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 11th 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.
