Chicago Marathon 10.10.10 in review...

Last Sunday was the day to put my months of training to the test......race day.  This year's Chicago Marathon was on 10.10.10, who could have picked a more perfect date?  We arrived in Chicago on Saturday afternoon and headed to the race expo.  The anxiety I've been experiencing for this race is no secret, however, as I was standing outside the expo waiting to meet up with Mo I realized that I was no longer anxious but extremely excited.  There was a confidence knowing that I trained hard and I was physically ready for this challenge.  The night before the race we laid out all of our gear for the next day and went to bed early for a good nights sleep.

The morning of the race I got up, got ready, and caught the bus to Millenium Park.  We hit a hiccup when we got to the bus when we found out that we wouldn't get change for the bus fare.....so we would have ended up overpaying by about $16.  Luckily, there were some very generous runners who had an extra bus pass that we got to use!

The race started at about 75F, a bit warm for a marathon!  The first 16 miles felt great and a bit warm.  Then we hit a stretch of road that was in the direct sun....and a bank thermometer read 98F in the sun by the asphalt.  I had salt caked on myself and started to feel sick to my stomach making it hard to take in any gels, water, or gatorade.  After run-walking the last 8 miles or so I ended up finishing and finding my way to the runners reunite area to meet up with Jonah and some of our friends.  I was so thankful to be done...I have to admit it was the hardest thing I've ever done!  The alert system for the marathon went from green in the morning to red by the time I started run-walking.  Red alert is just below the black alert when the race is  shut down due to extreme conditions.  Although it took me about 5:27 (nearly an hour slower than the last marathon I did) to finish there were still TONS of people finishing at the same time and after me.  Approximately, half of the field finished after me.  Insane!  I decided I needed to run another marathon in the next year so this experience isn't the last memory of a marathon.

On the bright side....boystown was the most exciting and motivating area of town.  If the whole marathon was that energetic it would have been amazing!

I'm glad I experienced this type of race and I'm slowly recovering this week!