced myself not to dwell about being even close to done until I’d at least reached mile 22, the furthest I’d run in my training program.

Well, mile 22 turned out to be the worst. The absolute worst. The boy and I both agreed on this in retrospect. There were almost no crowds in this stretch (we’d been spoiled earlier by the festivities in Chinatown, one of the best spots for spectator cheering), it was starting to get really hot, and 22 miles is far enough to be very painful, but not far enough where the excitement of finishing begins to take over. While I never did hit the dreaded “wall”, if I had, it would’ve been at 22.

I got through the remaining miles at around an 11:00 mile pace – not my fastest, but I was just happy that I didn’t stop and walk. In the last .2 miles, at the last turn, a lot of runners around me started going really fast out of excitement, some of them bursting into all-out sprints. I was excited too when I saw the finish line and I remember trying to pick it up – but I just couldn’t. My body was like, hell no lady; you are not going any faster than this. I crossed the finish line four hours and nineteen minutes after I’d started. Words cannot describe how good it felt.

Finishing a marathon and doing the mile-ish walk to the reunite area was definitely one of the strangest experiences of my life. My legs were like planks, stiff and strange. I could not bend at the knee properly and I felt like my feet were glued to the ground. I’d reluctantly pick one foot up, stiffly swing it forward, put my weight on it, and repeat on the other side. It looked totally ridiculous but then again, everyone else around me was doing the same pain shuffle. All of us had ran 26.2 miles and apparently forgotten how to walk. And don’t even get me started on stairs.

I "walked" away with some soreness and minor chafing but nothing else that a hot meal, a cold beer and a good night’s sleep couldn’t fix. It’s been 2 days since I crossed the finish line and my feet and legs are feeling almost completely back to normal. 

Running a marathon was the most physically challenging thing I’ve ever done in my life. I feel happy with my time and proud that I saw it through without walking or injury. Like all new big life experiences, it’s something that I have learned from and that I will treasure forever – another piece of the puzzle that makes me, me. I am grateful for all the support - the good lucks, the pats on the back, the people who showed up on race day and cheered us on. And a shout out especially for the boy's mama, who drove in from Michigan that weekend and was the best spectator ever, in my unbiased opinion. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I’m not sure if I will run another marathon anytime soon. Probably not until the motivation comes to me or there’s a good reason/cause involved. I do feel happy to be able to call myself a marathoner, though, and I fully intend to keep on running.