Coming into this trip out to Chicago, I was a bit anxious as it would seem like all of my friends that were also running the race had already been there for a couple of days. Also it did not help that the federal government was having their annual shutdown where essential employees that work at the airport would have to continue to work without being paid. I was praying that there would be no significant delays flying out to the race.
Ventra card
Once again I had a pretty early flight on Southwest Airlines out of Ontario Airport. I timed my arrival to Parking Lot 5 for about 6 am. I couldn't find a closer vacant spot, so I ended up parking along the fence near Airport Dr. From there, I walked over to terminal 4 and got in the general line for TSA screening. All of that worrying was for naught as everything was pretty much on schedule.
Parking Lot 5
Ontario Airport
ONT > MDW
The plane landed at Chicago MDW Midway Airport at about 2 pm. After getting off of the plane and using the restroom, I followed signs to head for the CTA Midway station for a train ride on the orange line into the city. For some reason, I always get turned around and end up in the baggage claim area where I would then need to go back up a level. I used the Chicago Marathon Ventra card that I had pre-purchased with a 1 day pass to pay for the fare. I took that train over to the CTA Roosevelt station to transfer over to a green line train heading south. Finally, I got off at the CTA Cermak-McCormick Place station. I thought about getting something quick to eat at the White Castle that was just outside of the station just as I had done in prior years.
Ultimately however, I decided to just plow on ahead to the race expo over at the Lakeside Center of the McCormick Place Convention Center. Coming in, I thought that there wouldn't be that many people as it was the last day of the race expo with only a few more hours to go before it would be closed at 6 pm. Boy, was I wrong! It was just as packed as when I had come earlier in prior years. Before going inside, they had to examine the contents of my bags. Then I found an open station to scan in my QR code and for the guy to check my ID. Next I was directed to a specific station to pick up my bib and gear bag. That was a very nice streamlined process.
McCormick Place
Lakeside Center
Race expo
Expo goodies
Now the second part was to go into the exhibit hall to pick up my race shirt and to check out the vendor booths. Just like most races, the shirts were distributed on the other end of the hall so you were forced to wade through tons of people and vendors like a salmon swimming upstream. After getting my race shirt, I started going up and down each aisle to check out each booth. Before heading out, I stopped by the OAR (Organization for Autism Research) booth to say hi to Adeline and Cora, the two coordinators for the charity.
Race shirt
Back of race shirt
Race bib photo
Yakult sample
Once I was done with the expo, I used a restroom and headed back to the L to catch a train into the Loop. I supposed that I looked like I knew what I was doing as a couple asked me for directions towards Midway Airport. I told them that they needed to head north 1 station, get off at Roosevelt, and switch over to the orange line. I got off at the CTA Washington/Wabash station. From there, I walked over to the Target to buy some snacks and water for the weekend.
Snacks from Target
1 gallon of water
I was at least 25 minutes early when I arrived at Harry Caray's Italian Steakhouse for the charity team dinner. As I entered the restaurant, I waded through the crowd at the waiting area as I knew where to go. Once I went up the stairs, I put my bags down and waited just outside of the restrooms as the restaurant staff wasn't quite done yet with all of the setup. Originally, I was at table 9, but got moved to table 1. I got to meet a few new people (Colin C., Chris N., and Wellington R.) at my table. It also turned out that Chris and I had a few common friends. What a small world!
OAR charity dinner photo
Samuel Adams Just the Haze IPA NA beer
Dinner
More dinner
I didn't stick around too long after dinner was over as I needed to get to my hotel before it got too late. Chris and I ended up walking out together as we were headed in the same direction. He had a hotel in the Loop, while I was headed over to the CTA Clark/Lake station to catch a blue line train out to O'Hare. I had forgotten just how far the airport was from Downtown Chicago! Once I had finally reached the CTA O'Hare station, I made my way over to catch a tram ride on the ATS (Airport Transit System) heading over to the O'Hare Multi-Modal Facility (MMF).
From there, I hoofed it over to the La Quinta over on Mannheim Rd. There was a lady walking the same path, so I assumed that it was relatively safe. One thing that I did notice was that there weren't too many sidewalks. There were some sections where we had to either walk in the road or up on the grass or dirt. While waiting in line to check-in, I overheard the front desk guy mentioning that they will have a 4:30 am shuttle to the airport. When it was my turn, I was checked into room #413. The guy told me as a Diamond member, I could choose a snack and bottle of water from their sundry store. Before going up to my room, I made a reservation for that 4:30 am shuttle as the guy reiterated that the number of spaces were limited on their shuttle for each time slot.
