Chicago / Boston Marathon double race report, part 6: Can I run Boston?

Less than 2 hours later, we land in Boston, I get my checked bag and call the hotel for their shuttle service. I wind up calling a total of three times over about 45 minutes before the van actually arrives. But it does, and I finally make it to the hotel -- all the way out in Revere, just past the end of the blue line (which has its terminus in Wonderland).

Nice hotel, friendly staff. I get my key from the front desk and then ask if the room has a bathtub, or just a shower. Oh, what a wonderful question to remember to ask. I was given a shower-only room, so I asked for one with a bathtub, if still available. (Given it was past 8pm, there was no guarantee I could change rooms.) A few minutes of typing in the computer and shifting someone else who had not yet checked in, I get a different room. Top floor (the hotel has an elevator, so no complaint), and it is a fully ADA-compliant accessible room. Not only is the room itself huge, as is the bathroom (since it needs to have room to accommodate a wheelchair), but there are bars by the toilet and plenty of bars in different configurations in the tub. Fantastic! While I didn't need them right now, they would surely come in handy after finishing Boston... if I can finish Boston, or even start Boston.

By this point in time, I was really worried about my toes. And as quickly as possible, get my sneakers off and my socks. Huge inflammation of the toenails on both big toes -- the left one feeling much worse than the right -- and both getting cloudy and purple under the nail. (Yep, those are actually blood blisters forming.) I need a pain reliever -- Motrin is what I've been advised. And I really should get some Gatorade or Powerade to continue replenishing some electrolytes. So, wool socks back on my feet, I shuffle downstairs to purchase both items, and get a list of the local restaurants. Despite it being as late as it is, I eventually make the decision to order some take-out Chinese food. Large delivery fee tacked on, and it wasn't quite what I thought it was going to be. But it was good and what I needed.

Still, the worry was whether I could even start Boston, let alone finish in a reasonable time. Can I do 5 hours with these toes? One of my running friends was starting an hour after me and sent me a photo of the outfit she was going to be wearing. I advised her of my hoped-for time and that I'd keep an eye out for her green Mordor outfit. What would the morning bring?

Chicago / Boston Marathon double race report, part 5: Getting to Boston (again)

I finished at about 10:45am, which became a new start clock for me. Why? Because I needed to make sure I got back to the hostel, showered, changed, and got to the airport in time to catch my flight. As my flight was scheduled for 3:40pm, I wasn't overly worried. But, still, given how my toes were screaming at me, I didn't know how fast I was going to be moving. So, having gotten through the post-race area, picked up the medal, space blanket, and food/drink, I was off.

It felt like a really long walk. No longer than it was in the morning when I walked to the start line, but it certainly took a lot longer. But absolutely everyone that I passed (the vast majority of whom were on their way to the family reunion area post-finish) congratulated me on my finish. Absolutely great having all that extra validation for the effort.

I finally get to the corner by my hotel, and wonder how am I going to cross the road? After all, there was a HUGE number of people still on course at that point. (Remember, it's around Mile 12 of the course.) There weren't really any gaps to exploit. So, I do the only thing I can do, jump in with the flow of the runners to shift to the other side of the road, then double-back on the sidewalk to get to the entryway.

I take out the fob and enter. Ugh. There are the stairs. I have three full flights of stairs to walk up. And that's not the worst part of it. I will then have three flights of stairs to walk DOWN. WITH all of my baggage that I need to schlep to the airport and Boston. Sigh.

I finally make it up to the room. Carefully take off my sneakers and socks. Methodically take off the rest of my clothing and get them into plastic bags. Wrap the towel 'round my waist and off to the shower. (It's a hostel. So the bathrooms/showers are shared, not in the private rooms.) Definitely feel a bit more human, but disappointed that I don't have a tub to soak in to help my legs and feet out. Meh, I'll make sure I have that in Boston.

Get back in the room, get dressed, and finish up the last bit of packing that I hadn't done yesterday to set myself up for a quick departure. Off I go. Downstairs. Three. Flights. One. Step. At a time.

