2007 Chicago Marathon Week Recap
Well, as you’re probably aware, the 2007 Chicago Marathon didn’t go as planned for most people. Here’s my report…
I started marathon week on the Sunday before the marathon with a carb depletion run under hot conditions
Little did I know how much that would foreshadow the Chicago Marathon. Carb depletion lasted until Wednesday night, and was pretty miserable as usual. Thursday morning, I took the train up to Chicago, and grabbed a carblicious breakfast at Lou Mitchell’s.
I met Josh for lunch, and he’d managed to find somewhere that we could get Chip Butty, bless his heart.
Saw a matinée of La Boheme at Lyric Opera, and then took the train up to Josh’s where I was staying until the night before the marathon. Grabbed sushi at Agami on Thursday night with Josh and Denise. Friday was mostly a day of relaxation and a trip down to the marathon expo for packet pickup. I made a batch of pasta w/ goat cheese for dinner on Friday night, and chilled out most of Saturday, heading down to my hotel mid-afternoon.
Grabbed an early dinner with Darryn at Bin 36, consisting of caesar salad (romaine hearts, cured white anchovies, egg yolk , garlic croutons, and caesar vinaigrette), rabbit roulade (served with with house made rabbit sausage, red kuri squash and sage dumpling, and rabbit jus), rare hanger steak (with yukon gold potato & leek galette, watercress salad, and blue cheese-marrow butter), frites with balsamic vinegar, and a dark chocolate & yuzu ganache bar, with lemon coulis and fromage blanc ice cream.
(yes, a decidedly non-traditional pre-marathon dinner)
Relaxed a little after dinner, then drifted off to sleep
Met up with Josh in the open corral, and warmed up before the start, and at roughly 8am, we were off.
I ran the first mile pretty much right on pace (8:58), but realized soon after that I probably was not going to be finishing in sub-4 hour time, given the heat/humidity. By the time I got to about mile 8, I was positive that there was no way I’d be able to finish in less than 4 hours, so I decided to just have fun with the rest of the marathon. From about the half-marathon point on, I had some pretty major intermittent nausea problems, but keeping my pace on the slow side and consumption of S!Caps helped greatly with that. I did manage to finish well ahead of the cutoff where they started re-routing people. By the time I got about to mile 20 or so, they had announced the official cancellation of the race, and race officials and others were telling runners to walk the rest of the course due to the heat and humidity. I’d trained a good deal in the heat this summer, and was feeling a bit better at that point, so I decided to run as much of the rest of the course as possible, which I did, although the field was crowded and slow moving enough that I had to do a good bit of weaving to keep my pace up. I did manage a pretty good finishing kick, and crossed the line in 4:54:22.
It was a pretty surreal experience - medical tents overflowing, roadside IV administration to fallen runners, 300+ people taken away in
ambulances, at least one person that I know personally that ended up
in the ICU (she’s since been released). Race organizers should have provided more cooling stations and hydration supplies, and many runners should have been better prepared for the conditions.
I was a little sore after the Marathon, and had a bit of a head cold several days afterwards, but have recovered pretty quickly.
