Chicago Marathon

Goal time: 2:42.59

My time: 2:48.12 (40 sec PR)

Sunday: Chicago Marathon: I am writing this as I am crying (yes I am a baby) 😂. So this will be really emotional… Here is my race report. Everything went smoothly this morning. Getting up and ready, walking the streets in the dark to the train, and then connecting with 45,000 other runners. Beautiful but warm and windy morning. But I was not going to let that effect me! 

 Cops ligned the streets everywhere… It was neat to see. 

 I hung out in the American Development tent with about 200 other people trying to qualify for Olympic Trials… The nervous energy was so intense and heavy! My nerves were so strong. I just wanted the race to start. And then right at 7:30 we were off! I felt so good… More than good, great. My garmin kept beeping every mile and I was faster than my splits! I was excited. My half was right at a 1:20… I knew I had another half marathon in me… These were the 1st 17 miles from my garmin:  (my garmin went out on me when I was writing it down and I know that my last 2 miles were a 6:43 and a low 7- maybe 7:03). 

 I just kept thinking, my girls are going to be so excited because I told them we will go to Disneyland right after the trials (which takes place in L.A.) I thought about Corom as he was chasing me around the course (he even rented a bike to get back and forth).  I did find out that he knew I was off from tracking my number. He was afraid to tell me because he thought I knew… As I ran past him smiling and waving every time. 🙂 He was the best out there! 

 I thought of all the kids I coach and the support they have given me, all my friends and church members and then I thought of my coach… How he would be proud. 🙂 These were all the things going through my head after every split on my garmin.  
When I hit mile 24.45 on my garmin, I noticed on my right that there was a flag saying mile 24. I was a little confused and then in that split second I got so discouraged because I thought I only had a mile and a half left (and I knew I would have been close…the last few miles I did slow my pace down 20-24); I realized then that my garmin was off . I ended up running 26.7 (on my garmin, whether it was correct or not) I thought I was closer than what I was. Once I realized I was .5 over on my garmin at mile 24, I just knew that physically I would not be able to make that time up. 😕 The crazy thing was… Everyone around me all had our garmins going off at the same time… And it showed that we were on pace. None of us took in that with all the tall buildings our garmins would be thrown off. (That’s the only thing I can think of.) I should have known that I felt too good to be hitting the times the entire way. At mile 24 there was the clearing of no buildings. But on that point, who knows if I could have held on to the 6:10 pace for that long to the end… It is what it is… This is what my chip report (the official race report) had:  

 As you can see, my garmin was way off… I thought I was hitting all my marks but I obviously wasn’t. I missed most of the flags with the mile markers because the crowd (1.7 million people) were along the entire course and it truly was electrifying!!! Simply amazing with the amount of people out. I am just so frustrated thinking I was on. I do want to say that we have met some really fun and great people here! I will blog about my weekend probably tomorrow because this truly has been a great experience.  K I’m going to stop because I will just keep rambling!  

 Thanks for all the love and support!!! I do want to say that it really was fun. Great course, great spectators, well put together and very electrifying! I did love it.