Chicago Marathon, 2013...

Yesterday, Jeannie and I ran the Chicago Marathon.

It was our first marathon so we were very excited, nervous and amped up.

It didn't start off great.  I had a few hiccups.

First off, I've had a battle with my Yurbud headphones for the past 2 months.  I returned 2 sets of the headphones because they stopped working.  I really love Yurbuds, but the special edition pair are fatally flawed.  They short out after 2 miles every time I use them.  I returned my second pair 6 weeks ago and never received a replacement pair or a refund from the company.  I waited all the way to Saturday to see if new ones would arrive in the mail.

They never came.

Out of desperation, I went to Sports Authority late Saturday and picked up a pair of Yurbud headphones for the marathon.

Epic Fail.

When I got home I opened up the box and someone had stolen the rubber Yurbud ear coverings out of the box.  All that was in the box was a useless earphone cable.

I scrounged around and found a really old set of headphones and set them aside for the marathon.

My second hiccup?  I bought a new pair of running sunglasses a few months ago (also from Sports Authority.  What's going on over there?).  After wearing them during 2 runs, the right earpiece snapped off.  It was really odd.  I didn't drop them or squeeze them or anything.  I took them off my head and the earpiece remained behind my ear.  Weird.

The glasses were expensive and I loved them so much that I superglued them back together and they were as good as new.

Until yesterday.

As we walked from the red line to the starting corral of the marathon, I took off my sunglasses and the left earpiece remained behind my ear.

I started to throw them away, but I really love these glasses.  I put them back on my head and determined I could just go ahead and run with broken glasses and would fix them after the marathon.

Hiccup #3.

I run with a belt pack.  I use it to hold my iPhone while I run because I don't like running with an armband.  There are elastic grips on the side of the pouch that can hold gels.  Normally, I put gels in my pockets, but I switched to running shorts that didn't have side pockets because I don't like the gels bouncing around while I run.

I loaded the elastic grips with 3 gels tested the pack to make sure they'd stay in.

They didn't.

Within 1 mile, I lost all my gels.

They flew out of the grips like missiles.  It was pretty funny.

These minor little hiccups were the only parts of my day that I can even slightly complain about.  Everything else went pretty perfectly.

Sunday morning, woke up at 4:30.  Showered, ate a bagel with peanut butter and then Jeannie and took the train downtown.  We met up with Brett and Becca Taubel and made our way to our corral.

I always tend to over-hydrate so I stopped for a quick pitstop at the porta-potty (Gross).
We got in our corral H and inched forward to the starting line.

Jeannie and I run at different speeds.  I usually run 9 minute miles and she's most comfortable somewhere in between 10:30 and 11:00 minute miles.   We calculated that we should run at a pace that would be slower than what I normally run and slightly faster than what she runs.  If we could settle in at a comfortable speed for the both of us, we could accelerate it or decrease it later on.

At the expo, Nike gave away temporary tattoo's that you could wear to help you keep track of what times you were shooting for.  I applied it, but never looked at it.  I really just wanted it because I thought it made me look like a sci-fi running robot.

We cruised at that pace for the entire marathon.

Looking at stats, we stuck to 10:30-10:40 minute miles for almost the entire race.  We had a couple miles where we stopped to talk to friends and another mile where I had to stop to go to the bathroom again (I was way, WAY over-hydrated.)  Outside of those, we were remarkably consistent.

That served us well to the very end.  I never felt winded and never felt tired.  My legs were sore and my feet ached, but my body held up remarkably well to the punishment. We never stopped.  We never walked.  We finished at 4:42:14.

Pretty good for our first marathon, I thought.

We could have pushed a bit harder and finished around 4:30:00, but we were very cautious and didn't know what to expect from our bodies running a full 26.2 miles.

Also, Jeannie and I ran next to each other for the first 24 miles.  For 2 of the last, 2.2 miles, Jeannie settled in behind me.  I slowed down because I thought she was gassed and needed to slow down. Even though I slowed down, she didn't slide back beside me.  I finally realized she was behind me because she wanted me to set the speed so she could just follow.  My mistake.  If I hadn't slowed down, we would have shaved off 3 or 4 minutes.

Nevertheless, we hit the hill rounded the corner and finished our first marathon in great spirits.
Jeannie was so happy to have her medal.

I was so impressed with the marathon and the fortitude of all the runners.  We passed people and people passed us and every runner had the same look on their faces, determined.

It was an absolutely beautiful day and it was such a joy to run through all the neighborhoods and see the throngs of people that came out to cheer.  Forever I will have etched in my mind the faces of all the spectators who cheered everybody on.

I had my old headphones, but we actually didn't listen to music our use our headphones until mile 22.  Those first 3 1/2 hours we just raced along and listed to the cheers and music from the people on the street.  There was always some kind of entertainment or atmospheric attraction to observe.  So much so, that the first 18 miles flew by.  It just went by so fast.

Some of my favorite spots:
1 - Running down State Street.  So historic, so cool.
2 - The narrow strip on Halsted, before you turned onto Taylor.  It was so narrow, people were so close, it felt like you were running in a Chariots of Fire type race.
3 - The Tree lined streets of Sedgewick.  So shady, so nice.
4 - Taylor Street.  I used to live in Little Italy and that's where our friends Anne and Jeff held up a sign for us.
5 - Running under the entrance to Chinatown.  So cool.
6 - Pilsen.  So many, lovely cheering people with pretzels and Smarties!  Also, mariachi music!
7 - Fleet Feet's Elvis impersonator.  Hilarious.
8 - Lakeview.  It was fun running through the streets of where we live.  Also, when we passed by the Starbucks near our house, Jeannie pointed and said, "Look Jeff, they have your name written on their window.  She was right.  They had sign encouraging all the neighborhood marathon runners.  "How did they know?" I asked.  "I signed us up so I could surprise you when we ran by," she excitedly told me.  It was such a funny surprise.

Great day.  Great race.  Great city.