Chicago Marathon '07, Day Two: Judgment Day!

So it’s 5AM, Sunday the 7th. Since my body thinks it’s 6AM, because it is indeed 6 on the east coast, I wake up two minutes before the alarm goes off. Feeling rested. So off I go into pre-race autopilot, shower, shave, dress, go down to the hotel lobby for coffee (my stomach can handle it before a race, always can) and back up to put on the temporary tattoo from the New Balance Pace Team. It’s a 7-inch excel spreadsheet in green and white, and it gets slapped onto my inner left forearm. I know, Nerd Alert. Anyway, I’ve signed up for the 7:40 minute/milers, which means a 3:20 marathon. Based on my last half marathon finish line, I should be done around 3:10, but with the expected heat I allow for an extra ten minutes.

So out the door I go with a big-ass tattoo on the left arm, and all the fixin’s I need packed for post-race glory or depression. Since I see other hapless runners heading to the Red Line stop, I join the lemmings going up the steps to wait for the next train, and lo, Jehovah or Yahweh produces public transit salvation. We get on the train, and we quickly discover that the only folks nutty enough to be on the CTA at 5:50 on a Sunday morning are marathon runners, runner hangers-on, and very large, inebriated homeless men. One of these large, drunken men gets on after a few stops and decides to stand and stagger around the train car for the next twenty minutes. And we’re all just nicely sitting there and thinking to ourselves ‘Stay the Hell Away From My Legs’ Drunk Guy’ because having your legs and feet crushed by a raging drunk right before the Chicago Marathon ain’t kosher. He yells and annoys some guy listening to an iPod for another ten minutes, then leaves, thank you, and we’re back to enjoying our typically inexplicable stopping and starting experiences on the lovely CTA.

Then we’re at a downtown stop, and off we go to the baggage area in that Millennium Park area that better be big enough for thirty or forty thousand people. It’s still dark, but that’s OK, it feels nice out, it’s in the mid-70s, and that’s… uh oh, that’s a little warm for 6:30 in the morning. Cue foreboding incidental music.

Next is a quick cell phone call to comrade runner Bambi, who’s arriving with Running Bitch soon, and I’m fussing with my checked baggage while standing by Buckingham Fountain, which I think was in the opening credits of ‘Married With Children’.

I have some time to spare, but after meeting up with my running friends, and rummaging through our packed bags a dozen times, we’re off to baggage check where listless, bored kids file your bag in big cardboard boxes. I make some joke with one of these kids who's trying to nap for some reason, and I say something along the lines ‘yeah, I’m not sure I want to be here, either’, and he doesn’t get it. Anyway, more fussing with safety pins and such follows, and I encounter running friends without even trying. Off to a last-minute bathroom break, the men’s bathroom lines are too long, which rarely happens, so I go to my corral.

The corrals are set up this way: elite (i.e., Kenyan) runners up front, a group of the top 100, then three corals, A, B, and C, seeded based on a submitted previous marathon or half marathon time. I had sent them my 1:30 half marathon time from August, so I land in corral B, with bib numbers in the 2000-4000 area. Corrals are optional, and the bulk of the runners are in the ‘open’ field, which probably means about 80% of the folks out there. So after a ‘bathroom’ trip en plain air, which means locating an obscure tree in the park (women are doing this, too), I make my way to the B corral, which is filling up, with 15 minutes to go. It feels like we’re right up front, and relative to the rest of the runners, indeed we are. Some guy wearing a camelback and sporting at least ten gels in a fuel belt stands in front of me, and I roll my eyes and issue another mental Nerd Alert. Later that day, I retracted that very Nerd Alert, goofball runner was right.

So country star and marathon runner Jo Dee Messina belts out a twangy national anthem, and pretty soon, we’re off. It’s crowded, but I can see a 3:20 pace team ahead of me, so I keep up. There are three pacers holding little signs from what I can tell; I pick one team and stick with it. Suddenly, I realize that the Chicago spectators are cheering to the point of going nuts. Really. I haven’t heard such crowd support since NYC, and it only gets stronger. Gotta love that.

The first few miles create an S-curve through downtown, shady, and crowded. The weather is cool but humid, and after a few minutes I realize I’m sweating more than usual, and I’m not known for that. Never mind, I feel good, even though I see the first runner of the day starting to walk at the 5K marker. Headphones are banned, so for once I’m not getting cut off by somebody who can’t hear anything but their tunes. Sure, there are a few runners with mp3 players, but there are far fewer than you see in New York races.

