In 2004 I trained for my first marathon. Originally the goal was just to finish, but as I realized how fit I was it continued to get progressively more ambitious—first to break 4:00, then 3:30, and by the end to qualify for the Boston Marathon, which would have meant 3:10 or better. Well my training was ultimately inadequate and I failed to respect the distance, and after running the first half in 1:35 I hit the wall hard and limped home to a 3:25:52. Ever since then my goal has been to qualify for Boston, and last weekend I finally achieved it at the 2021 Chicago Marathon, my fifth marathon and 17 years after my first.
Going into the race I felt very confident. My training had gone exceedingly well and I was 100% injury free. My only concern was the weather forecast—mid-60s at the start with a forecasted high for the day in the low 80s. That said, I knew there was nothing I could do about it and just focused on controlling what I could control. I arrived in Grant Park about an hour before the race, had a light breakfast, hit the bathroom twice, and headed for the starting line.
I hit the first mile in 7:35, which I could not have been more pleased with. After a quicker than I would have liked second mile I settled in to keeping every mile in the 7:30-7:40 range. I also made sure to hit every water stop, during which I would pour one cup over my head and drink the second. I was surprised by the number of people I was passing throughout the first half of the marathon, including several that were already walking. I guess the first sign the weather conditions were impacting me was when I hit the halfway mark in 1:39:15, my second slowest first half of the marathon split ever. In addition to the heat and humidity, the wind was blowing pretty strongly. That said, given the fact I knew I was as fit as I had ever been, I was still reasonably optimistic.
I continued to focus on banging out 7:30-7:40 miles, which I was able to do pretty consistently until the 30K mark. That is when I had my only major setback of the race. As I toed the starting line I really needed to go the bathroom (I drank a 20-ounce bottle of Gatorade during breakfast, as I was really nervous about getting dehydrated). I was hoping I could hold it until I finished, but it was getting more and more difficult with each passing mile. I finally could not take it anymore and hit a porta potty right after mile 19. Given all of the fluids I had taken in it was not a quick stop by any stretch of the imagination.
Once I got out of the porta potty I was laser focused on not stopping again or walking at all and finishing strong. I was definitely starting to slow down, but was not falling apart. Eventually I started counting down in my head the number of minutes I still had to run based on the mile and kilometer markers, a tactic I employed many times during my training runs. I was still passing a ton of runners, more and more of which were walking or trying to work out cramps by stretching on the side of the road. Before I knew it the final hill approached. The first two times I ran the Chicago Marathon I walked up most of the hill, and had promised my coach I would run up it if it was the last thing I did. I then pushed through the final few hundred meters before crossing the finish line in 3:23:50. I had stopped my watch when I went to the bathroom to keep accurate mile splits, and my bathroom break cost me almost exactly two minutes.
I have to admit that although I had comfortably qualified for Boston I was initially upset that I had missed my "A" goal of breaking 3:20. But the more I learned about how the conditions had affected everyone, the better I felt about my performance. For example, only the top three men's finishers broke 2:08, and only the top five broke 2:10. And the top woman faded from a 1:07 first half to a 1:15 second half. So I feel like it is a reasonable assumption that with better conditions I would have finished several minutes faster, although this is obviously just conjecture.
After taking Monday completely off I rode my bike on Tuesday and eased back into running on Wednesday. I am not sure what the future holds for my “running career,” but I can finally say I am a Boston Marathon qualifier, and I have to admit that feels darn good. Thanks for reading!
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