2019 Chicago Marathon: How I broke 3 hours running 30 miles per week

My best marathon by time and joy

The Chicago Marathon was an amazing experience. The weather was fantastic, the city beautiful and the logistics surprisingly easy. I can’t believe how lucky I was to be there. Going into the race I had no idea I could really take 9 minutes off of my 4+ year old marathon PR and break 3 hours for the first time (2:56:35). My training plan didn’t resemble anything that any logical person would do to try and run a fast marathon. However, my fitness was demonstrably the best I’ve had in over 4 years and I’d lost 35 pounds in 3 months by cleaning up my diet.

2019 got off to a rough start for me. 6 days before running my 6th Boston Marathon I was in a doctor’s office with a needle being guided into my hip joint with the aid of an ultrasound machine. I’d tried ramping up for Boston this year with a plan heavy on speed work. It broke me. I wound up with hip pain and I had to stop running for the last month before toeing the line in Hopkinton. When I got an MRI to find what was going on they found 5 problems in my hip, but it was a mystery which one was causing all of the pain. The doc made her best guess of the source of my pain and gave me a shot of cortisone. The one thing that was clear to me at this point was that I needed to make some drastic changes. If I kept doing the same things I would keep getting the same results. The shot wasn’t that bad, but with so many potential sources of the injury I felt compelled to change everything. I’m not getting any younger so if I couldn’t find a way to approach things differently there might not be many years left.

The first thing to do was easy to identify. Stop running. Not just stopping running until I feel better, but just stop for as long as I can. My body needed a long break. I needed something else to focus on. Fortunately, I was helping coach a friend to his first 140.6. John was just the distraction I needed. Focusing on his success helped me get some distance from my own challenges and gave me just the right kind of distraction at just the right time. In the six weeks after Boston, I ran exactly twice. I then ran about 5 more times until my next triathlon in mid-July. Every run was nice and easy with the sole purpose of wanting to hang out with John and have a great conversation.

During my running hiatus I discovered the joy of long bike rides. I didn’t have a plan. From Late April until Mid-July I just did a lot of whatever brought me joy and that was being on the bike.

My stats for May were:
* 37600 yards swimming
* 29 miles running
* 777 miles cycling

My stats for June were:
* 10000 yards swimming
* 48 miles running
* 1252 miles cycling

By mid-July my body felt really good but most importantly I found joy in my training. I also enjoyed the lack of structure. I didn’t really have a plan. I just had a desire to train a lot at an easy pace for however many hours life would allow me. However, I was going to need to get a little more structured. I’d previously signed up for the Chicago Marathon which would happen in mid-October. I’d been cycling more than my buddy John and the idea of doing a September 140.6 mile triathlon started to catch my imagination. It seemed like a wonderfully silly stunt to do my first 140.6, the Chicago Marathon and the Bourbon Chase Ragnar Relay in the span of 4 weeks. With so much racing on deck there was no way that I could “race” them all, but I could certainly “fun run” them all. Best of all, if they were all going to be fun runs I wouldn’t really have to focus on speed, I just had to focus on an obnoxious amount of training volume to get my body ready to take the beating of 3 events in 3 states in 4 weeks. Staying flexible on my training and focusing on hours of swim/bike/run instead of any particular pace or effort made it much easier to accommodate an extended family vacation in the 18 weeks leading up to Chicago. I just had to keep moving in whatever ways I could. These are all going to be fun runs, right? Right?!?!?

The 18 weeks leading up to Chicago started on June 10th, so I kicked off my marathon training by riding my bike 400+ miles. Run miles? Zero. Swim Yards? Zero. Like I said, this plan was not implemented with any semblance of what a real marathon plan should look like. I still can’t believe that it worked.