The owner was really lax about the check-out time. I had moved it originally from 11am to noon, but now it was approaching 12:30pm. No hassles. One thing he asked of me, that he had upon check-out: Please make sure to autograph one of the marathon posters in the other room. I gladly oblige with name, state, and time.

Back onto the sidewalk, where throngs of runners are still flowing by. I stand there for a few minutes with the medal hanging around my neck, cheering them on, and telling them that the bling is worth the pain (or some variant). But the clock is still ticking. And where I really like being able to get back to a race course after I finish to cheer on the runners, I just didn't want to take the chance of lingering too long and something getting messed up. So, I trek back to the L station (just a block away), and get stopped by a police officer right after I throw away an empty water bottle in the recycling bin just outside the entrance to the station.

We chat for about 5-10 minutes. He's contemplating getting into running and asking me all sorts of questions. I tell him about starting off small with C25k (couch to 5k, for the uninitiated reading along), then slowly tackling longer races as he works up his stamina and speed before signing up for a marathon. I tell him the different ways to get into the Chicago Marathon and, during the course of conversation, wind up mentioning that I'm on my way to Boston to run that the next day. Yes, having just finished Chicago. He wishes me well, and off I go, into the station and onto the L back to O'Hare.

Getting from the L station all the way to the actual terminal in O'Hare is a huge trek. (Watch, someone will come back and say it's not even 0.25 miles.) Loaded down with luggage and feet hurting (despite being in comfortable wool socks and looser sneakers), it seems interminable. But I get there. and, per my plan prior to the weekend, after I get through Security, I immediately get lunch: a torta and tortilla chips from Torta Frontera. While I would have preferred to get a burrito (to have the rice and beans, too), this was quite satisfying.

Eventually make my way to the gate, we board, and we're wheels up. And at least 20-25 people on the flight are also obviously going to Boston to complete this once-in-a-lifetime double. And I can relax, having managed the first several legs of this journey, safe in the knowledge that I will be arriving in Boston Sunday evening, already having my bib in my backpack, not having to worry about getting to the expo. Now all I have to worry about are these toes...

Chicago / Boston Marathon double race report, part 4: The Chicago Marathon

Finally! The big day has arrived. As always, sleep the night before was not great. There's just no good way for me to control that adrenaline from kicking in early. Despite that, I was reasonably well-rested and eager to get out on the course, despite being a bit fearful about just how warm it was going to be.

Well, part of the reason why I got up at 4am was because the hostel was actually putting out a breakfast for the runners. What he neglected to tell me at check-in was that this would be on the ground floor, behind a door that was closed when I arrived. I thought it was going to be on the first floor, where the rules of the house dictate that all the guests are supposed to eat -- no food is permitted in the guest rooms. So, turns out that I merely ate my usual pre-marathon meal (granola bars and banana). Oh well. I was looking forward to seeing what he put out.

Next was getting my sneakers on. Normally this is not something that should even deserve remarking on, but this time it did. As per usual, I put on two pairs of socks: my Injinji toe socks *and* my Wrightsocks (which themselves are a double-sock by design). I do this on race days when I expect it to be raining or I will be dousing myself with lots of water, as I wind up getting blisters a little too easily in those conditions. Getting the socks on is easy. But the sneakers... I had just starting using this style of shoe less than 2 weeks before, and had only gotten about 25 miles of break-in time on them. While that was enough to know I could deal with the shoes, it wasn't enough to determine whether my feet would be able to properly deal with them once they swell during the latter stages of the race, since the longest run I had gotten in on them was 13 miles.

