Chicago Marathon - race day!

Mere days ahead of leaving for Chicago, I found out that my hotel reservation had been shifted from a hostel that was 1 mile from Grant Park (the start/finish) to a hotel near O'Hare. Instead of a 15 minute walk, I now had to be on the Blue Line for about 45 minutes to get to approximately the same spot in downtown to walk to the start area. While it did wind up turning out well, in order to maximize the amount of time I could spend at the Abbott Age Championship tent, I amde sure to get the hotel shuttle to the train station at 4:30am so that, by the time I got on the train, arrived in town, and made my way down to the entrance specifically for us, it would be approximately 5:30am -- when the gates were supposed to open. I wound up arriving at about 5:40am.

To say that the entry into Grant Park for us was a clusterf*ck would be an understatement. There were 2500 Age Championship spots and, naturally, given the timeframe we were given, a huge number of us showed up during the first 10-15 minutes. (From what we had been told, there was no other way we would be permitted to access the tent. This turned out to be false.)

1) Apparently, they didn't open up the gate until closer to 5:40am. And that gate was maybe 20 feet wide, at best.

2) Only about four people were standing at the gate looking (barely cursorily) at the contents of our check bags and looking for both the blue dot on our bib and the blue wristband. Beyond them were the AI-powered "metal detectors". This was one helluva chokepoint.

3) Non-runner friends and family joined the age champs on the bridge leading up to the gate, thereby making the line longer and slowing things down as they were told to leave (once they got to the front).

4) The line was going so slowly that after about 15 minutes after I arrived, about 100-200 people (at least) who were behind me on line bumrushed around the open sides of the line and cut in front of a large chunk of us. (What the f*ck!)

5) It took about 40 minutes to get through the checkpoint and start making my way to the tent. So, it was about 6:15am.

Requested drop-off time for all of the gear check? 6:15am. Great, so, instead of having the opportunity to relax a little bit, contemplate enjoying some of the light breakfast that was available (I barely noticed some of what food was there), and take my time to go to the porta-potty, remove most of my throwaway clothing, check my bag and trek to the starting corral, instead I jumped onto a portapotty line (not so horrible, but should have been shorter) and rushed to deal with my throwaways and bag check. During that timeframe, I missed the first group of people (6:30am) being escorted to the start corrals. The next group was set to leave at 6:45am and take 15 minutes to walk to the corrals. I wound up grabbing a bagel to eat and tried to find where the meet-up would be for the next group. There was no indicator of where to go. Several of us simply followed the one sign pointing towards the corrals and made our own way, unclear for several minutes that we were actually going to be able to make our way without being accompanied. Mercifully, we were able to get to the corrals without being hassled.

I positioned myself at the front of Corral B (yay!) near where the 3-hour pacer eventually set up. Confusingly enough, even though Corral A had people with 2:55 and lower, there was a 3-hour pacer in there too. Huh? Slowly but surely, the corral filled up, and as time got closer to the starting horn, more and more people threw their throwaway clothing to the side -- or at least tried to. There were a surprising number of people, even in the center where I was, who were getting hit in the head/face with the flying clothing. 

Finally, we were off! My first few miles were really good. I was pretty much keeping pace for 3 hours, but that clearly fell off by Mile 5. So, I shifted to my B goal -- 3:15, which would be BQ-10 (a.k.a., 10 minutes under my Boston Qualifying time). While my HR stayed in a manageable range throughout, my legs just didn't have enough in them (given insufficient successful training in the latter several weeks of this cycle) to keep to that goal. Ever so gradually in the last several miles, that time slipped by, at which point I shifted to my C goal -- 3:19:31, which would be a BQ-5:29, matching the cut-off that was in effect for the 2024 Boston Marathon (which I registered for with better than BQ-9:00). Alas, that also didn't manifest. My final time was 3:21:31. While an inherently good time, at BQ-3:29, given the glorious conditions that we had for the day (stayed under 50F the entire time) fostering about 10k BQs (where fewer than 30k get into any given Boston), there's no chance this will wind up being a time that will get me into Boston 2025; I definitely need to run a better race before September.

