Fragility of Life
Good morning Sports Racers. It’s unfortunate that it takes an event like this to get me to come back to my blog, but I fear if I don’t “blog it out” I’ll lose my mind.
I was out early for my morning run, trying out a new route in Libertyville. My new home has easy access to my beloved Des Plaines River Trail and from there I have hundreds of options depending the day’s workout. Today was a rolling hill run on River Road, a training ground for competitive area runners and Olympians.
I was immediately in love with my new route. Wow! Hills in Lake County! And in spite of the hills, I was running faster than I normally would have in the morning. I was even considering adding on a couple miles when I approached….
A car parked in the middle of River Rd and thought “that’s a stupid place to park!” but as I came closer to Rt 120 it became apparent what had happened. Three cars were parked on the side of the road, an ambulance was stopped in the median of 120, and a motorcycle lay on the road in a mangled mess.
Two guys were on cell phones, one with 911. Two EMT’s from the green, off-duty contract ambulance service had been in traffic and saw the accident just as it happened. Those of you who know the intersection know how fast the cars on 120 go and how impossible it can be to turn left off River Rd to 120. The motorcyclist had been traveling eastbound on 120 approaching River Rd. The driver of the car, a small beige Nissan Sentra, was making a left turn off River road to 120 and didn’t see the motorcycle. The cyclist broadsided the car on the driver’s door.
The airbags in the Nissan deployed and saved the driver more serious damage. She continued a few more yards on and came to a stop on the westbound side of the road. The motorcycle, which had come to a very abrupt stop, was spilling gasoline all over the pavement. The front end and gas tank had been demolished by the impact. The wind screen of the bike and chunks of plastic from what looked like a Harley Dyna Super Glide were strewn across the median. Two EMT’s in red shirts were kneeled over the driver of the bike. As I walked closer to see if there was anything I could do to help I had to hold back an overwhelming urge to gasp and say “oh god.”
The driver of the bike had been wearing a helmet, although it was an open faced helmet. He was probably about 50 years old and dressed in a leather riding jacket, boots, and nice jeans, all what I would consider a responsible motorcyclist would wear on his way to work (i.e. not flip-flips and a ball cap). Although since the helmet was open-faced, his face struck the car at 50+ miles per hour. His bike fell on top of him after the impact. The EMT’s told me and another guy to move the bike off of him so they could get him on a stretcher. Upon lifting the bike we found his left leg bent in a very unnatural position. His face was bloodied and his eyeglasses had been smashed into his eyes and forehead. All this made for a very gruesome scene.
At this point I somehow became detached from the reality of it all and felt a sense of “duty” to try and help any way I could. The driver of the Nissan got out of her can as was seemingly meandering onto 120 aimlessly. The 70+ year old woman was visibly shaken up and was coming over to see how the cyclist was. She kept saying “Is he OK? Is he OK?” The EMT barked at her to wait in the ambulance so they could check her out. She resisted at first and I almost had to pull her into the ambulance so she could calm down. At this point the Gurnee Fire and Rescue showed up and went to work. Strangely enough, some of these paramedics were the same ones I had met four days ago at a kids parade and ice cream social in my neighborhood.
I’m sure there’s a certain level of desensitization that occurs when you become a police officer. Maybe you see these sorts of things daily. The first cop approached the motorcyclist and immediately said “Doesn’t look good” as if to imply he wasn’t going to make it. After the Gurnee EMT’s loaded him into their rig, one poked his head out and said “He’s coded! Bring me the (something)!” (didn’t catch all of what he said). At this point a police officer came by asking me and the three other bystanders if we had seen what happened. One guy did, and the cop dismissed the rest of us to go home.
I walked across 120 to rejoin the trail. I barely got 100 yards before the gravity of the situation hit me. I stood on the trail, doubled over, and almost threw up. Holy jesus, what a mess. All I could think about was the guy on the motorcycle. He could be a dad. He could have kids depending on him. Maybe his wife nagged him about how unsafe a motorcycle can be? Maybe he started riding the bike to work because of gas prices?
I got home and quietly got ready for work, which at this point seemed trivial. Life can change in an instant. Enjoy every moment while you can. I’ve seen some bad shit happen on my runs (like Drunk Girl or my friend Steve getting hit by a car) and this has the unfortunate distinction of being the worst.
The Race of My Life
Took me long enough but, behold, my account of the greatest race of my life. This is a blog of sweat and tears, and the occasional blood, too.
The planning for this race began in the shadow of disaster. The day before the Chicago Marathon, Steve, Shelley and I discussed backup plans should worst come to worst. And did it ever. With temperatures creeping into the 80’s we decided to step off the course halfway and save it for another day.