The course heads north parallel to, but not on, the lake, and every so often you feel a nice breeze. Although we knew it by looking at the course map, it wouldn’t be until later on that we’d fully realize those would be the last breezes of the day. After six or seven miles we U-turn and run a few streets over from the one we ran up, parallel again. My pace group is keeping up, the head pacer is giving us words of encouragement, and spectators are even cheering us as a group. ‘Go, three-twenties!’ we here, over and over. Heading for the Mile Ten marker, we’re almost back downtown to the shade and comfort and huge, huge crowds. I feel good and actually have to slow it down and try to not run faster than the pace team, which shows you how much I was raring to go. But I have to cool it and keep the pace because it’s not going to get easier, I know from experience.

Around mile twelve, my right Achilles tendon wakes up. The same tendon that caused me to take nearly a week off in September.

AT: What? What? Hey, what’s going on?
CR: Uh… uh…. Nothing, don’t worry about it, just a little, uh, race..
AT: You sure? I feel like I’m working kinda hard.
CR: Don’t worry, we’ll all be fine.
AT: Well, if you say so, but I know you, and well…
CR: Relax. You’ll be resting this afternoon, and then we can all have a protein shake to celebrate.
AT: Alright!

And that was the last conversation I had during the race with my right Achilles tendon. Love that A.T.! No problems.

But then my quads and glutes start to have a similar conversation between them, and I overhear it. They’re starting to stiffen a little and they’re not too happy about it. So I convince them it’s time to show me what they’ve got. And despite the grumbling, they come through for me, then and for the rest of the day.

After a few twists and turns downtown, we head due west towards the halfway point. For the first time, I start to long for mile markers. It’s too soon to do that, I haven’t even reached the 13.1 marker, and the hardest part is ahead. Heading west, we lose the shade of the skyscrapers, and full sun hits our backs. It’s getting hotter. I arrive at the halfway point at 1:40 and some seconds, and the big-ass pace tattoo on my forearm tells me I’m pretty much on time. Anyone else could’ve done that math in their head, but when you’re running and losing brain functions, sometimes you need an excel spreadsheet on yo’ ass to help you out. For the first time, I stop at a water station to take off my shirt and re-pin my name banner, which requires more motor skills than you’d think. So I lose about a minute and or so, but I’m just glad to be halfway done.

A note about the water/aid stations. There are fifteen of them total, about a mile and something apart. Not at every mile marker like in some marathons, but instead, sometimes as much as 1.8 miles apart, and unless you’re carrying a map, it’s a little bit of a mystery as to exactly where the next one is. This would be an anxious and sad situation later on for everyone.

So off I go and… where’s my pace team? I know I stopped and all, but they’re really nowhere to be seen, not even somebody wearing the 3:20 pace bib. I start to see 3:10 pacers without teams, and a few people with higher numbers than mine, and… it’s starting to look like a zombie movie. And after slugging it out to about mile 15, the course U-turns and now the sun is facing us, and it’s even worse. We’re in an area that has lots of low, two-story warehouse-looking style buildings, and there is no shade, unless you want to count shade from fire hydrants. Like running through Long Island City, and that ain’t so pretty, either.

Casting for the zombie movie is in full swing, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see a sign that says ’Brain Station Ahead’. If somebody had thrown a whole cauliflower on the course, it would’ve happily halted the race, at least temporarily. But we’re plugging away, no sign of pacers, and I realize that everybody around me is pretty damn fit. All of the men are skinny and shirtless, all of the women are wearing those sports bra/shorts combo bikini-like outfits, and it’s a tough crowd. Which helps me a little, because you find yourself keeping up with the Joneses if you know what I mean. But, boy, is it getting harder.

By the Mile 16 marker I’m starting to get more tired. For crying out loud, I have ten miles to go, it’s too soon for that. And it seems to take forever, and I can’t believe it’s the Mile 17 Marker, I thought I’d passed that. I don’t even want to think about how long I have left, it’s got to be more than another hour (and it is). And it’s getting hotter.

People pass me, I pass them. I start to stop at every water stop, walk for a half a minute, then continue, feeling slightly better. I pass the people who just passed me. Spectators are ecstatically cheering us on. But I generally keep my pace. And guess who I see? Mr. 3:20 Head Pacer, passing me, he’s all alone. You mean to tell me I’m running faster than he is? Not really, he just passed me, but what gives? Things are falling apart.

