Race Recap | Chicago Marathon

This year’s Chicago Marathon started off as a beautiful, cloudless morning. The logistics of the starting area for Chicago are vastly different from New York, as I was able to walk out from my hotel on Michigan Ave and cross over to Grant Park in less than 5 minutes. I enjoyed a warm-up stroll and my fellow runners and I were treated to a nice sunrise over Lake Michigan. Lucky for me, I got a great night’s sleep after an early pasta dinner, so I was feeling ready to take on the day. 

After hitting bag check and the port-a-potty, I made my way over to my corral in Wave 1. The experience so far has been seamless, and the race organizers deserve some praise for that. Energy is high in the corrals, and after the first few corrals are set off, I’m crossing the starting line around 7:40am. My intention was to start off slightly conservatively, but overall was looking to maintain a pretty consistent pace throughout (sub 7:00 per mile). The Chicago Marathon course is really the perfect course to maintain a consistent pace given it is such a flat, non-technical course. 

Everything started out smoothly, as most marathon experiences tend to do. I did notice I felt like I was sweating a lot more than I thought I would early on, but I tried not to think anything of it and just made sure I was staying hydrated as best I could. The first few miles of the race are electric, as you make your way through some of the busiest areas of the city. We continued north for about 8 miles, before turning back and coming south again toward the start line. The pace was still consistent, the energy was still high, and I kept reminding myself my main goal for the day was to have fun with it – something I can’t necessarily say I did with past races.

Around mile 13-14, the energy picks up even higher, as many cheer zones for different teams, charity groups, and brands line up along the streets to cheer on runners. We continued west for a few miles, and this is about the point where I think many of the runners can agree we started to realize it may be a bit warmer than ideal. Sponges were out on the course, and I watched many people dumping water on their head and down their back to try to stay cool. Unfortunately, I did start to notice toward the last 8 miles or so that the wheels were starting to come off on my race plan. My pace was slowing and I could tell I was going to be hitting a wall soon. I tried desperately to take extra gels and water to prevent a total meltdown, and even slowed my pace further to help. 

Overall, I was feeling okay through the last few miles, and even thought to myself in the last stretch, “Well, at least I didn’t cramp.”  In an act of cruel fate, I cramped with 800m to go. I laugh about it now, because it is so ridiculous, but I was pretty annoyed in the moment. Eventually, I made my way to the finish line and crossed it, quite literally limping. Despite my mixed feelings about the race still, what I can say for certain is that Chicago was an absolute blast and I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for an energetic race with a great course.

Sometimes I struggle with posting about races and being vulnerable about my goals. I’m proud to set lofty goals for myself, but definitely can get burnt by the letdown when those goals aren’t reached. My biggest reminder to everyone is that our goals for ourselves are not a reflection of our self-worth, or what people we care about think of us. Remember it is a privilege to be able to move our bodies in this way and to do hard things, and to set goals for ourselves that challenge us to be better in multiple ways. To me, that’s the real lesson of being a marathoner, more so than any time achievement or PR. So go out there and enjoy it, no matter what race or what distance!