portal
The 2004 Chicago Marathon
I trainied. I ran. I finished.
This year everything finally fell into place, and I was able to complete the training schedule while remaining relatively injury free. With all the training completed, I was able to be at the starting line on race day, and I completed the 2004 Chicago Marathon. I finished the race with a time of 5 hours 0 minutes and 3 seconds. I can't seem to deep link directly to my results, but the searchable results can be accessed through this page.
But there was more to this weekend than just 5 hours of running. For me, the weekend started on Thursday night when I picked Nora up from the airport. Being the superstar girlfriend that she is, she flew in to Chicago to cheer me on. She is awesome for doing that, and for many many other reasons. That's really all there is for Thursday, because her flight got in sometime around 1am. It was a pickup at the airport, then home and off to sleep.
Friday
Friday was a very full day. After eating some breakfast, Nora and I drove down into my old neighborhood of the South Loop and hopped a shuttle to the Runner's Expo at McCormick Place. The convention center was full of super athletic people who all had the same goal of running 26.2 miles on Sunday. I picked up my registration packet that held my number and my timing chip, and then we looked around the expo for a while. It's amazing how whatever your hobby may be, whether it is running, music, movies, or whatever, there is always some gadget that you don't have. The expo was full of things that would be considered essentials by some people, but other people would never even think about buying or using them. All kinds of athletic clothing, fannypacks, energy gel-packs, clif bars, hats, gloves, socks, shoes...pretty much anything you can think of that is remotely related to running. It was fun to look around for a while, but our day was not finished! We had to get out of there and prepare for my carb-loading dinner party that we were hostiing.
So we left the expo and got on the shuttle bus and it took forever to go about 1 mile. It was about 4pm on Friday, and rush hour was in full effect. When we finally got back to the car, we got on the highway and headed up north, and again rush hour was in full effect. I'd say that we probably spent a good 3-4 hours sitting in traffic throughout the course of that day.
Anyhow, we ran a few errands (picked up chairs for the guests, some food for dinner) and then it was back home to clean up and start cooking. About 10 minutes after we got home, ding-dong goes the doorbell and guests started arriving. Dinner that night was with Maureen and Trapper, Brian and Tracy, Stacey, Nora and myself. Unfortunately Tom and Kim were both out of town, and Ray was sick. But after dinner, we were joined by Lippy and Jen.
Dinner was awesome. We had pasta with spaghetti sauce that Tracy cooked up, Mo made some great lasagna, Stacey brought delicious pasta salad and chicken, and there was basically more food than we could have ever have hoped to have eaten in one night. But that didn't matter. We ate and talked and had a good time. It was nice to have a night like this to feel the support of my awesome friends and just relax before the big event. Eventually the night ended and everyone went home and we went to sleep.
Saturday
On Saturday, Nora and I just bummed around mostly. But that night we met up with Trapper and Mo at went to see Team America: World Police. As we all expected, it was awesome. Very funny stuff, and hey, it has puppets! The crazy thing was seeing parents bringing little kids to this movie. I mean really, what part of "from the creators of South Park" makes you think "gee, I'll bring my 6 year old son to see this film"? Just crazy. Anyhow, after a nice funny movie, it was home to go to bed nice and early. The next morning would bring the big event!
Sunday - Race Day
Sunday morning, I woke up at about 5:45am. I took a shower, gathered up my stuff for the race, woke Nora up, ate a bagel and then next thing I knew, Trapper was at the door to pick us up and drive us down to the race. He and Mo really went above and beyond the call of duty. They got up super early just to give me and Nora a ride to the race. It was a very nice thing for them to do. So as we left my house, it was kind of cold and the sun was not even up yet. As we drove towards downtown, the sun was rising, and the city was looking beautiful. I kept thinking "Am I really going to do this? 26.2 miles all over the city? From the loop up to Belmont, then back and west to the United Center and down to Chinatown and down by Comisky and back to the loop?" But then I would think "Yeah, I'm ready".
They dropped me off near the start area, and I went to go get ready. You can imagine how busy the area was since there were 40,000 runners. As time went by, the sun climbed higher and it got warmer out. By the time I headed over to the start line, I was able to take off my sweatshirt and pants. The start area was really cool. The music was blaring, there were helicopters hovering overhead, and people were excited and anxious to begin. As the 8:00am start time approached, people who were still wearing sweatshirts started stripping them off and throwing them through the air towards the sidewalk. Slowly the crowd started moving towards the starting line, and at about 8:15am, I crossed the starting line and began my 26.2 mile run.