Getting to the starting area could only have been easier by choosing a place a bit closer to Grant Park. As it is, I chose a place in Greektown. In fact, what I didn't know when I made my reservation was that the hostel was literally along the marathon route, around Mile 12. Well, it was about a 1-mile (or a drop longer) walk straight along Van Buren to get to Michigan Avenue. Just a short jaunt to the right from there, and I was at my designated entrance to the park. I quickly make my way through security, meander through much of the area to get to the baggage check area (despite not checking any bag), pick up an extra sleeve of Endurance chews, hit the porta potty, and proceed to the corral where I sit for an hour while the same brief loop of video material is played on the jumbotron. As the corral fills up and it gets close to 7am, I make my way out to line up one last time at the portapotty and then head in to join up with the pace group that has slowly assembled while I was out of the corral.

7:30 arrives and we're off! Well, Corral A was off. Corral B (where I was) needed to wait until 7:35 before we were set loose. Then, off like a shot. For the most part, during the first 7 miles, I paid little attention to my watch, as I was merely making sure to keep pace with our pace group leaders. Turns out that they were going quite a bit faster than they had said they were going to do, but I didn't know that given my non-reliance on the Garmin this time. Paired with the heat (it was 74F by the time we were at Mile 5), this would lead to problems with achieving my sub-3. As I started drifting further back from the pacers, I started looking at my watch to see what was happening. Sub-3 was quickly slipping away.

Well, as you can guess from further above, my feet did NOT do well later on. These ASICS Metaspeed Sky sneakers only come in a Regular (D) width. However, I always by Wide (EE) sneakers. They were tough to get on during my trial runs when only using a single pair of socks, it was definitely a bit tricky with both these pairs. But I managed. And there seemed to be enough room at the front of the sneaker to expand into.

Mile 17. My big toes (especially the one on my left foot) start hurting. A lot. And they only hurt even more the further I go. I know for sure that this is a problem because of the width of the shoe and not having enough space overall to swell into, but have no idea exactly what has happened. Did I actually wind up spraining or even breaking either big toe or both? It's certainly not unheard of for that to happen during a marathon. Was it something else?

The cheering of the crowd definitely helped quite a bit to grit through the pain of my toes. Amazingly enough, my glutes and quads were totally fine -- they didn't feel sore or lock up at all. Possible that the style of sports massage that I had gotten just a few days before was what I needed to prevent problems there.

I see 3 hours come and go, and I still had 2 miles to go. In the end, mostly because of the heat but possibly in small part because of the shoes, I wind up finishing in 3:15:33. It's a BQ, and one that would be sufficient for my registering for Boston 2022 given I age-up, but one that I don't need since I still have my 3:02:02 PR/GWR that can be used from Oct 2019.

Chicago / Boston Marathon double race report, part 3: Food porn, part 2

Saturday... the day before the Chicago Marathon and my sub-3 attempt. What's on the itinerary? Absolutely NOTHING. As minimal physical activity as possible. So, that means staying inside my room the vast majority of the day, and only venturing out to get lunch and dinner. (Since I have something to eat for breakfast and snacks with me in my room.)

Well... I remembered the dim sum restaurant I stumbled upon five years when I did the Chicago Marathon the first time: Minghin Cuisine, in Chinatown. When I had gone in 2016, apparently it was after lunch hour, or something, because it was not all that busy. But this time... I got there right at the height of lunch hour... this place was HOPPING! It was a 30-minute wait for me to get a table.

Finally, I make my way inside and am handed both a dim sum-oriented menu (which has spaces for me to write the number of orders of each item on it) and a tablet. I turn on the tablet thinking that maybe I'm actually supposed to place my order that way (I've been to such restaurants before), but it turns out that their standard Chinese restaurant fare is listed there, not the dim sum. Off it goes, and study the hardcopy. So much to choose from, but I know that I don't want to go TOO far overboard.

Shrimp and chive: while these look pretty nasty, as it's a more slimy/starchy kind of wrap for these, the stuffing is one solid piece. So, when the first one I picked up with the chopsticks fell apart out of the wrap, it was no loss when I left the wrap behind and merely ate the stuffing. Mmm...!

