Chicago Marathon

I can hardly believe the race is over....

On race day, my morning started at 5:15am when my runner buddie Helen picked me up. We than meet with another 2 runners Ann and Caroline before heading to the City. Helen's husband, Paul, drove us to Downtown where we met another 3 runners Mark, Paul and Angela at the Hilton hotel. The Hilton & Towers hotel is where most foreigner runners stay when coming to Chicago for this race mainly because of it's location; right across grant park where the race starts. Needless to say, that we encountered the lobby and the entrance of this hotel totally packed with runners from all over the world. I particularly enjoyed seeing a lot runners from Brazil in their beautiful and colorful uniforms. I also met a huge group of runners from Mexico (see pictures on previous posts). It was so much fun to see so many people from so many different nations, speaking all different languages and yet we all shared the same energy, enthusiasm, excitment and goal on that morning. I took the time to talk to some Brazilian runners (most of them from the state of São Paulo) and to some from Mexico. What a great way to start a race day.

At 7 am we than started walking towards the start line. While cruising the streets that eventually would take us to where we would wait for the race to begin we saw many runner dressed in customes. Some were dressed as Elvis, I saw a guys dressed as if he was running on a horse, another runner dressed as Minnie mouse...

As planned, Helen , Caroline and myself started the race together. Since I was not trying for a PR running with the two of them would be ok since my goal was just to run it and not race it. With that in mind I tried to enjoy the race and for the first time I did just that. The reason why I decided not to try for a PR is that I was trying to avoid any more injuries that the ones I had previously recovered from.

We started running a little bit to fast during the first 4 miles or so when I urged Helen and Caroline to slow down. We all know that is mistake running to fast the first half which will just make you run out of gas and most likely not having enough by the time you are at mile 20. Keeping this in mind we did slow down and kept running at 9:15 pace.

It was pretty hot by the time we reached mile 10 and on top of that the sun was blasting which made it even harder to keep up with our pace.

I must say this: Kudos for the organizers, the people of Chicago and the hundreds of volunteers. There were 22 water station along the course. Even on mile 24 there prenty of cold water. Our thanks to the people of Chicago! Around Pilsen are the residents came out to the streets to handle out to runners fruits such as bananas, oranges. I saw many expecators along the course in that area with bucle of ice. It was just amazing. The best areas as far as expectators goes in my opinion were: Boystown, Chinatown and Pilsen; they were especially great!

We ran on pace through mile 17 and then the heat caught up and we started losing time. By mile 19 I could barely keep my legs moving. Both Caroline and I had to walk thru water station to drink enough water and cool off which really slow us down. Our goal was to finish in 4: 15 (actually that was Caroline's goal)but we ended up at 4:25 which was disappointing. This is the second dissapointing Chicago Marathon for me. Either I am getting too old for this or I am doing something wrong..

Anyway, even though I did not particularly like my finished time this race was a blast,specially because I run it with Caroline and Helen, two great running buddies. I did miss running with Mark who by the way completed in 4:15.

Just a great race. Everyone from the runners to the volunteers and the spectators made this a great day. I am totally looking forward to next year race.