La Quinta O'Hare
Diamond member check-in snack and water
A/C not working
Flat runner
Sunday 10/12
I had received a message from Southwest Airlines that my flight home was going to be impacted by the storms as it had a layover out in Baltimore BWI Airport. While I was getting ready for the race, I was able to switch on the mobile app to a flight leaving a couple hours later with a layover in Phoenix and would get me home a couple of hours earlier. There was no change fee so it all worked out for the best in the end!
I headed down to the lobby to wait for the 4:30 am shuttle about 15 minutes before departure time even though the guy at the front desk had said to be there 5 minutes before. For some reason they had overbooked that 4:30 am shuttle that they had shared with Hyatt Place. So when that shuttle arrived, I made sure to get myself on that bus before everyone else figured that out. I believe that driver was going to rush to get everyone to the airport as he was clearly hauling ass so he could go back and bring over the remaining people. I supposed this still beats having to walk in the dark over to the MMF for a tram ride over to the airport. There were several homeless people on the train with no intention of exiting the train. The first car I went into had one smoking something, so I quickly exited and found another car. I really did not need to be breathing that shit in before a marathon. As the train got closer and closer to Downtown Chicago, each of the cars filled up with runners. Most of us exited at the CTA Jackson station. From there, I walked over to The Blackstone where the charity had reserved the Crystal Ballroom for us.
For breakfast, I ended up deviating from my usual coffee and CLIF bar. I ate a banana and some bread. I also got some Gatorade to fill up my handheld bottle. My fellow charity runners warned me about pre-filling my bottles, but I didn't have any issues in prior years. Thankfully, it turned out to be fine. I think races were more concerned with backpacks that had a bladder.
Pre-race breakfast
After using the restroom and taking the team photo, we walked over to the start area as a group. In the years past, I didn't do that and rushed over to meet up with friends at the Buckingham Fountain for the Marathon Maniacs pre-race photo. This year, I thought I should spend more time with my charity team as it was more meaningful than a running club with a rather unhealthy addiction. :)
Sorry! :)
Sunrise at Grant Park
Before queuing up into corral J, I headed over towards corrals D, E, and F as I had used the standup urinals that they had fenced off for men. Thankfully, they were there at the same location. Seriously, more races should do this as not everyone in line for a portapotty needs to drop a deuce!
Urinals FTW!
Queued up in corral J
Long walk up to the start line!
Course map
The professionals started at 7:30 am. The first wave started at 7:35 am. Wave 2, started at 8 am. Corral J was at the very end of wave 2. I did not cross the start line until 8:25 am. I tried not to go out too hard, but the first 3 miles were too fast for my goal of finishing at around 4:20. Perhaps I should've started in corral K were I was originally assigned. The one thing that I made sure to do was to keep an eye on my heart rate. I kept it in the low 140s. I believe by the time I had reached the 10k mark, I was already starting to fatigue quicker than I had hoped. I ran by effort and the pace just kept slowing down. It was pretty much a slow death by a thousand paper cuts.
1: 8:39
2: 8:49
3: 8:53
4: 9:20
5: 9:29
6: 9:22
7: 9:42
8: 9:52
9: 10:01
10: 10:08
11: 10:14
12: 10:11
13: 10:33
1st Half: 2:08:07
The wheels came off rather early this year. I was hoping that they would stay on until mile 20. I noticed that my heart rate kept climbing with each successive mile. It was quite apparent that I was not fully recovered from the Portland Marathon last weekend. After reaching mile 14, I was starting to take walk breaks after reaching each mile marker for my heart rate to calm down a bit. I thought that I had done enough to stave off the leg cramps, but for the rest of the race, different leg muscles were taking turns cramping up! By the time that I had reached Chinatown and mile 22, I was pretty wiped out! I ended up walking from mile 23 through 25 while eating my emergency Maurten bar to give my leg muscles the time to recover. I was able to run a bit more in that last mile, but the legs were definitely on the verge of cramping up during that last stretch up Mt Roosevelt!
14: 10:33
15: 11:45
16: 12:40
17: 13:56
18: 12:28
19: 13:38
20: 12:36
21: 13:30
22: 13:07
23: 16:05
24: 15:46
25: 14:03
26: 12:37
26.2: 7:20
2nd Half: 2:56:09
~21.7 miles Chinatown
~24.4 miles, heading north on Michigan Ave
Finish: 5:04:16
Click here for my Garmin data.
While I was hoping to improve on my 4:48:48 from last year, this was one of those races were I was just happy to have finished! Still I was a bit unhappy that it took me over 5 hours to finish. Many people come here to run their personal best. Yet I seemed to have a track record of doing bad on pancake flat courses. However, I still need to remind myself that without doing long runs in training, I will always have issues with endurance when it comes to the marathon distance.