Then at one of the water stations I encounter my first and only running idiot of the day. I feel an entire cup’s worth of water hit my right leg and go into my shoe, and then I see this guy pass me. He’s taking cups of water and dousing his head, one after another, until he’s finished off around eight cups (and you just knew he did this at every single water station). I almost went up to him and said ‘thanks for the shower’, but I didn’t think it was worth the effort, and besides, the water would evaporate soon enough. Of course, he had every right to use as much water as he wanted, he paid his entry fee, but in hindsight it was a tad bit indulgent. Not that he or I would’ve known it, but runners behind us would’ve killed to have that water later. Anyway, I watched him weave and cut in and out of runners despite the wide open space we had, and that pissed me off, too, so I decided I was better off turning inward to wallow in the mounting misery.

I start to get into the 20s. Same routine, I run until I make it to the next water station, curse the heat, curse the world, stop at the station, walk with my water or gatorade, hear the cheers of teenagers and older volunteers. At one point around mile 23, a teenage girl sees my name pinned to my shorts and screams out an earsplittingly loud and mock-encouraging ‘RICHARD, YOU’RE GONNA DO IT!!’ At that point I’m holding a cup of water, bent down, facing the ground and watching sweat drip like vanishing points to the unshaded asphalt. Waiting a beat, I let out a comparably loud and insane ‘YOU GOT THAT RIGHT!’ And the whole water station erupts in laughter. Thus ended the comedy portion of today’s program.

And a water station away, a nice lady, noticing that I’m not enjoying this particular chapter of my life, quietly offers me a little cup of ice. My brain instant-messages an ‘OMG’ to the legs, and I effortlessly stop and thank her with more sincerity than anyone has a right to. It’s a frickin’ episode of ‘Touched By An Angel’. After crunching on some of it, I walk a bit more to add more water to make ANOTHER iced water, and it’s heaven. I didn’t know it for sure, but the temperature is in the mid-80s, and it feels like the 90s because of all the humidity, and there’s no shade, and it’s only 10:30AM. Got to run to the next water station.

And I do, and amazingly, my pace has not suffered substantially. Despite the little walk/stops at water stations that are killing any hope of a 3:20 finish, I’m not delirious, I’m not feeling light-headed, I’m not even feeling nauseous like I have in a couple of other hot marathons. Just getting more tired, hotter, and even bored with having to struggle to the next water station. And the course has us zig-zagging south through a Mexican neighborhood, and then a mile later, Chinatown. I see the typical ethnic establishments, but I’m not paying much atttention, because I just want to finish the damn race. And get to some shade.

I see a mile marker at an underpass and we get a ten-second break from the sun. I realize now that I have about three miles to go, and thank God, because I’ve had it out here. What’s three miles, about 25 minutes? That sounds a hell of a lot better than an hour, so I suck it up until the next water station. And I can do it because strangers I’ve never seen in my life are screaming at me like insane asylum inmates and telling me I can. (I must admit I heckled a spectator at mile 22 who yelled out a chipper ‘You’re almost there!’, with an equally chipper ‘No, we’re not!’)

So after heading south through another non-scenic neighborhood of automotive body shops and warehouses, we turn left onto Michigan Avenue. A straight shot of two miles, where every far off highway sign looks like the finish line. And you get closer, and it’s not. And I’m still seeing skinny, fit, personal trainer types trudging along with me, trying to keep a respectfully decent pace amid this third reel of today’s zombie movie. Less shade, more insane spectators.

I realize I’ve hit the last water stop, and soon (but not soon enough), I see the Mile 25 marker, and thankfully, the Mile 25.2 marker, which means you-know-what. I know the course is going to turn right, go a bit, then left to the finish, and after another ‘OMG’ IM, I’m turning. And here’s the hill everybody warned me about. It’s steep for its location on the route, it’s a bridge going up to the final 400 meters. But I was warned, and off I go, up the hill, no stopping now. Someone screams my name out, and I pass a younger guy, he hears them scream out, too, and in a split second he looks over at me, and I look at him, and there’s this mental connection that says ‘this is hell, but we’re going to finish, aren’t we?’ It was a level of communication that can’t be fully described; he knew it, I knew it, and we turned to look up just as the hill ended. We turned left, and there’s the $%&^# finish line.

Upon seeing the finish line banner, I let out a ‘THANK-YOU-JESUS!’ which I’m sure no one else heard, but was about as heartfelt as any cynical, post-enlightenment going-to-hell heathen like me could muster. I look down and see a spray painted ‘300’, which better mean 300 meters, and there’s no stopping now, looks like my finish time is about 3:30. I can’t believe it when I cross the finish line… wait, I can, it’s about fucking time.


Next: Post-Race Wrap-Up and Race Organizer Bitch-Slap!