Sunday October 10 2021
Last year’s Chicago Marathon was cancelled, this year it was on. And bloody hard.
I flew out with my friend Ryan on Saturday morning, getting into O’Hare around 1300. We took the blue line train to the city and checked in to the hotel – a Travel Lodge – which was not high-end, but was very near the race!
We headed to the Expo, grabbing lunch at Chipotle en route, walking and using the green line. The Exhibition Center was miles away, a nightmare to get to, and had no signs externally or internally – ridiculous. When we eventually got in where we needed to be, we had to join the longest snaking queue I had even stood in, and meander along for an hour or so. Then we showed our vaccine cards like Europeans aboard a Nazi train, and were allowed in, to join another queue to pick up our race packet, and another to pick up our T-Shirt etc. Then I had to check in with GLASA, the charity I was running for, and still had time for a look around the expo before they started to close it down around 1730 or so. My GLASA fundraising page – https://fundraisers.hakuapp.com/joey-prestidge
I booked us a Lyft, and we went straight to dinner at Pizano’s Pizza and Pasta. We got in right away to eat at the bat. I had some Gnochi, then we grabbed a Kilwin’s desert on the way back to the hotel.
I got ready for Sunday morning’s early race day start, and hit the hay.
I woke up early and got ready, then headed to the Hilton for our GLASA charity breakfast and team photo – before making my way to the Corals. I waited there for a while, and sussed out some other runners who, like me, had ended up in a coral that was not befitting their ability.
Our coral of the 45000 runners set off at 0800, and after an almost immediate break to take a quick leak behind the well used support pillar of a bridge, I continued to overtake people until about…mile 20.
Up until around mile 10, I followed a girl in mint who was pushing for 3 hours, so that was all good. She eventually pushed on, but I was running well, and felt really good. I had moved to an eight gel strategy – one every 5K, last two caffeinated – but I think I needed more fluid. I didn’t need to relieve myself at all after that first time, a stark difference to the NM race… The race conditions were 76 degrees and deceptively humid, even though there seemed to be cloud cover keeping off the worst of the sun’s rays. Anyway, the crowd support was huge, but all this transpired to leave my headphones out of battery at 19, and my legs out of battery at 20.
I think my hip abductors were tired after the incredibly flat course, and my resultantly stiffened form, and my dehydration, led to terrible cramps – left hamstring, right hamstring, both quads, then my calves. It was a nightmare.
I did my best to stretch them out, keep going, and get to the finish line, but it was really frustrating, and extremely painful. I managed to end with a ‘sprint’ finish against some Asian guy who’d previously got annoyed at me for pulling up with my debilitating cramps – in his way – so that showed him to be more respectful as an elder. Sayonara.
It was annoying and a bummer, to feel that I had more in the tank but my body couldn’t deliver. My lungs and heart could have kept up that same pace, but my leg muscles would not let me. What a shame.
I felt pretty much fine after the race, just a little achey, chafed under the arms, with a sore left toe. But although I had a slight headache (again, maybe dehydration?), I really felt I could have pushed much harder for a great time, if I’d just had access to some other legs for the last six miles. Maybe two marathons in 14 days with 45 miles in between was just too much.
Anyway, I finished the race, headed back to the hotel to wash up and pack, then we headed for a burger at Epic Burger. With Uber and Lyft barred from the City Loop area until 1700, we walked to the station to get the blue line back to O’Hare, and met a fascinating guy called Leo, from Austin, who represented elite runners as an agent and also worked for Hoka.
I didn’t get on to Ryan’s 1610 flight using standby, so waited for my original 1835 flight by myself, meeting an interesting F3 guy from Greenwood, SC in the process, Wooter.
I landed in CLT around 2130 and headed home to sleep.
I have now completed races in the 48 contiguous states, with just Hawaii and Alaska to fall.
Racing Americana 