Reflections on the Chicago Marathon almost a week later

My training for the Chicago Marathon officially began the week of June 7th. I was still pretty trained up after back-to-back spring halfs: the Kentucky Derby Mini-Marathon, held in a staggered format over four days (I believe), mostly on running paths over the Indiana border; and the Lincoln Half, held in a more normal format with some Covid restrictions. I wasn't overly happy with my performance in either; I'm really motivated by competition, and the staggered format for Derby had us so spread out that I found it hard to keep up a good race pace. Not only was the Lincoln Half fairly hot and humid, but it was literally a week and a day after Derby, so I really hadn't had time to recover. I was pretty proud of myself that I was in good enough shape to do halfs two weekends in a row, though.

The training plan that I followed was the Hal Higdon Marathon Novice 2, which, according to the web site, is designed for runners who may have already finished their first marathon and are looking to build mileage and improve speed for their second or third. I actually used the exact same plan when I ran my first two marathons. I like it, but while looking at the web site just now I saw the Intermediate 1 plan and am preemptively excited to use it for my next full. It has runs five days a week instead of four, which I sometimes did anyway even when I was doing Novice 2, so I think I'm ready. The Novice 2 only included one race in the build-up to the marathon, a half-marathon. I did A BUNCH more than that, including the Don Childs 5 Mile Run; the Cornfield Cornfield, Boonville Backroads, and Harvest Moon Hustle 10Ks; the Dizzy Goat endurance trail run, which for me wound up being 12.4 miles; the What the Hill?! trail half-marathon; and the Market to Market relay, where my legs added up to around 14 miles. I know this doesn't sound ideal, but I think it worked out okay, because I was still able to keep up with my long runs even on 10K weeks, and the 10Ks basically wound up being my pace/tempo runs on those weeks. Also, most of them were so much fun; there were only one or two that I can even imagine NOT doing next year, so that's just going to be how it goes in the summer/fall racing season, I guess.

My first two fulls were the 2018 and 2019 Indianapolis Monumental Marathons. I ran the first in 4:37:35 and the second in 4:36:17. I figured I would shoot for 4:30 in Chicago and drove my Omaha running friends and my Indiana friend, Carrie, who was also going to be doing Chicago, absolutely INSANE trying to determine whether I would start with the 4:30 pace group, the 4:20 pace group, or just not run with a pace group and try to keep my pace under 10:17/mile, which is what I needed for 4:30. In the end, I went with the third option, only I hadn't counted on it being SO FREAKING HOT.


The Chicago Marathon has an alert system where green means ideal running conditions, yellow means proceed with caution, red means potentially dangerous, and black means so dangerous that they would have to shut down the race. The alert level was at yellow when we started the race; I don't even remember which mile I was at when I saw that it had changed to red. I DO remember thinking, "If they change it to black and I don't get to finish this race, I am going to lose it." Luckily, that didn't happen.

My first four miles were sub-10 minutes, which was a little fast but not alarmingly fast. When I fell back into the 10-11 minute mile range at mile five, I thought that was good; I was settling into a pace. A few miles were slower than the 10:17 pace I needed, but I figured it would probably all work out since the first four were a little faster than I needed, and I had it in my head that as long as I stayed at a net pace of 10:30 or under, I would still PR. At maybe mile twelve or thirteen, the 4:30 pace group caught me, and I ran with them for two or three miles. One pacer was going real crazy waving her sign around; I was already kind of fading and in a bad mood at that point, and all I could think was, "Take it easy with the sign! You're going to hit someone!" Or maybe something meaner. You know. Then at mile fifteen I was like, "Whoa! Why are they taking off at a dead sprint?" They were NOT taking off at a dead sprint. Friends, The Wall is real, and I hit it hard at mile fifteen, and harder at mile nineteen. At some point I basically abandoned all time goals and just focused on keeping going. Also, I drank A LOT of water. I carried my own water bottle; at some water stops, in addition to the paper cups, they had people just standing there with jugs who would fill your bottles for you, which was nice. I also ate, over the course of the race, some Skratch chews, two mini Honey Stinger waffles, and part of a banana that a volunteer gave me at some point in the last ten miles. They gave me I think half of a banana; I couldn't eat all of it, and as I threw the rest on the ground, I was like, "Oh, no, what if someone slips on my banana peel?!"

Another thing is that my watch didn't quite line up with the mile markers. I had been warned beforehand that the tall buildings and tunnels would throw off my GPS, so I knew that was going to happen, but it was a little demoralizing to hear the beep signaling a mile and then not see the mile marker for like a quarter mile. (My watch wound up measuring the course at 26.59, so less than half a mile off, which doesn't seem terrible given the distance, the buildings, etc.) At some point I thought to myself, "Well, I think I can still finish in under five hours, but who the heck even knows at this point?" That's right: I fell pretty far off goal pace. I ultimately finished in 4:56:24, which obviously wasn't what I wanted, but given that the temps were literally thirty-five to forty degrees higher than they were when I set my PR at Monumental in 2019, I didn't think it was that bad. The difference made sense to me.