The day after Chicago we jumped right back into full time marathon training. It was a bit of a shock to the system. I had been tapering for two weeks and had hoped the last of the 5:00 am weekday runs were behind me. As hard as it was, it turned into quite a stellar training week. Chicago’s aborted marathon went in the books as a 13.1 mile pace run, then some short intervals on the track to wake up the legs, a solid tempo run, then capped off with a phenomenal 18 mile long run in great weather to boost the confidence. I put in a 74 mile week, which is about what I averaged since June. And I was hopeful that it would keep me going through an abrupt training cycle to my new goal marathon, Grand Rapids on October 28.
Saturday October 27
I woke up about 6:30 am with a calm feeling over me. For the first time I was running a marathon and didn’t feel tired, stressed, or worried. The last two weeks of my running log were full of phrases like “confident” “relaxed” “effortless” “nailed it!” or “felt great!” I had worked harder than I ever had for a marathon and on some level I just knew I was ready. I suited up to do an easy two miles in the cool morning air. Just as I was about to walk out the door I was greeted by my four year old, Max, who insisted in going out running with me.
From time to time Max would ask to go running with me so I’d take him out for a jog in his new Saucony running shoes after work. Dare I say, I think he enjoys it. He’d made it partway around the 0.66 mile loop in my neighborhood, encouraging me along the way. (That’s right, HE was encouraging ME) On this morning he waited patiently on the sidewalk for me to finish a mile and a half before joining me for the last half mile. Future distance star? I’m not the type of dad to push him into an activity or sport, but I can silently hope, right?
I was on my way to Brad’s house by 9:30. This trip to Grand Rapids was going to be all business. One night. One race. Go home. After a detour through the Starbucks drive-thru, Steve, Shelley, Brad, and I were on the tollway to Michigan. We made good time in Brad’s Mercury Mariner only stopping once for gas and potty break (watch out for the Denny’s in Portage, Indiana. I was in the bathroom for all of 30 seconds and came out smelling like an ash tray.)
We landed in Grand Rapids about 2:00 and checked into our home for the night, the Country Inn. Steve got us a fantastic deal on Priceline. The hotel was mostly new, too, so no stained sheets or beer cans in the fridge. After getting settled in we headed into town for packet pickup!
Last year’s race expo seemed to be an unfortunate afterthought. There was one exhibitor, one massage table, and in a separate room there was chip and number pickup. Golly, why even have an expo? I was in for a surprise this year because the expo had taken steroids and quadrupled in size! By golly, it was a bona fide marathon expo!
At 4:30 we had a reservation with about ten other members of the Lake Forest Lake Bluff Running Club (of which we were members) for dinner at Pietro’s, said to be one of the best Italian restaurants in Michigan. It was no exaggeration. I ordered my usual, and normally boring, spaghetti and meatballs and was blown away by how tender the hand rolled meatballs were, or how delicate the homemade marinara sauce was. This could have darn well been the best plate of spaghetti and meatballs I’ve had since I was 12 years old at my grandmothers home in Boston.
Being a business trip, most of our time was spoken for. After dinner we stopped at Meijer for provisions (and seemingly stepped thru the twilight zone while there) and headed back to the hotel to wind down. We took in viewings of Old School (fellow marathoner Will Ferrell streaking was very motivating) and Van Wilder (I sense that movie watching is a growing trend the night before a marathon) before pinning on my number, stretching thoroughly (Shelley even showed us some yoga moves), laying out my race clothes, sucking back some Gatorade, and snacking on a bagel. I was very very calm that night for some reason. It’s almost as if I just knew something special was going to happen the next morning.
Sunday October 28
Six o’clock AM and ready to rock. I had ample success drinking Red Bull before and during a race, but today wanted to experiment further. I drank one when I woke up two hours before the race and planned to drink a second on the starting line. Reasoning being that the early one would be in my system for the first few miles of the race to help me get on pace and in a groove; and the second helping would fuel me the for the middle and later stages of the race.
With as unlucky as we were with the weather in Chicago and Milwaukee three weeks earlier, we were as proportionally as lucky today. At 7:15 am we were loading into the car and the weather was 30 degrees with no wind. We had clear skies (and even a few stars at this hour) and a forecast of a high of 50 later in the afternoon. One word summed up the conditions: Perfect.
After some unexpected traffic congestion, we made it with some time to spare (thanks to some fancy driving by Brad.) We put on our industrial strength garbage bags and jogged to the starting line. We made it. After 21 weeks of training, a double-taper, and the heat wave straight out of Hell, we stood on the starting line of the race to destiny. The “Finnish” flag was once again rolled out and the gun fired.
I surged to get next to Brad and we settled into an early groove. I was caught off guard by how any people were bolting out fast so early on. Then I was reminded by a fellow runner: there was a half marathon and relay going on at the same time. Brad and I weren’t going slow by any means which is why we were surprised. Our goal pace was 6:40. We had trained for a 2:55 all summer and by some counts, we thought we could do even better than that. It was a rather audacious goal, but I knew that by setting a goal in May I’d be ready in October.