And here are some random statistics to ponder about just how weird this training cycle was:

* Average run miles per week, 29.9
* Average number of runs per week, 4

* Average swim yards per week, 4972
* Average number of swims per week, 2.5

* Average bike miles per week, 146
* Average number of bike rides per week, 5+

* Number of weeks with 20+ hours of training, 5

* Max run miles in a week, 102
* Number of 20+ mile runs, 3
* Number of 20+ mile run days, 7
* Longest run (miles), 22

* Max bike miles in a week, 404
* Number of 100+ mile rides, 5
* Longest ride (miles), 150

Sorry, that was a lot of numbers. The story of my training was that I kept biking as much as I could throughout. I enjoyed it! I got to the point where I was disappointed if I didn’t have a 100-mile ride on the weekend. I swam whenever I needed recovery from cycling or running. I didn’t run a lot, but when I did run I often ran by time instead of distance and did as much long running as I could find time for. In weeks 6, 7 and 8 we went on a family vacation. When we were traveling I didn’t have access to a bike or a pool, so I ran a lot. I would often scope out our agenda for the day on foot as my morning run each day of vacation. Since the fall focus was 3 events in 4 weeks the cornerstone of the plan was 4 weeks in a row of 20+ hours per week of training. My thinking was that if I could survive these 4 weeks then my body would be ready for the extended challenge of the 3 events/4 weeks challenge.

This ramp up for the Chicago Marathon may have been completely non-sensical, but this was my favorite time for training in the 7 years that I’ve been doing endurance races. I met new friends. I got closer to old friends. I got to spend almost 260 hours (!!!) over 18 weeks on my fitness in whatever ways brought me joy. I still feel unbelievably lucky.

Along the way I started seeing signs that I might be able to race some of these events fast, but not if I kicked off the challenge with a 140.6-mile triathlon. I ditched the idea of going to Ironman Maryland and instead went to Barrelman 70.3 in Niagara Falls after some really effective lobbying from my newest training buddy. Barrelman is an independent race that is very well run, and I’d rather do any independent race over an Ironman branded race almost every time. Barrelman was at the end of week 15. I did a bare minimum 2-week taper for Barrelman. In the first week (14) I swam a lot. I was trying to cram for the swim part of swim/bike/run. In both taper weeks (14+15) I ran short distances fast. Barrelman was the original “race of my life”. I took 24 minutes off of my best 70.3 time ever and placed 19th overall for 3rd in my age group with a 4:36:57. Woohoo!!!

With the first of the 3 events in the 4-week challenge done I felt even more confident that something big could happen in Chicago. My run volume in this cycle had obviously been very light. I was smart and had kept a number of long runs in the mix, but less than 30 miles per week running? Yikes. I rolled the dice and with 3 weeks to go until Chicago I decide to run every day in week 16. Every run was at an easy pace where I accepted whatever my body was willing to give me. The day after Barrelman my pace was around 9 minutes a mile. The end of the week I was constantly holding myself back while easily running close to 8 minutes a mile. As week 16 progressed it turned into something magic where I felt like I could do anything! I demolished my old personal best high of 75 miles run in a single week and finished the last 3 miles of a 22-mile run on the last day of training near 7 minutes a mile. I was exhilarated!

Garmin failed to upload two runs of 4 and 6 miles. The 920xt was then retired.

The last 2 weeks of taper were my usual run fast strategy. Every run was 3–6 miles long and was done on the treadmill at 6:18 pace. Over a 10-day period during taper my average HR dropped from 171 to 161 for 3 miles @ 6:18 pace. I finished taper by running 1 mile @ 5:22 pace as part of my carb load strategy. This was 10 seconds per mile faster than I ran the same mile 3 weeks earlier before Barrelman and was a new personal best as an adult. I now knew I might be up for a second “race of my life” in only 3 weeks. It was terrifying.

In the lead up to Barrelman I struggled with time goals and it sent my race anxiety through the roof. Now, going into Chicago I was having shades of the same problem recurring. When I had this problem before Barrelman I broke out of it by declaring time was an abstract and that I knew I’d PR anyway so predicting times didn’t matter. I would just race hard, chase joy and find empty. I didn’t have the same confidence to reject time at Chicago. I tried to, but I couldn’t. I told people that I was going to run solely based on heart rate and that I would go so far as to take pace and time off of my watch entirely. I wasn’t brave enough to actually follow through. With the disjointed and light run volume training of the last 18 weeks it was really hard to know how to approach pacing Chicago. My marathon PR was a 3:05 from Boston in 2015 and I predicted that I would finish somewhere between 2:57 to 3:10. That is a pretty big range. Usually I can look back at recent run races, paces in tempo runs, heart rate in long runs and predicted a finish within 2–3 minutes. At the Chicago Marathon Expo they were giving out stickers where you would write your predicted finish time. I wrote 2:57:40 on mine. I thought I’d lost my mind. No. Freaking. Way. Not going to happen.

