My Chicago Marathon Super Fans

I remind my family quite frequently that I had nobody watching me in my very first marathon in Columbus of 2010.  My parents (and all the other aunts and uncles) had a 50th wedding anniversary party to go to that weekend and Columbus is about a 6 hour drive from Chicago.

But they all made up for it at this year's Chicago Marathon!  I didn't expect so many family members to come, but my family sure does love running.  (We even have our own marathon, 2 years strong.)

I'm not 100% sure, but I think they all planned to wear red on purpose.  I knew to look for my family around mile 4.5 first and was told Aunt Mary Ellen would have a red Elmo balloon.  Sure enough, I spotted them all.  I hope they weren't too bored while waiting, but it seems like that got some good family photos in the meantime.  (And obviously they didn't have to wait too long since I was RIGHT behind the Kenyans, duh.)

 They all had really great signs too!

Besides my family, I also had a lot of friends come out and cheer too!  Catherine and Matt were at miles 3.5 and 16.5.

Wondering what a TIGER BODYSLAM is?  Catherine's main track event in high school was the 2 mile race.  If you've ever been to a track meet, distance events aren't nearly as fun to watch as sprints and given the longer distance, the field of competition is pretty spread out.  A lot of times, the slower runners end up getting lapped by the faster runners.  To take care of this problem, at one meet the 2 mile race was called "Tiger takes the Tail" where the runner in last place after each lap of the 2 mile race would be stopped and not allowed to finish the race.

So basically, we decided that for this to happen, the tiger mascot person would body slam the person in last place and not let them finish. I'm glad I didn't get tiger bodyslammed during the marathon.

Steph and Danny were around mile 17-18 I think?  I don't remember that clearly, but Steph was jumping up and down with her sign.

Christina and Jim were around mile 6 with a big pirate balloon and n awesome sign that said "Your feet hurt because you're kickin' butt!"

I tried to remember other good signs, but my brain was kind of fried while running.  One said "Run quietly, I'm hungover" and then all the standard ones like "Worst Parade Ever."

But back to my fans...

I think the most mobile group of fans was Uncle Ron, Uncle Rob, and Jessica.  They were at 16, 18, and 20...as well as the earlier miles 4 and 10.  They used a car, which proved a better strategy than the other group who walked and barely missed me at 17.

Another perk of having fans at the race is that they can take pictures and I don't have to pay for the professional ones if I wanted a picture.  However, this does not improve the quality of how I look while I run.

I really loved my headband...I don't know if I can give enough plugs for how awesome those Sweaty Bands work to hold my hair back and are also glittery and thus, awesome.

I also spotted a few other people I knew along the course which was good to see.  And of course, the other 1.7 million strangers were great to see as well.  So thank you to everyone who was able to come out and cheer!

And also thank you to my fans who were not physically there, but texted me throughout the days leading up to the race and afterwards.  Some of my friends even made signs, took pictures of themselves holding the signs, and then mailed me the pictures.  :)

Race Recap: CHICAGO MARATHON 2013

Well, the Chicago Marathon is over!  I have so much to say about it and don't know where to start, so this will probably end up a little scattered, but I'll do my best.  And I'll also probably have a post every day this week on various events of race weekend (the expo, the pasta party, the recovery, etc.) but I'll try to keep this one to the actual race recap.

Summary/spoiler alert: I finished in 3:23:15!  A PR by close to 6 minutes and Boston Qualifier!

My parents dropped off Angela, Olivia, and I as close as they could to the starting area and we made our way through the security checkpoints.  The weather turned out to be absolutely perfect for marathon running, but the morning was rather chilly.  We were wearing clothes that we could discard at the start line and never see again - to be donated to a homeless shelter in Chicago.  Angela and I discarded our clothes right before entering the corral and a man with a vest that said "Clothing Donations" was on his walkie talkie saying "we are going to need way more bins."  There were mountains of sweatpants and sweatshirts all around.

We also waited in a really long porta-potty line...but glad we did so before the race.  Once we got settled in a spot in the corral, it was time to go within about 5-10 minutes.