Even though I ate more/better during this race and drank a lot more water than I did at Indy in 2019, I still don't feel like I have race nutrition totally figured out. As I mentioned, I am going to the next step up in training plans the next time, so that should also help. However, I was pretty happy with the training season as a whole. Also, wow, what an experience race weekend was! Everywhere had long lines, but everything was run very quickly and efficiently. It was also great that basically the whole city seemed excited about the race; a banner greeted us at the airport, and even flying out the next day, people were still wearing their shirts and medals at the airport, which was neat.

It was also, of course, super fun spending time with my friend Carrie, who I hadn't seen in six months, and her family. All in all, the whole weekend was a great experience. My next full will probably be a considerably smaller one, but it was great to have the World Major Marathon experience.

Thoughts on The Baby-Sitters Club Season Two (spoilers)

 

Don't you love that I haven't written on this thing in more than a year and The Baby-Sitters Club is what brings me back 😅?  I just unabashedly love this show.   Just in general-- and this was true of Season One, as well-- I love how the series is faithful to the spirit of the books and uses individual books as the inspiration for specific episodes, but doesn't treat the books as gospel.  With that in mind, we get roommate problems between Mary Anne and Dawn, but they happen when Mary Anne and her dad are just staying with the Shafers for a week instead of after they become stepsisters, and we get Derek Masters, the child star who gets Jessi thinking about giving up ballet, as an online sensation rather than as a TV actor, among other changes.  

 One especially well-done episode was the one where Mimi dies.  As a kid, I remember putting reading off that book for a really long time because I knew it would be sad.  The episode was obviously also sad, but really well-done.  Claudia spends most of the episode trying to distract herself from her grief.  Mary Anne is the one who finally gets through to her, reminding her of a time when she broke a bone, and how if she had just ignored it, it would have only gotten worse, but since she dealt with it and got help, it healed correctly.  She says that grief is the same, and she has to face and deal with her pain in order to get through it.  I thought that was a really good way of putting it.  Also, how weird was it when Karen told Claudia that Mimi and Old Ben Brewer were together in the afterlife like literally the day after Mimi dies?  And literally no one tells Karen that was inappropriate.  To an extent, I think it's great that the Thomas/Brewer family lets Karen be weird, but wow.  Finally, when Janine announced that she was in love with Ashley, I literally blurted out, "Oh, shit!" I did NOT see that coming, I guess because it didn't happen in the books (Ashley Wyeth was a character, but she was an artist who briefly distracts Claudia from the Baby-Sitters Club).  But it was pretty awesome.  

I also was fairly impressed with Watson's little speech about how the Thomas kids' dad is a piece of shit (obviously he didn't use that kind of language, but you know) and that they all needed to just stop letting him disappoint them and let him (Watson) be their real dad.  I also liked how Dawn and Mary Anne jumped in to back him up, with Dawn saying that even though her parents are divorced and she doesn't get to see her dad much, he is NOT absent in the way that Kristy's dad is.  I don't really remember having strong opinions on Watson one way or another in the series, but I appreciate that the show is portraying him as a big dork who tries too hard but a really, really good guy.  

I also really appreciate Kristy on the show, and I like that the other girls seem to really appreciate Kristy, too.  There is one episode where Kristy is sick and Dawn, as Alternate Officer, takes over; Dawn has a lot of good ideas, but no real plan to execute them.  Kristy comes back and is very quickly and efficiently like, "Great ideas, Dawn.  Here's how we're going to implement them."  I appreciate that she didn't take glee in the fact that things were kind of chaotic without her or shoot down Dawn's ideas, but actually saw the good in them and figured out how to make them work.  Along with that, I also like how even though sometimes the girls disagree or get annoyed with each other, they are fundamentally good friends who accept each other for who they are.  Their families, for the most part, are like that, too.  There is one episode where Stacey asks them to help with a fundraiser for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, and Kristy firmly says she'll participate, but will NOT wear a dress; they're all just like, "Yeah, cool."  In the Valentine's Day episode, Karen asks Kristy if anyone gave her a flower for Valentine's Day, and Kristy's just like, "No, thank God"; Karen's just like, "Hmm. Cool, now let's talk about how our house is haunted," or whatever.  They all know when to call each other out or challenge each other, but they don't make A Thing out of every little thing.  

The stuff with Mary Anne and Logan's relationship was kind of weird.  The two become a couple and Mary Anne is overwhelmed with how much things change; they get invited to sit in the "couples lounge" at lunch, Logan gets kind of peer pressured into taking Mary Anne on a really fancy date for Valentine's Day, and Mary Anne's friends stop inviting her to some things because they assume she'd rather hang out with him.  Mary Anne's dad eventually has a talk with her and tells her that she and Logan don't have to be a couple, they can just be friends who like each other, which is good advice, I guess, but I feel like another option was that they could still be a couple, just not LIKE THAT.  That's basically what they wind up doing, but junior high relationships weren't really like that anyway, were they?  Hmm.

I also really appreciated how Jessi's mom was just like, "Oh, you are NOT giving up ballet just because you didn't get the lead in one show."  I think what happened there was Jessi went from being a big fish in a small pond to a small fish in a big pond, which happens to everyone sooner or later, and it's probably good that Jessi got that experience out of the way so young.

Finally, I'm sure I mentioned this in my first season review, but how brilliant was it of them to cast Alicia Silverstone as Kristy's mom? She was like ICONIC to us 90s teens.

Anyway, can't wait for season three! Great job, show!