2:57:40?

All modesty aside, I’ve run some pretty fast races. A 3:05 marathon PR is no joke. That’s a hard time to achieve. So why was it crazy to think I could run under 3 hours? Because history says it was! The 3:05 marathon PR was from 2015. I’ve run some good races since then, but I haven’t had any great ones. I’ve been fortunate to squeak back into the Boston Marathon the last few years, but often by the thinnest of margins. It didn’t help that since 2015 I was often racing at 220+ pounds, so cleaning up my diet and getting down to more appropriate racing weight was in my favor but just look at the times since 2015. None of this history says that I was ready for a breakthrough.

I told people that I would go out with the 3-hour pace group for the first 5k and then adjust from there. I figured this might be too aggressive, but it probably wasn’t a suicidal pace. My thinking was that if I start with this group I’ll be held back from doing something exceptionally dumb. I was then going to check HR at the 5k mark and run the race progressively increasing my HR from 160 to the low 170s by the finish. I also secretly set a goal for myself to run 21-minute 5k’s. Since Chicago has digital clocks at the 5k marks I thought this would be an easy way to keep track if I was going to break the 3-hour mark. A marathon is 42.2 km long. If I ran 21 minutes per 5k I’d reach the 40km mark at 168 with 12 minutes remaining for the last 2.2 km (1.36 miles). It seemed like a crazy plan but if I managed to run by HR and was seeing these 21-minute 5k’s then I’d crush it.

The logistics for Chicago were surprisingly easy. My wife Amanda and I had a direct flight into O’Hare where it was easy to find the train and buy a pass for unlimited train/bus rides for 3 days. We flew in Saturday morning and were going to leave on Monday evening, so a 3-day pass worked out perfect. We took the train to near the expo, went through packet pickup and hit the expo. I liked this expo better than NYCM or Boston. There were plenty of vendors, but the aisles were wide enough that you didn’t feel like cattle trying to get around. We bought a few things, including some new socks for race day and had a good time. Our hotel was right next to Grant Park where the start and finish lines are for the marathon. After some lunch at a nearby restaurant we decided to walk the 2 miles back to the hotel. This might not have been a smart idea, but I’m glad we did it. We got a chance to walk the end of the marathon, see the “crazy steep hill” at mile 26 and explore some of the park. In case the quotes didn’t make it obvious, the hill at mile 26 is no big deal but I have heard from many people that have done this race that it feels like climbing Mt. Everest and I get that. It is the biggest hill on the course, and it is mile 26! The hotel was fantastic. I hesitate to name it because I want to be able to stay there again :-) It was the Congress Hotel. Our room was on the 4th floor and had a window overlooking the park where I would pass through security to get to the start line. Despite being close to everything my watch recorded 22,326 steps the day before the marathon which is about 10–11 miles of walking. Oops.

A view of the hotel from Grant Park the morning after the race

The view from our hotel room post race

The morning of the marathon I set my alarm early but woke up even earlier. After taking my time getting ready and eating I thought about heading over to the start at 5:30 am. The race starts at 7:30am. 2 hours ahead of time seemed pretty reasonable for a big city marathon. It does make me less anxious to be early. Fortunately, I had a view of what was going on in Grant Park. I looked out the window and there were very few people heading through security. OK, this will be cool. I’ll just sit in the room watching out the window and as the foot traffic starts to increase decide to make the move across the street to sit in the cold. Well, not that cold, but 40F when you are outside and sitting on the ground can get a bit chilly. At 6:15am the foot traffic was still fairly light, but I couldn’t hold back anymore so I went ahead and left the hotel. I was wearing several layers of clothes, but it was the magical extra-large plastic trash bag that kept me the warmest. Getting through security and following the volunteers’ instructions over to the start line was easy. The start corrals had 6-foot fencing on the side and hundreds of volunteers inside with ropes to keep each of the corrals separate. I knew I would want to line up at the start of corral B, but I didn’t want to stand for over an hour or worse yet, sit on the pavement, so I found a comfortable spot in the grass next to the corral and leaned up against a tree. I watched people slowly trickle into corral B, but people accumulated pretty slowly. Around 7am I stood up and walked over to one of the 35 portapotties right next to this part of the course. No line, no waiting. A quick in and out and then I was over to the corral. I was able to walk right up to the rope that separated us from corral A with no problem. I had to shake my head and laugh at some of the other runners though. In every corral I could see, including mine, there were dozens, maybe even up to one hundred runners running in circles on imaginary 100–150 yard tracks within the corral. I get the point of doing a warmup but I swear some of these people had been running for more than 30 minutes before the start of the marathon! I couldn’t help but think that they all looked like they were swirling in a giant toilet bowl after someone had hit the flush. What can I say, the things that come to mind early in the morning when you are in the middle of a bunch of like-minded crazies can be a little weird.