The first 8 miles of the race flew by.  It was definitely the easiest/most fun hour-ish of running I've ever done.  Our goal was to start at 8 minute pace for 4 miles and then pick it up to 7:30-7:40.  I don't remember splits exactly, but I think the first mile was 7:49 so we said we could ease up a bit.  The problem was that we were stuck behind the 3:30 pace group which was huge and taking up a lot of space all running together.  So over the next 3 miles, we were still doing about 7:45-7:50 working our way up and around that 3:30 group, but still not trying to go too fast.

We saw so many people throughout the course - the first being Catherine and Matt around mile 3.  I almost missed them but luckily they saw us and called out...and I heard them over my awesome playlist of music which will be a whole separate post because obviously you need to know exactly what I listened to for 26.2 miles.

 

I think I could also write a decent amount on all my spectators and signs, so I will save that for later, but the important thing right now is that I saw my family around mile 4.5 for the first time and I was STARVING (I'll explain why when I write about the pasta party...do you like all my cliffhangers?) so I yelled to my mom to buy me a bagel.

Sure enough, when I saw them again around mile 11, my dad had the bagel for me so I grabbed half and ate it while running.  I took water at every water stop, and Gatorade at I think only 2 during the first half and every station the 2nd half.  Apparently when you lose a lot of sodium, your body essentially starts producing salt, so I had a white ring around my face when I finished.  I also took GU Energy Gel 3 times throughout the race - around miles 9, 16, and 22.

Angela and I didn't talk much throughout the race, but when we did, the conversation went like this:

*Pass a mile marker*

"7:32"

"We should slow down a little and save it for later"

"Yeah, we should"

*Pass a mile marker*

"7:26"

"We should slow down"

"Yeah, we should"

*Pass a mile marker*

"7:34"

"This is comfortable, but we should maybe slow down a little more"

"Yeah, we should"

But we did not slow down.  I personally am glad we did not...hopefully Angela feels OK about it.  I know it is best to run negative or even splits (or even slightly positive splits at the marathon distance since negative/even splits are extremely difficult at that distance), but I also knew that by the time we were at mile 9, I needed to just go with it while I felt good.  And I did feel really good.  Angela decided to ease up a little and dropped back from me around mile 15-16.

(professional photo by MarathonFoto)

Around mile 19, Mac magically appeared.  I was very surprised because he had passed Angela and I around mile 10, but apparently he made a bathroom pit stop somewhere along the way.  He and I ran together for about the next 2 miles until he started to fade back a little.

I was actually pleasantly surprised with how even my pacing was for all of the race.  Yes, I died off the last 10k, but not nearly as much as I could have (or did during my previous marathons).  I ran it pretty exactly according to my plan.  Since I knew I wanted to beat my time from the Columbus Marathon in 2010 and I knew my splits from that race at the 10k, half, and 20 mile marks, that's what I was comparing myself to.  I was 1:40 ahead of pace at the 10k, which worried me a little because I was afraid maybe we did go out a little too fast.  But actually, I remember thinking I was only 40 seconds ahead...not a minute and 40 seconds.

(professional photo by MarathonFoto) 

And it's a good thing I did think that because at the half, I was 58 seconds ahead of my first half of Columbus.  And knowing myself, if I would've thought that I went from being 1:40 ahead of pace to only 0:58 ahead of pace, that might've mentally screwed me up a bit...but what you don't know can't hurt you.

After we hit the halfway mark, my plan was just to make it to 20 as fast as I could, knowing that no matter what, the last 10k was going to be miserable.  I wanted to/thought I could be at mile 20 between 2:31 and 2:34.  My brain was shut down at this time, but I think I remember being there right around 2:32:00 - 2:32:30, which was 2 to 2 and a half minutes ahead of my Columbus pace.  I didn't mentally put that split into my head though because I thought they recorded a 20 mile split with the chip so I figured I'd look later, but I guess not.

