Chicago marathon

Last weekend, I traveled back to Chicago to run the marathon. I took a Virgin Atlantic flight direct to O'Hare on Friday, which was amusing since more than half of us on the plane had running shirts of one type or another... there was very little drinking on the plane, but plenty of random running stories with strangers.

Friday afternoon was my quick "I'm in the US, buy stuff now!" trip. I found a new suit, a few dress shirts for work and new dress shoes, before going off to meet a friend for sushi. Right about the time I returned from dinner, two of my friends got in from their travels -- Stu from Seattle and Julie from Hoboken. The three of us ended up out for another dinner, as neither of them had eaten yet, and I hadn't seen either of them in months. By the time I finally got to sleep, I was more or less delirious and had been up for just shy of 24 hours.

Saturday was a great, relaxing day... we walked around the city, tried and failed to get on an architecture tour, spent some time relaxing in Millennium Park, and went to the race expo before a charity dinner and an early night.

Race day was infinitely better than last year! It was still 67 degrees at the start line and got into the mid 80s during the race, but the humidity was much lower, the temperature peaked about 8 degrees lower, and the course had many more fluid stations. I'd been feeling great in the first half of the race and ended up trying for a 3:10 pace. At the halfway mark, I felt like I was pushing as hard as I could for any reasonable duration of the race and I crossed at 1:35:30 chip time. As I didn't think I could reasonably maintain that pace, let alone make up the 30 seconds that I was off of my 3:10 target pace, I dropped back a bit from a 7:15/mile pace to something closer to 7:45. This was the first race where I hit the wall... I ended up just feeling incredibly lethargic from miles 18 to 20, before slowly picking it up again after that. I also had another first after that... cramps in my calves. I stopped several times to stretch, before continuing. In all, I finished in 3:37 -- it's a personal best by seven minutes, but noticeably short of my goal time that I had known was somewhat unrealistic. I have no regrets, though, as I gave it everything, had a great time that weekend, and noticeably improved on my previous times.

That afternoon, Stu, Julie, and I went for burgers before Stu had to leave for his flight back to Seattle. Several hours later, Julie and I met a few other friends at a steakhouse and I ordered a fillet -- definitely something I have not seen readily available here in London. WOW it tasted great!

I met two coworkers, one of whom had run the race as well, for deep dish pizza for lunch on Monday before heading to the airport. The flight back was great -- even though there was a crying baby two rows away, I put in ear plugs, spread out into the seat next to me, and slept for almost the entirety of the flight, before landing at 8am Tuesday, showering, and heading into another (admittedly shortened) workweek.