I had to hold back at the beginning and not go out too fast. Apparantly this is a common problem during races. The excitement of the event makes people run faster than they usually do, and this usually results in slowing down towards the end of the race. So I made a conscious effort to run at my regular pace. I ran up Columbus and turned onto Grand. As we went underneath Michigan Ave, there was a guy standing on the side of the street with a homemade sign that read "Wrong Way". About a block past him I saw my friends Trapper, Mo, Brian, Tracy and Nora on the side cheering me on. Every time that I would see them throughout the day it gave me a real boost. I ran past them feeling good and feeling strong.
As the race kept going, I continued to feel good. I ran past the guy on Lasalle handing out beer by the water stop. I ran past the nun standing outside of the church shouting "God Bless You" to everyone. I ran through the streets, through the park, past the zoo and all the way up to Belmont. When we turned onto Belmont, there was a lady on the sidewalk with a big black dog on a leash. As we turned the corner, the dog started barking and jumping like crazy. The guy who was next to me ran over to the sidewalk and the dog started jumping all over him licking his face. Even in a crowd of 40,000 runners, that dog picked out his master. It was pretty cool.
As we turned south, there was a band playing, and apparantly this is where Stacey was, but I didn't see her. That makes me sad because I saw everyone else, but I didn't manage to see her. She told me that she yelled, but she was drowned out by the tuba.
As we continued south, I still felt great. There goest 7 miles, 8 miles, 9 miles. No problem. As we got back into the loop, I started looking for my friends again, and just past mile 12, there they were on the side of the road. Trapper always seemed to manage to climb onto the top of something, and this time he was climbing a streetlamp pole somehow. It made it easy spot him, that's for sure. As I came up to my friends, this time I stopped to talk for a second. I was feeling good, and to me it was important to share this with my friends rather than worry about the 20 seconds that would be added onto my overall finishing time. I really appreciated them being there, and I wanted them to know that. So after a quick 20-30 second chat, I started running again. Nora ran with me to the end of the block snapping pictures, and then I was off on my own again.
It Just Had To Happen
I crossed the halfway point feeling incredibly confident. I was feeling great! I thought to myself, "No problem, Kev. Just keep on moving." Everything was going great. My sore left knee was nothing more than a dull ache as I coasted into the water station and prepared to get some water and gatorade. Then it happened. The inevitable. I slipped on some crumpled paper cups in the street. My left leg shot out to the side, and my sore left knee that I had been worried about for the two weeks proceeding the race twisted. And it hurt. Really bad. So I had to walk for a while. I took some water and walked until the pain receded a bit. Well, there was no way that I was going to quit, so I started running again. The knee still hurt, but it wasn't terribly painful anymore, so I just kept running, although a bit slower than I had been running before.
The next few miles would prove to be my slowest. The knee, while it wasn't hurting horribly, was still hurting. So I was running slower, and despite my efforts, I was favoring it. This proved to be bad. As the miles kept ticking by, 15... 16... 17... I started to feel a strange cramp forming in my back on the left side. It kept getting worse and worse. I kept doing what I could to try to stretch it out, but there's only so much you can do while you're running.
All throughout the marathon course, there are so many people yelling words of encouragement to you. It really is quite amazing. But even with that, it had been almost 10 miles since I had last seen anyone that I knew, and I was ready for some familiar faces. As I approached Chinatown (mile 21), I knew that I would see my friends there.
The closer I got to Chinatown the more dense the crowds of spectators became. The music was getting louder and louder, and as I turned the corner to enter the gateway to Chinatown, the dragons were dancing and the music was loud and the people were cheering. And there on the right hand side of the course was Trapper. Just behind him was the rest of the crew. I stopped and Mo gave me some Ibuprofin. I was very thankful for that. The cramp in my back was hurting really bad. It was making it difficult for me to take deep breaths, and that obviously made it harder to keep running after already logging 21 miles. So I took the Ibuprofin and said hi to everyone and then got my legs moving again. As I rejoined the race, Mo yelled something to me, but I couldn't hear what she said. I figured it was "see you at the finish" because we had planned on meeting there after the race. But apparantly I misheard her. This proved to be problematic later on. More on that in a bit.