Steamed BBQ pork buns: I was almost disappointed that these came out with the shrimp and chive and well ahead of the other two dishes. This is so sweet, it could easily qualify as a dessert. Oh, wonderful! And these particular buns, if/when they fall apart, you definitely want to make sure to gobble up each little bit that drops to the plate. Wonderful!

Fried roast pork sticy rice: Very simple dish, and one that even novices with chopsticks could handle with aplomb. The sweetness of the stick rice with the saltiness of the soy sauce used while stir frying this paired very nice. A smattering of roast pork throughout was a nice complement.

Fried corn and shrimp cakes: It seems like these got lost in the shuffle back in the kitchen. I had to wait about 5-10 minutes extra after all of the other dishes were finished and I flagged down the waiter to let him know this last dish never arrived. But this dish did not disappoint. Scrumptious. And it also had a hint of sweetness to it, that it was a good "substitute" dessert where the pork buns would have been my default, if everything arrived simultaneously.

While this was my full meal, it PALED in comparison, volume-wise, with what the lady next to me (and fellow Chicago marathoner) was eating. I don't know exatly what dishes she got, since I made it point not to stare and I thought it would be rude to make any overt comment a la "I hope you're going to be bringing half of that home for dinner tonight." However, this relatively thin woman had one large bowl of soup, one dim sum "small plate" (like mine above), and SIX full-size regular entrees brought out. It was just her at the table eating. And slowly but surely making her way through it. She arrive after I did, so it was a bit of a marvel as dish by dish got brought out, maybe 2 or 3 at a time, with the soup being the last to arrive while I was still there. I can't fathom how much of it she actually ate -- I wasn't there to bear witness to the entirety. But even what amount I was there for, it was impressive. And I'm sure, just like with everything I had for my lunch, it was likely all delicious.

Like with Giordano's for deep dish, you *must* make it a point to get to Minghin Cuisine to get dim sum if you are in Chicago long enough to do so. Personally, I would choose Minghin over Giordano's if given the choice, but that's not exactly a surprise.

Chicago / Boston Marathon double race report, part 2: Food porn, part 1

While I was snacking a little bit throughout the day, with all of the running around between both Boston and Chicago and their respective expos, I never managed to have a lunch. (I didn't have much of a breakfast before leaving, either.) So, needless to say, I was *hungry* by the time I was making my way back to my hostel.

Well, thankfully I looked up where some of the best Chicago pizza is located. (NOTE: I'm a New Yorker. Nothing will ever replace a great slice from a New York pizza joint, but when in Chicago...) Lucky for me, my hostel was literally one block away from one of the Giordano's franchises. It was just the right time where it wasn't all that busy inside. 

Sure, it was a 45-minute wait while they baked the pizza, even for the personal-sized like I got (it's well-advertised that's how long it is supposed to take; no surprise, there), but, boy was it worth it!

This photo doesn't really do it justice. Oh, when that was dropped off at my table, the aroma... You can't necessarily tell from the photo, but I got my pizza with both sausage and bacon. And, wow, was it wonderful. Sure, part of the reaction was likely due to sheer hunger. But this was genuinely great Chicago-style pizza. If you're ever in Chicago, make it a point to take the time to go to Giordano's.

Chicago / Boston Marathon Double race report, part 1: two flights, two expos, one day

The races have finally come and gone. It was a wonderful weekend, and while I didn't do as well as desired in Chicago and much better than expected in Boston, let me not get ahead of myself jumping to the results.

Logistics

The logistics that I had to maneuver through worked out beautifully. I flew to Boston early on Friday. Having checked a bag through to Chicago, I didn't need to worry about schlepping the heaviest bag, though I did have two carry-on size bags with me. I was tentative enough with how Security would deal with these bags. Getting the Silver Line for free is always nice. Pretty quick ride and easy connection to get down to the Finish Line area.

