Following a couple of great days with our Chicago friends Sharon and Dan and their adorable young Miles we signed on at the Expo the day before and picked up our race numbers and signed up for the Nike 4hr 30mins pace team. I was pretty impressed by just how slick the organisation was and this carried through into race day as well.
Chicago is a really striking city and at first light on a freezing cold October day it looked quite stunning as we lined up along with 50,000 other runners for the start.
We weren’t expecting the cold conditions given that the previous year it was quite hot and the year before it was over 30 degrees.
The reality of running in near freezing weather is that everything takes that much longer to warm up and my already pathetically short muscles were struggling after just 6 miles when the first of five stretch stops had to take place.
Our pace was easy to maintain, we would be running around 10 min mile pace but that was really too slow to get warm and with the cold also forcing a number of toilet breaks, when combined with the stretch stops and a couple of first aid station stops for much needed painkillers we were actually had to run around 9.15 pace to stay on target.
Liz’s race wasn’t helped by the fact that she tweaked her calf muscle at around the half
way mark. It was really hurting and I thought she would have to pull out but she’s a tough cookie and after downing some ibuprofen pills she dug in and toughed it out.Sharon, Dan and Miles came to cheer us on and we first spotted them at mile 15 where we stopped for a quick stretch, photo and energy gel. Having them there really gave us a boost, especially when we came across them at mile 19 by when things were getting a bit hard and definitely at the 23 mile marker. At this point it was a mixture of feeling like I was running on wooden legs through a vat of treacle but I was also a bit excited knowing that with only 3 miles to go that we would definitely make it.
The flip side was that we had slipped behind our 4hr 30min pace which would mean running the last 3 miles around 8.30min pace. Although in many ways it seemed pointless to make any extra effort I think it was a combination of having something to aim at and desperately wanting to end the thing that got us to the line in 4hr 29mins and 27secs!
Crossing the line together we were amazed to see free beers being donated by the Goose Island Beer Company, usually I’m not one to pass up a free beer but somehow this one was e
asy to give up!We collected our medals and picked up some bananas and bagels and as soon as we had collected our gear we sat in the park and ate. It felt great to get some real food inside instead of the slightly nauseous energy gels we’d been slurping for the last 3 hours or so.
The downside of stopping running is that it was virtually impossible to start even a slow hobble afterwards and we were rescued from having to walk too far by Dan picking us up and driving back to his place to spend the rest of the day on their wonderful recliners being waited on patiently with food and cups of team.
We need to say a massive thanks to Sharon and Dan for letting us stay with them and
also for their wonderful hospitality. We also need to say a heartfelt thank you to everyone who has contributed to our Just Giving page. We raised just under £1000 for Trust Pa which was almost twice what we originally hoped for.For us we have another challenge coming up as I’ve recently accepted an offer to work in Australia and we head off in mid November to start a new way of life in Sydney so the next blog will hopefully come from the other side of the world.
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