And there it is… My Third Star.
The Chicago Marathon. In this race, the world marathon record was broken by Kelvin Kiptung (2:00:35) and Sifan Hassan (2:13:44) broke the course record (she also won London this year). Me, well I beat my Berlin time by 2 minutes! I finished in 4hrs 43mins 20secs! So I can improve and run faster.
Challenges. 1) My big challenge was that I wanted to see if I can break 4:30-4:35. Clearly, I haven’t… but seeing that I’ve improved is 100% fine by me. 2) For about 12 miles, I actually held my pace to under 10min/mile. Then on the performance graph, one can see when I started negotiating with myself. 3) Due to the very tall buildings of Chicago, my Garmin (along with everyone else’s tracking) was sooo off. Off by about 0.5 miles, which was so annoyingly deceiving.
Key moments. 1) This race was perfect, mainly because of the weather – perfect amount of sunshine, clouds, wind, chill. 2) There was a point on the 24th mile, a girl slightly ahead of me, just abruptly stopped. When I got up to her, I tapped her and said “No no don’t stop, we’re almost there, let’s go.” She said thank you and kept running to the end. 3) I stopped to wee just once throughout the course (hooray!)
The best thing about this marathon was my support crew. I had told everyone I knew around the Midwest that I was running in Chicago and sure enough, they came. Carlo, Josh and their daughter Sarai (who I got to cuddle) came from San Francisco. Also got to meet Josh sister Elle and her fiance Danilo. Yen and Zack came from Kansas City. Julie came from Columbus. And Liz and Mike came from Milwaukee (came the day before the race). It was a star-studded event. On race day, they met me at Mile 3, Mile 12, and Julie at Mile 21. It was incredible how uplifting these moments in time were and how much of a boost it gives when trying to battle it out there with tired legs.
At this race, I also met a few people and heard their stories of why they came to run. I had chats with Robin from Canada who’s getting closer to achieving his 6th star and bought me a train ticket on the way to Grant Park, Audrey from South Dakota – she has 4 kids and is running for the first time, Chris from Australia who travels far to run races and now just needs to get back to drink Melbourne coffee, Kelcey from London who asked me what my next plan is and said it’s easier to just keep going than to start stop (I might just end up signing up to the Portsmouth Coastal Marathon again).
I also realised how it can sometimes be bittersweet or a little lonely crossing the finish line, because you had just accomplished something amazing and you instantly are overwhelmed with emotion but you have no friends or family around you to celebrate. You don’t really get to celebrate with them until you meet them at the meeting points. Right after I finished and started to walk towards the medals (emotional, obviously), another girl next to me was walking and also very tearful. We congratulated each other and we agreed how lonely it can be… “Do you want a hug?” So gave each other a big Well Done hug. Her name was Jeanine.
Also… this is the first time since I moved to the UK that I came back to the US. And all I wanted to eat was Buffalo Wings and Chicken and Waffles. Jollibee was an added bonus!
For over a year, I’ve been anticipating actually running the marathons I won lottery places for. I’m still bummed that I lost my Tokyo place (my own fault) but 3 in a year is more than what I bargained for and by its own right, an incredible feat on its own!
3 down… 3 to go…
Next up, the Great South Run with David next week.
Reach for the Seven Stars 