As I left Chinatown, I started thinking that I was only five miles away from completing my goal. I knew that I could run five more miles, so I kept telling that to myself. Every step brought me closer to the end, but at this point, every step was starting to hurt a little bit more than the last. My leg muscles were getting a bit tired, but my knees were starting to feel the strain even more. But still I was not going to give up. No way. So I just kept on going.
How Many Losers?
When I got to around mile 23, I saw my friend Jacky on the sidewalk. I stopped for a second and said hi to her, and that was the last friend I would see on the course. From here on out it was all me until the end. I stretched my hamstrings again and kept on moving towards downtown. I went past a guy sitting on the side of the road with a sign that said "1 Winner, 39,999 Losers". Whatever, I'm going to keep going.
Slowly but continually I made progress. Mile 24... 24 and a half... 25! Only two miles left? No problem. Even if it hurts, I'm going to keep running. Now I've made a turn and I'm back on South Michigan Ave. I can see the loop up ahead. There's the 26 mile marker! Finally we approached Roosevelt Road and we turned east. Only one more turn before the finish line. Climbing the hill that is Roosevelt Road, I approached the turn onto Columbus, and there it was. The finish line was just ahead. What a feeling to run that last distance thinking back to the crowds at the starting line earlier that morning. It already seems so long ago. The finish line got closer and closer with each step, and then after completing 26.2 miles, I crossed the finish line.
Post Race Drama
After crossing the finish line, I headed over to the "runner reunion" area by Buckingham Fountain to meet up with my friends. I made my way through the crowds over the the "P" section, and there I stood. And there I stood. And there I stood. Hmmm...maybe they're over by the "K" section? Nope. Well, I'll wait here for a while. Tick, tock, tick, tock. Ok, well I'll go back over by the "P" section again. Tick, tock, tick, tock. Well, they're taking a long time to get here, so I figure that I'll just go and pick up my stuff from the tent.
So I walk over to the charity village and gather up my things. I talk to the people there for a few minutes, eat a rice krispy treat or two, have some water and then head back to the runner reunion area. As I'm approaching the "P" area, I finally see Trapper and Brian walking around. I go up to them and get their attention, and they both look like they've seen a ghost. Trapper just screams and puts me in a bear hug. I'm not sure what is going on, and then he tells me that after Chinatown, they all headed over to mile 25 to give me one last cheering section. But as they stood there waiting, they never saw me. They kept waiting and waiting and just never saw me. Now in reality, somehow I slipped past them, but they thought that I must have slowed down dramatically, or maybe even gotten hurt and dropped out.
So as I was waiting for everyone at the runner reunion area, they were waiting on the course thinking that I was either hurt and running very slow, or else hurt and out of the race all together. The happy mood of the day was dropping. Nora went down the course looking for me to give me extra support if she found be on the side of the road just utterly broken. Mo kept watch on the side of the course, and Trapper and Brian walked to the finish area to check the medical tents. They didn't see me anywhere, so Trapper checked with an aid station to see if I had finished. Well, even though I was all done, at this time the computers did not have a time for me past the 30K mark. So they all feared the worst. Thankfully Trapper and Brian decided to check the runner reunion area and that is where I saw them and finally met up with them.
As we left the reunion area, phonecalls were made telling everyone that I was indeed still alive and well and that I had finished like an hour ago. We're still not quite sure how we missed each other on the course, but we did. Oh well. Even though it was a bad situation at the time, now it just adds to the story.
Brain, Trapper and I walked back to the car as Nora, Mo and Katie headed there to meet us. When we all met up, they seemed relieved that I was ok, but Mo said she felt like smacking me. She said it was like the moms who is worried about the kid who wanders off in a store and then when she finds him and sees that he is ok, she smacks him for wandering off. In my defense, I pointed out that the main difference is that I was on a closed course, so I didn't really wander off. We just missed each other somehow. So I avoided getting smacked.
As we drove home, we talked about the race. I was curious what it had been like for them watching and waiting. They told me about seeing the Kenyans running down the street at the front of the pack, and the wheelchair racers just blazing past the crowd. They told me about some of the signs they had seen and the costumes that some runners were wearing, such as Spiderman and the San Diego Chicken. I didn't see them on the course, but you get to see many more people when you're spectating than you do when you're actually running in the race.
We dropped Katie off at her apartment and then headed back to my place. Trapper and Mo dropped me and Nora off, and they headed to the grocery store to pick up some food for my "post-race recovery" party which Kim was hosting for me. Because she's awesome. And she has a hottub. As we walked into my house, I was a little bit sad for the first time that my bedroom and shower was all the way up on the third floor. Those stairs looked quite daunting. But eventually I made it all the way up there.