Upon finishing and proceeding through the long, spacious finisher area, I made my way up and around to the Abbott tent. It is here where we received our Abbott World Championship medal. The communication was so poor here, though, you couldn't tell what the huge line was for. Thankfully after walking around the line to see where it was going, it was clear it was for photos and bag pickup. While I did want my bag to put on warm, dry clothing, I knew that it was not needed because the tent was heated. What I really needed was to use the portapotty (no lines!) and then get some more food, beyond some of the food I got from the finisher area. Mmm... Bacon, egg, and cheese muffin. Tasty and some more protein and salt that I needed. And, given how I eschew MarathonFoto (I think their photos are generally horrible, and they are definitely overpriced given the monopoly they have, at least on the larger races), I was able to get a fellow marathoner to take a photo of me with my medals inside the tent.

After a little while, I made my way outside to get on line for my gear check bag. There were minimal people in front of me, but it was clear that the people volunteering had absolutely no clue what was going on. They were shifting bags from a totally different bib number range (25,000+, though they kept calling it 2500) in front of all of the other bags of other ranges, including mine. WTF - was it so difficult to take the 3 hours you had with no runners seeking their bags to get everything into a logical order to make it easy to pick up? I was very lucky -- I only had to wait about 10 minutes to be handed my bag (and I didn't even know that someone was actually looking for it). There are plenty of stories about people waiting over an hour to get their bag, and some where their bag was lost. No wonder, given there were dozens or hundreds of bags that were moved out from the penned off area we dropped them off to the unguarded grassy area outside the low fencing. This is not rocket science, and they thoroughly screwed this up. (It sounds like it may have been even worse for the rest of the runners in the Red Wave dealing with their bags in the main area in Grant Park.)

Having put on some of my warm clothing, I then decided to get in line for the massage. There were lots of tables where people were being worked, and it only took about 5 minutes for me to get to the front of the line. While a brief 10 minute massage only, it was still helpful to get my calves and my back worked over a bit. Back inside the main tent to have a little more to nosh on (a bagel plus some of the peanut butter that I had brought from the hotel, and a double chocolate cookie), I was finally feeling up to making my way back to the L to go back to the hotel to have a cold soak, shower, dress, Normatec, and eventually make my way to dinner.

Despite the logistics problems getting into the Age Champs tent in the morning, and with the gear bag retrieval post-race, the actual race was great. The crowds throughout were very loud and cheerful. The aid stations were enormous: an entire city block with cups of Gatorade followed by another full block with cups of water -- plenty of volunteers handing them out. The blue line was visible throughout and while I stayed pretty close to it, I wasn't nearly as myopic looking at it as I was in 2016, though maybe I was moreso than I thought, because there were very few signs being held along the course that I really took any note of. The one that most caught my attention -- somewhere around Mile 11 -- was one that was "You're Almost There" written on a large piece of oaktag, but there was a smaller sign place on top of the center part of that sign saying "Message Not Available in Your Area". Brilliant, given the fact that I always talk back to anyone cheering "almost there" anywhere on the course that is earlier than Mile 25. Another that several other people say they saw in several different spots (including early on, within the first 5k): "You lasted longer than my ex!" 

Final stats:

Finish time: 3:21:31

Place overall: 7833

Place Male: 6363

Place M50-54: 609

Abbott Age Championship stats:

Place overall: 1212

Place Male: 949

Place M50-54: 228

Oh, and I guess I would be remiss without mentioning that the World Record was set by Kelvin Kiptum. 2:00:35. He crossed the tape when I was hitting Mile 16, and I heard the announcement by the time I hit Mile 19. It definitely spread lots of excitement and buzz throughout the field at the time. Not unlike the buzz at the finish line in Berline 2018 when we heard the announcement about Eliud Kipchoge's then-world record-breaking performance.

Next up? Pacing for Marathon Pacing at the Atlantic City Marathon -- 2 weeks after Chicago. The recovery has been going fine so far, and I have no doubt I'll be able to nail the 4:20 finish time. I'm just hoping that I have several people sticking with me through to the finish.