As the corrals started to fill I noticed a flaw in my plan to run the first 5k with the 3-hour pace group. I was in corral B. The corral B 3-hour pace group was 50 feet behind me. The corral A 3-hour pace group was 150 feet in front of me. I was not moving backwards. Ok, this won’t be that bad. I’ll just keep the corral A 3-hour pace group in sight. I might gain on them a little bit, and that would be fine, either way I’d be able to use the distance between us to stop me from starting off at a ridiculous fast pace. I don’t remember much from the pre-race announcements except that the announcer made one comment that was very poorly worded. He was talking about different people that were in attendance. First he mentioned some of the athletes from the Paralympics, which was cool, but then he mentioned someone else in attendance that was from the “real Olympics”. Really? Did he just say that? SMH. Also, before the start, I made friends with a Brit (named Alex?). He was a fellow big guy at about 6' 4" tall. He was hoping to run a 2:57. This caught my attention. It was windy. He was my size. He has a goal that is near my wildest dreams of what might maybe, possibly happen if I have a perfect day. We might get a chance to draft off of each other! That never happens with people my size. In windy marathons I will have dozens of people following me as if we are a human centipede. I never get anyone my size to break the wind for me. When the gun went off, I could see people in the distance in front of me start to cross the line but there was something weird going on. The 50 volunteers holding a rope between corral A and corral B didn’t move an inch. They stood motionless. Corral A was emptying right in front of me and the volunteers were motionless. Once there was a 50-foot break between the corral that had been let loose and us the volunteers started moving very slowly and then stopped again. WTF. I’ve never seen a start like this. They are actually going to hold the second corral back? Why? After what seemed like an eternity but was only 3 1/2 minutes they let us go and I was able to cross the start line. It was pretty cool going across the start and seeing almost no runners in front of me, but this also meant that I was on my own for that first 5k. There would be no 3-hour pace group unless I waited for the one behind me and that wasn’t going to happen. The corral A pace group had already disappeared out of site by the time I got to the start line.

The Brit went out pretty fast. I just focused on running comfortably quick. I knew from other friends’ experiences that GPS watches are useless at Chicago. I couldn’t help but look since I had not been brave enough to take pace off of my watch. It was jumping wildly. Alright, just relax and keep running comfortably quick and everything will be fine. In the meantime, The Brit had sprinted away from me, but then slowed way down and then started sprinting again. For the first half mile or so he was running very erratic paces. Eventually I caught up to him and noticed that he was constantly glancing down at his wrist. LOL. When I caught him, I informed him that his watch wasn’t going to work and that it would be very inaccurate. He was relieved. Apparently his crazy sprint/jog style was because he was trying to make his watch happy and get the display to show what he expected. I felt sorry for him. I’ve been that guy many times, but after such a carefree summer of joy it actually felt really good to be running the start of the Chicago Marathon naked of working pace technology.

Yep, I wore a tri-suit. It worked for Barrelman, why not Chicago? :-)

Amanda was going to be cheering for me around mile 2. I knew the spot we had agreed on but the crowds were thick at this point so I didn’t know if she would be exactly where we planned. I went over to that side of the course and started giving everyone high fives with the thought that I wouldn’t be able to miss her. I missed her. The first person that I high five’d? The spectator standing directly next to my wife. Sorry, Amanda!