I got cleaned up and dressed in normal clothes, and then Nora and I hung out for a little while with Trapper and Mo. Well, actually I hung out watching tv while Nora and Trapper and Mo all took a nap. I thought it was kind of weird that they all passed out while I was still sitting there wide awake, but in their defense, they had all been up quite early, and watching and cheering at the race is quite tiring.
Recovery Party
After their naps, we all headed over to Kim's house. She answered the door and congratulated me on finishing the marathon. Kim had trained to run the marathon a few years ago, but as she got up into the 15-16 mile range of training runs, she had injured her knee badly enough that she had to have surgery on it. That ended her marathon aspirations, at least for that year and a few more afterwards. So she was very happy that I had made it through successfully. She told me that she had been following along all morning online, watching my progress as it was updated on the marathon website.
We came in and sat down and ate some cheese and crackers and wine and water and things like that, all talking about our experiences of the day. One other guest at the party was our friend Tessa. Tessa had been working at the marathon in the massage tent. She is set to graduate very soon from massage therapy school. She was kind enough to come over, and somebody was kind enough to hook me up with a nice post-race massage. Man did that ever feel great! It's the kind of thing that would keep you going while you are out on the course, just thinking about getting a massage when you're all done.
As Tessa gave me a fantastic massage that was helping with that nasty cramp in my back, Trapper was downstairs grilling up some Great Grillsby cheeseburgers. I like cheeseburgers, but I usually don't eat them a whole lot. But during the last six weeks or so before the marathon, I just couldn't stop eating them. I would just get these insatiable cravings for cheeseburgers. So when I was asked what I would like to eat post-race, I said "Fire up the Great Grillsbys!!!" When my massage was done, I went downstairs and ate a cheeseburger or two and just kicked back with some friends. It was the perfect ending to a very...large day.
Final Thoughts
As you can tell from all of this writing, to put it mildly this was an action packed day. For me, it was a day that was a long time coming. I decided to undertake this achievement early in the year. It was a decision that I had to make and decide to stick to, no matter what. The training schedule that I followed was a 16 week schedule which typically involved running 5-6 days a week. Oddly enough, I ended up doing this during a year in which I found myself working more and harder than I ever have before in my career. Looking back, it strikes me that I'm really not quite sure how I managed to accomplish all of it. That's why one sign being held up on the side of the racecourse really hit home for me in particular. It simply said "You will never again doubt your ability."
Even though thousands and thousands of people run marathons all over the world, this statement really rings true for me. Sure thousands of people accomplish this feat, but many more people do not. I looked at the marathon as a physical accomplishment, a mental accomplishment, and a life accomplishment. It pushes you to do something that you've never before done physically. Succeeding requires you to be mentally tough and push yourself to achieve your goal. Achieving that goal will give you confidence in yourself, in your physical ability, your mental strength, your dedication to a specific goal, your time management skills, your work-ethic... It really does impact many facets of your life. There was another slogan on a T-shirt that read "Pain is only temporary. Quitting lasts forever." Nobody wants to be a quitter, and achieving a goal like running a marathon gives you confidence that you can overcome just about anything without quitting.
The only regrets that I have about the day are not so much for me as they are for my friends that came out. They were all excited for the cool technology that was promised on the marathon website. Mo had signed up to get a text message sent to her phone each time I passed one of the markers on the course that recorded my split times. These alerts did not work. Had they worked, then we may have bypassed all of the "did he finish or is he hurt?" drama at the end of the race. Even when Trapper checked with the course officials, they didn't have my split times. They didn't have anything for me past the 30K marker when I had already finished the race. The whole reason that Trapper and Brian thought to look for me at the reunion area was because Trapper's mom had phoned him from Alaska to see how I was feeling because she saw that I had finished. The website was updated, but the course officials didn't have information that reflected that. So on the technology front, they set high goals, but came up a bit short.
But for me, as an experience, I could not have asked for more. The weather was perfect, the support that my friends showed for me was overwhelming. Having Nora here meant so much to me. I just couldn't have wished for anything better. Will I do it again? Maybe. It was a great experience, and I would like to do it again. But as for whether it will be next year or the year after or when, well I'll have to see how my body is feeling and how my schedule looks. It's not always easy to block out 16 weeks of training time in your schedule. But the payoff is pretty awesome.