After receiving my hard-earned finisher medal, I continued along the finisher chute. I skipped the post race beer, but picked up a bunch of snacks and drinks. It was a total pain in the ass, trying to exit! It would turn out that the bottleneck was due to an issue where open beer containers were absolutely not allowed to exit! Once I had finally reached the Blackstone, I received my OAR charity finisher medal as well.
Finisher medal
Close up of finisher medal
Finisher medals and post race goodies
I had half a turkey cheese sandwich and some coffee. After I used the restroom to drain the bladder, I said my farewells and headed back to the CTA Jackson station to catch a ride back to my hotel. Unfortunately, there were delays for the trains headed to O'Hare. They had some issues with the signals not working. At one point, the conductor said that we would need to exit at the CTA Rosemont station and take a shuttle over to the airport. As the train got closer to the airport, the delay at each station was starting to get longer and longer. Some passengers with luggage exited and probably went outside to catch an Uber ride the rest of the way. As we finally rolled into Rosemont, the conductor made another announcement to let us know that everything was fixed and that we would be headed to O'Hare. All of the delays added about an extra hour to the trip. So in hindsight, it was a smart choice for me to empty the bladder before heading to the train station. From the airport, I caught a tram ride over to the MMF. On the walk back to the hotel, I chatted briefly with a fellow marathoner. He had what I believe was a very thick Scottish accent. He could understand me, but there were some phrases that he said that went over me head!
Half a sandwich and coffee
O'Hare
ATS
Back at La Quinta
View from my room
It was already past 6 pm when I finally got back to my room. Boy, I was feeling pretty wiped out, but I was starting to become hungry. I placed an order for a 12" thin crust Rosati's Monster from Rosati's Pizza that was down the road and across the street. I scheduled the picked up time for 7:15 pm. I felt a bit better after taking a shower. Then I walked over to pick up my dinner. I must say that I prefer the tavern style pizza over the more famous deep dish pizza. I had just enough stomach space to fit the entire pizza down my pie hole one square at a time!
Walked over to Rosati's to pick up my pizza
Rosati's Monster 12" pizza
Monday 10/13
I tried to sleep in, but I was pretty wide awake by 6 am. I decided to just get up and start getting packed very slowly. I turned on the news, ate my breakfast, and continued to hydrate with all of the remaining liquids that I had. Before the 11 am checkout time, I placed an order for 2 Chicago dogs at the nearby Portillo's. After checking out and dropping off my room key at the front desk, I walked over to pick up my food. As I was walking over to the MMF, I started feeling rain drops. Thankfully, it was at most a very light sprinkle. I found an vacant seat to eat my dogs and to finish off my water before heading over to O'Hare ORD Airport for my flight home.
Chicago dog x2
After using the restroom, I took the escalator up to get a ride on the ATS tram over to terminal 5. It would seem that most of the international flights were out of this terminal. For some reason, Southwest flights, including domestic ones, were out of this terminal as well. As I went through TSA screening, my backpack was flagged for additional screening. After the TSA agent emptied out my bag and examined everything, he sent everything back through the scanner. He said that the Spider-man phone holder looked like something sharp at a certain angle. That's good to know. I'll be sure to remove it from the bag next time. It had been a while since I had last flown out of this airport. I didn't realize how much they had renovated this airport. It was very white, spacious, sleek, and modern looking!
Escalator up to the ATS
Airport art
The first leg took me out to Phoenix Sky Harbor PHX Airport for a layover. During that flight, I caught the ALCS game 2 between the Mariners and Blue Jays. Man, Polanco was on fire and smashing everything! I followed that with the NLCS game 1 between the Dodgers and Brewers.
ALCS game 2 Mariners vs Blue Jays
Polanco on fire!
NLCS game 1 Dodgers vs Brewers
When the plane landed in PHX, I thought about eating at Matt's Big Breakfast, but it was close to their closing time. I supposed that I could've grabbed something quick from another place, but I ultimately decided to just buy a bottle of water from Connections and eat my leftover snacks. The 20 oz bottle of water was $4.08 even after scanning in my Club Avolta code for a little discount.
Phoenix Sky Harbor PHX Airport
20 fluid oz bottle of water
On the flight from PHX to ONT, I caught the remainder of the NLCS game 1. Snell pitched really well, only facing the minimum 24 batters in the 8 innings that he had pitched. That was to be expected. Thankfully, Treinen was able to come on and close out the game with the bases loaded in the bottom of the 9th inning!
Bases loaded nervy time!
Treinen closed it out!
Snell faced the minimum 24 batters in the 8 innings pitched!
Freddie's bat starting to warm up
Thank goodness for his elite pitching!
PHX > ONT
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