I came through the 5k mark in 20:32. Cool! This seemed to be a bit too aggressive though, so I actively tried to slow myself down. I looked at my heart rate and it was currently 160 but had been 165 for the prior mile average. Ok, so I got to the 5k mark working a little too hard, so it was time to dial it back a little bit. It didn’t feel too hard, but there was nothing to be gained from running 30 seconds per 5k faster than my wildest dreams. I just need to keep my HR down in the low 160’s and then let it rise slowly throughout the race. Turn off my brain and let my heart tell me what I had to give. The weather was beautiful at this point. It was in the low 40’s and the wind was inconsequential for now. The 15-mph wind was coming out of the southwest and only 1 of the first 3 miles was into the wind.

The next 5k came in at 20:43. Awesome, I managed to slow down! I was actually really happy about this. My legs just wanted to go, and it took a lot of self-restraint to keep them under control. I spent the entire 5k watching my heart rate closely and holding back. Miles 4, 5 and 6 were 161, 162 and 162 respectively. At this point I would normally let the HR start to drift a little bit higher, but I was running a nice fast pace and I convinced myself that maybe the perfect cool temps were causing my HR to “under report” a little bit. In any case since I was exceeding my wildest time goals there didn’t seem to be any harm to holding back a while longer. Around this time, I started thinking of the race as 8 easy 5k’s, each of them just part of a commute to the start line at 40k. 10k done. 25% of the way to the start line.

Just keep drafting, Just keep drafting, Just keep drafting

With the third 5k I reached 15k in 20:42 and I felt great but now we had the wind to contend with. A little bit before mile 8 the course turned to the west and then at mile 8 we turned to the south. The wind was coming from the southwest and it was definitely starting to be a factor at this point. Fortunately, I had caught up to the corral A people so there were some packs I could tuck into to get out of the wind. The problem? They were all running slower than I wanted to. They weren’t always great draft packs either with lots of people much smaller than I am running in a loose formation. All I could do was surge from one pack to the next, tuck in and take a break from the wind, then surge again. Wash, rinse, repeat. Not long after crossing the 15k mark though I came upon a bigger pack that had 4 people with the same running team singlet on. One of them was my size! I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. I didn’t know how long we would head south into the wind, but I knew it would be for many miles. Time to settle in and play Kipchoge with my own personal draft pack. They were running slower that I would have on my own but with the wind to contend with the pace difference was marginal and the energy to be saved by not battling the wind would be consequential.

The fourth 5k came in at 20:59. Perfect! They were running what I thought would be my ideal “swing for the fences” pace! I could shut everything off and just let them do the thinking for me! With 20k behind us we were now halfway through the commute to the 40k “start line”. The last 4.4 miles was directly south, and the wind was significant. There was another mile south and then we would turn west. I couldn’t help but wonder with the wind coming from the southwest how things would be once we turned that corner.

Nothing to see here, just a 13.1 PR!

At 13.1 there was a big clock. I came through the first half in 1:27:29. My half marathon PR was 1:27:56 from 2018. Wow. This was pretty unbelievable. I just ran my fastest ever half marathon and I felt great! It took real effort to disassociate from the success of the first half. My HR was low. My pace was fast. I just set a 13.1 PR. Yep, ignore it all. Just keep running. Just keep running. Just keep running. Nothing to see here. If I stopped to think about how things had gone so far I would have quickly psych’d myself out.

The fifth 5k came in at 21:01. Damn these guys are good. We had run almost the entire length of the westward section of the course. The wind was just as bad coming from this direction. Near the end of this 5k we caught the 3-hour pace group from corral A. I didn’t know at the time how big of a head start they had gotten but I knew it was a few minutes. I was now several minutes under 3-hour pace and feeling fine. The only frustration was that was a huge pack to get through. By this time, I had lost most of my pacers. The team pack dwindled from 4 to 2 people, but the big guy was still going strong and I was happy to stay tucked in behind him.