(professional photo by MarathonFoto)

Where I started to really struggle was around mile 18.  I knew I had about an hour or so to go and knew I could do it, but that's where I did start to experience some mental doubt in how fast I could realistically do those last 8 miles...I went from feeling pretty awesome to not so great pretty darn quickly.  I made the decision to walk through the next water stop I saw and that I'd walk through each one after that, which is also exactly what I did in Columbus.

So I would run all the way to the very last Gatorade person at each water station, take that cup, and start walking while I drank it and then take one of the very first cups of water, drink what I could, and make myself start running.  I imagine each stop was about 30 seconds, but really I had no concept of time.  I once again surprised myself with the fact that I really did make myself start running ASAP after drinking my liquids.

The last mile was pretty much the worst thing ever, especially "Mt. Roosevelt," the small hill within in the final 400 meters of the course. By this point I really knew I was going to finish in a great time though, so that made me push throug that final mile. And I saw Aunt Bernadette  saying "you're doing it!" Because she knew I would PR.

And then I finished!!

 (professional photo by MarathonFoto)

So I have a lot more details I could share and want to share, but those will come later this week because I've done enough rambling for now.  Basically, the race went as perfect as it could have and my pacing was better (more even...not quite as much dying at the end) than I could've ever expected from myself.

Race Photo Commentary

Get ready friends, I have race photos to show from the Chicago Half Marathon.  Race photos are always the worst.  I'm very jealous of people who manage to look good (aka like they aren't suffering a slow, painful death) while they run because I have never been one of those people.  However, I actually think these ones are far better than any of my race photos in the past.  I did not buy the pictures, so we'll have to deal with the watermark on them unfortunately.  Marathon Foto took SO many pictures along this course - they seemed to be everywhere!  I picked a small sampling to provide some commentary on.

I close my eyes when I run:

I don't really close my eyes when I run (at least I don't think I do?).  I just look down the whole time.  I don't know why I do this, but I think I am really conscious of the surface I'm running on and don't want to trip.

My sparkly headband is so awesome:

As is the rest of my outfit.  And I guess sometimes I open my eyes and look around.  Anyways, I can't get over how much I'm in love with the headband and the tank top.  I'll try to stop talking about them so much.  I also really liked the compression socks.  I bought them the day before because I had a Fleet Feet gift card and heard that compression socks can help with recovery.  I had no intention of running in them until the morning of the race and I'm really glad I did.  And then I felt like a tool when we were at breakfast and I was still wearing them. (I did change out of all of my other sweaty clothes luckily though.)

I try out new ways of holding my iPod:

My iPod was in my sports bra, as I did in the North Shore Half Marathon also.  That was the first time I did it and it worked well, so I'll continue doing it for races.  I don't plan to run with the iPod in the Chicago Marathon, at least not for the first half.  But then I might have my mom give it to me for the 2nd half because that half is not as fun and I will need some serious Teenage Dream in my life at that point.  I don't know how the iPod is still functional though.  It has been through so many runs with me - either held in my hand, in it's arm band, or in my sports bra.  I might also try it in my SPI belt sometime.  But I think no matter what, it's going to get sweated on.

Sometimes I try to smile, but it's really really really forced at this point.  And I have really weird, very inward facing knees:

In high school, Catherine and I discovered that my knees point extremely far inward.  This definitely shows in my running form and I wish I could fix it, but that's just how they are I think (that picture doesn't even do it justice).  This might also be why I don't pick my knees up at all when I run.  So I think during the winter when I am confined to the treadmill I'm going to work on my running form.  I learned some good tips from Bart Yasso and a rep from Newton Running this past weekend that I will share in another post soon!

And then I can smile for real after I finish:

Woohoo!  Another half marathon done!  I've lost count, but probably somewhere around 10-ish...but I do a lot "bandit-style" too, just for training or to run with a friend.  I also realized that this was my first just kinda average half marathon.  I think all of my others have been either really strong under 1:40 or really no-training, just kind of run and see what happens and end up close to 2 hours.

Do you ever like how you look in race photos?

How do you hold your iPod while you run?