I arrived at the COVID vaccination proof tent by approximately 11am, right when the expo was set to open. Inside the tent there were PLENTY of tables, I was immediately seen at one of them, got my wristband, and exited. Then I mosied up the block to get to the Hynes Convention Center, where the expo was being held -- its traditional spot. I was appalled at what I saw once I got inside and picked up by bib and shirt. There was, effectively, NOTHING. This huge space, and precious few vendors were there. Even though I'm typically jaded with most expos (after all, this was going to be my 48th race), it's still nice to have all the vendors there and the bustling atmosphere. Well, Boston had *maybe* a total of 5 or 6 vendors there. All I can recall seeing apart from the Adidas store for race merchandise (where I made my traditional purchase of a ball cap) was the Sam Adams area, the Adidas Makers area (which meant nothing to me at the time), and the Abbott booth.

Well, the Abbott booth was the only one I was interested in seeing. This will be the first opportunity since I earned my 6-Star medal in London back in April 2019 that I was able to see my name on the Wall of Fame. Not that it's really visible in this photo.

Well, breezing through the expo in less than five minutes, I was off... back to Logan Airport to catch my "connecting" flight to Chicago. Made it in plenty of time, flew through TSA Pre-Check, and was able to sit in a nice comfy chair near the gate for the hour or so before boarding. For some reason, there was a godawful modem-like static type sound that was perpetually emanating from *something* in the area -- no idea what.

Simple flight later, and I pick up my checked bag (turns out it arrived on a flight before I did), make the very long hike to the Blue line station at the airport, buy a discounted 3-day pass for the CTA and head on out to my hostel to drop off all my bags before heading over to the expo. 

Upon check-in, I get my key and see it's room 312. There is no elevator (not available for the guests, anyway). That's right -- three full flights of stairs to walk up to get to my room. Sure, I could do that at the beginning of the weekend, but how will my legs and feet cooperate after I finish Sunday's marathon? Oy! Suck it up, buttercup -- you're not the only marathoner staying here.

Chicago's expo, while much smaller than it was my previous time (in 2016) and no speaker programs, it was quite respectable. And, in comparison to Boston, it was positively huge. First stop, the security check that had us also show our vaccination card in order to get our wristband. Now I've got two vaccination wristbands for the weekend and my Berlin 2018 security wristband on. I will certainly keep the Boston and Chicago wristbands on at least until the COVID hysteria dies down. But likely even longer than that, given that it's over 3 years I've been wearing the Berlin wristband. (Wow, that time has flown by.)

I quickly get my bib and shirt and make my way into the rest of the expo.

Of course, it's a rule (isn't it?) that you have to take a photo at Abbott's Wall of Fame the first time you are at an expo where your name is present, right? This time the Abbott volunteer did a better job with the photo, getting the full wall of names in.

Of course I wound up getting an amusing t-shirt that would wind up being ironically semi-prophetic: "Run. Walk. Crawl. Hail a Taxi." Too funny to not get.

Last-minute worries

I'm sitting down at my table listening to the radio and waiting for the car that I put a reservation in for... for more than an hour from now. I *hate* waiting - ugh!

In this intervening time, I get the chance to worry about all sorts of things:

• Do I have my vaccine card? (Need that for both Chicago and Boston to get into expo, get my bib number, and get on the bus in Boston.)
• Do I have my full kit for both races?
• Do I have the proper nutrition (Shot Bloks) and both water bottles for both races?
• Do I have the right additional clothing for the weekend, accounting for the two race shirts that I will get at the respective expos?
• What is the weather really going to be like in both cities? Is it really going to be THAT warm? Will I be able to hit the PR that I'm looking for in Chicago which such a high temp?
• Will my nutrition and hydration this weekend be sufficient for the expected conditions?
• Will there be any timing issues for my turn-around flight to Chicago or my post-Chicago flight to Boston? (I *think* I gave myself enough time for each.)
• Have I forgotten anything that I really need with me and don't want to purchase again?

To be sure, I'll run through this list and maybe a few more questions not yet in mind at least a couple of more times before the car arrives to take me to the airport.

What sort of last-minute worries do you obsess over before you get underway?