The sixth 5k was 20:53. Along this stretch my pacers found their coach and he told them to take it easy until mile 18 and then let it go. It was nice to know they had a strategy. As we turned east with the wind to our backs and sun shining bright it actually started to feel quite warm. My dollar store ski cap was long gone, but now the thin gloves were coming off too. I toyed with the idea of trying to pull away from my pacers, but they’d done such good things for me so far it seemed like a smart move to just stay in place and relax. Only 10k to go until we get to the “start line”

The seventh 5k was 21:01. At one point I thought about how I had passed the 20-mile mark in this section and quickly put the thought out of my mind. Being on my 7th 5k with less than 10k to go to the “start line” was much less daunting. Nobody ever talks about the hitting the wall in the 7th 5k. I wasn’t going to hit the wall. Mile markers didn’t matter. Just keep running. Early on in this 5k the smaller of the two guys that had signed up to pace me against their will started to take off. I thought about chasing him for a minute but then let him go. There was risk to following him. Could I keep his now faster pace? Maybe, but probably not. There was still a bunch of south running to come on the course and I wouldn’t be able to draft off of him. I stayed with the big guy, but after a while I lost track of him in some traffic and we were separated. No worries, the worst is behind us. I’ve got this. Eventually, he caught me again. Cool, just go back to drafting, or at least I thought I could. He started to slow about halfway through this section. When I came up to pass him I thanked him for being such a big help. It was time for me to repay him. I encouraged him to tuck in behind me and let me carry him to the finish. After a short while I thought I had dropped him but looking back at the results it looks like he did manage to stay in touch for most of the remaining distance.

The eighth 5k finished in 21:30. Uh, oh. I’m slowing down, but I couldn’t really run any faster. Maybe it was the beer I took at mile 22? Nah, I spilled most of it on me and only drank about an ounce. The entire back side of my left leg was crazy tight. It was affecting my running gate, but I could manage it. There was a worrisome feeling though that if I pushed the pace any faster something could pop and leave me laying on the side of the road. I just had to get through this last 5k, and I’d be at the “start line”. It seemed like forever before we got over to Michigan Avenue. The wind was at our backs for a lot of this leg except for one weird spot where there was a break between some buildings, and we got a peak at the lake. A sudden gust came from the east and knocked me sideways about 3 feet. I almost fell down and had to lean sideways to keep my balance until I was back in the shadow of the next building. From there on it was all smooth sailing. I’m now at the “starting line” and I can’t wait to finish my best race ever.

For the first 40k of the race it seemed like I was constantly passing people. I’d never run a marathon like this. I couldn’t believe it. This is how people much better than I run marathons, but now it was happening for me. I felt so incredibly lucky. It was exhilarating. I knew Amanda would be on the left side of the course somewhere around the 40k mark. I had planned to run that side of the course but now was trying to conserve every step, so I needed to stay at the right. With thousands of people in this stretch of road I expected to miss her again, but she wasn’t going to let that happen. She spotted me first and started screaming louder than everyone in Chicago. I’m a very lucky husband. I waved and stuck out my tongue in a playful way. I was on top of the world. Just keep passing people, just keep passing people. I started to wonder what the finish line clock would say. It wasn’t going to have my time since corral B was held back a few minutes, but how many minutes? I was certain to break 3 hours for the first time. It wasn’t even going to be close. I just had the race of my lifetime, well the second race of my lifetime. I guess this one should be known as the marathon of a lifetime. The last thing I wanted to see in the finish line photo was a clock that started with 3:XX:XX. I ran sub 3, the finish clock better show that I did! I ran hard up the hill at mile 26 and passed a ton of additional people. When I rounded the corner to take the straightaway into the finish line I saw the clock. Uh oh. It said 2:59:XX. Time to sprint. I can’t let that ‘3’ win. Faster, run faster. I can breathe when I’m done. Bam. 2:59:59. Woohoo!

One of the medical staff caught me and it was a good thing he did. It is normal for me to finish a marathon feeling lightheaded and emotional but this one was different. I was overcome with a vertigo like feeling and I was having a really hard time staying upright. I bent over a railing for a minute and immediately felt better. When I stood back up I was 100%, but the medical volunteer insisted on walking with me. About 100 feet back from the finish he handed me off to a second volunteer. I tried to refuse help, but they insisted that she needed to walk with me and that I needed to put my arm around her. This poor woman was easily 18 inches shorter than I am. I couldn’t stand up and reach down to her shoulder. If I did fall she was going to get crushed. After some negotiating I agreed to let her walk with me but only if she stayed away so that I didn’t accidentally crush her. She got me a bottle of water, opened it and we said our goodbyes. I haven’t felt this good at the end of a race in a very long time. If it weren’t for the tightness in my leg I swear I could have kept 21-minute 5k pace up for at least an extra 5 miles. I felt like I was on top of the world. As I walked through the finishing festivities I grabbed a variety of freebies but the best one was a can of Chicago Marathon Beer. Unfortunately, it was very hoppy and not to my liking, but the can was very cool. It had a special label and a place to write in your finishing time. When I got to the first exit unto Michigan Avenue I exited and was right in front of our hotel. I crossed the street to go into the hotel and right as I got on the sidewalk 10 feet from the front door Amanda yelled out at me to wait. I had managed to beat her back to the hotel :-)

We went up to the room, I took a quick shower and although I already felt great I now felt even better. An old coworker/friend had reached out to Amanda on Facebook to see if we might be able to get together. She coordinated lunch with him while I cleaned up, so we immediately went back out to walk over to his apartment. He was only about 1/3 of a mile away. It was nice to see how he lived and I’m a little jealous. The views from his apartments were fantastic! We walked over to Giordano’s for some Chicago style deep dish pizza. It was delicious! After our meal we went our separate ways with Amanda and I walking back over to the hotel by the finish line. We kept walking past runners as they left the finish line area and I guess I kept getting strange looks from people. Since I’m oblivious, I didn’t realize it, but Amanda said that other runners seemed to be confused why I was walking toward the finish line wearing a medal in clean clothes. It was fun watching the finish line activity from our room while we tried to figure out what we would do for the next day and a half that we would still be in Chicago. It had been a great weekend so why not pack in as much fun as we could!

Amanda and I with our friend Brandon and his daughter

We went to a comedy show at Second City the evening after the race and it was nice having public transportation, so we didn’t have to worry about libations during our date night. The day after the race we were both up early, so we went over to Grant Park to finish seeing the sunrise and take in the sights. After some aimless walking around we stopped back at the hotel to checkout and then walked downtown for a river tour. The river tour was cool. It was a really interesting way to see the city, but also get some time sitting down. The only downside was that it was cold! Either way we had a great time. After the boat tour we walked over to the Art Institute of Chicago to take in some culture. The art museum had some beautiful displays, but I think at this point we both were getting pretty run down. We were out sightseeing from 6:30am until 2pm when we both decided it was time to find some food and get to the airport. The first couple of restaurants that we looked at were packed so we decided to just get on the train and eat at the airport. This turned out to be the right call because as we walked to the train station we were blocked by a Columbus Day parade. The police officer said he would let us cross at the next break in the parade, but it seemed like they were never going to let us go. The parade was cool, but not really where we wanted to be as we both kept getting more and more hungry. After about 30 minutes he let us cross and then a short while later we were on the train to O’Hare. Monday we walked 21,381 steps, so this meant that our day before and day after marathon walk totals were each over 10+ miles. It might not have been a smart thing to do but it sure was a fun thing to do. I don’t think we could have gotten anything more out of our time in Chicago.

Conclusions

The entire weekend was near perfect. We had great weather. I had great company. Tons of friends back home and virtually online were cheering me through the experience. I got to exceed my wildest expectations and still felt good enough to be a tourist. I don’t know how this weekend could have gone any better.

As I reflect back on the training that got me to this point, I think there are some conclusions that can be made but also a lot of unanswered questions.

My conclusions:
* Chasing joy revolutionized my training and racing
* Getting to the start line healthy is the most important goal
* My body can handle high volume training
* Healthy weight loss helped a lot
* Fitness gains from any source can improve your running
* Despite low overall mileage, preserving long slow distance runs paid off

My questions:
* Would I have performed better with more running?
* Would running more have prevented me from getting to the start line healthy?
* Did the variability in my training help me or hurt me?
* Without a clear way to predict my time did it set the stage for a breakthrough?

So, how do you break 3 hours in a marathon on less than 30 miles a week of running? For me I chased joy, let go of expectations and did way more cross training than anyone in their right mind would do if breaking 3 hours for 26.2 miles is your goal. Oh, and it helps to be very lucky with the weather and the opportunity to draft off of others in the wind!