Brad and I’s first two mile splits were 6:46 and 6:41 and the pace felt as if we weren’t even working. In the interest of running our own races, Brad broke off from me and turned up his pace just a tick. I kept him in sight until the race turned into a proverbial fog as thick as pea soup. The cool misty air was welcomed by my occasionally-exercise-induced-asthma-suffering lungs and I began to reel off some mile splits in the mid to low 6:30’s.
Like any marathon, you get to know the people around you running the same pace as you. After seven miles, a random runner and I both commented on a freshly slain deer on the side of the road (this was Michigan, after all). I had noticed him earlier in my vicinity and thought that maybe we could work together in these middle miles of the race and share the load. He introduced himself as Greg from Kalamazoo and he was intending to run 6:37 miles for the entire marathon. Greg, I’m Dave, let’s knock this out.
Greg and I chatted and inadvertently let the pace slip. He shouted over to a guy cycling near us “Hey Keith, this is Dave. He’s going to be joining us!” Keith was acting as Greg’s bike-mounted wing man and said he’d help keep us on pace. After a couple miles we picked up another fellow named Andy and the four of us flew in formation for the next fifteen miles.
We were approaching the halfway point which had the first of a few “out and back” sections of the course. Since I knew about a dozen people running the race I started seeing familiar faces coming back at me. I cheered everyone’s name and high fived people where I could. I saw Brad and noticed I was still about a minute behind him. He was all business, and running well. Steve was about a minute behind me as well, and looking good. Then down the path came Laura, Brian, Shelley, Mark, Rodney…and as everyone came by we all exchanged encouragement. At one point, Keith wondered out loud “Geez, who here DOESN’T know Dave?” And then yelled over to a couple dozen spectators on the sideline “Hey everyone, this is Dave! Everyone cheer for Dave!” The crowd erupted! This of course gave me a huge boost and almost made me fall over laughing.
I came through the halfway point at 1:26:55 and still felt great. Greg lead us on a few splits right at 6:30 and I wondered for a moment if I was getting in over my head. My goal pace was 6:40 and I was afraid I might crash out in the end if I was too aggressive early on. After all, as Frank Shorter once said, the halfway point of the marathon is 20 miles. I had to decide between dialing back the pace a notch to my intended pace, or staying with my pack and sharing the load. Even though I had never been this fast this early in a marathon before, I had never felt so good either. Seemed obvious to be that the shared energy the four of us had was pulling me along. I’m sticking with it.
Keeping with his wing-man duties, Keith started making conversation with me. “Where are you from? What do you do?” He made me again forget I was running a marathon. I told him, only half joking, “Keith, if I get out of this alive I’ll buy you a beer.”
Just after the 15 mile mark there was a water stop which meant it was time for another gel pack! I squirted the gel in my mouth with my left hand and reached for a cup of water with my right. Not being known for my manual dexterity, I bobbled the cup of water and spilled it all over myself, completely missing my mouth. I was left with a mouthful of banana flavored maltodextrin the consistency of cake frosting and nothing to wash it down. AH! What do I do now? Turn around? For the next two miles I gummed down the rest of the gel pack until we pulled through another water stop. Don’t try this at home kids. Taking gel without water is something I hope I never have to do again.
Last year at Grand Rapids, there was a part of the course which became my undoing. On that windy day last October, I had turned off the shaded and protected river front path and into an open office park and was greeted by gale force winds. It darn near killed me last year, but this year, on this calm, cool, and sunny morning, the office park became my victory cry. We logged a 6:29 and a 6:30 for miles 17 and 18 (our fastest yet.) Greg and I were motoring along but noticed Andy had slipped off the pace a bit. I looked back and called out some encouragement to Andy and he waved us on as if to say “go ahead without me.” Seeing this i said to Keith “Looks like Andy needs some help! Can you go back and get him?” which Keith did dutifully. He turned back to Andy and rode along side him to help him get back to Greg an I by mile 19.
The four of us emerged from the office park with a little more than 7 miles to go. Greg did some math in his head and said “Ya know, if we keep this up we’ll come in under 2:53!” I felt like a shot of adrenaline was stabbed into my heart. It was the first realization that I was about to do it; about to have the race of my life. I just had to keep telling myself “Stay on target….” and not let the pace get out of hand. If anything, keep it together for another mile or two before putting the hammer down for a hopefully strong finish.
We came thru 20 miles in 2:12:27 (a 20 mile PR!) and then put in a 6:39 for mile 21. It was time to go. I couldn’t hold back any longer. I started to turn up the dial a notch and yelled over my shoulder to Andy and Greg “I’m feeling good! Let’s bring it home!” Greg called back “Go get’em Dave!” and let me go. For the first time in over an hour and a half I was running alone. I was going to either blaze my own trail or crash and burn from a fast early pace.
Mile 22 was a 6:32 and I had no intentions of stopping, I even turned it up a tick again. And then waaaay up ahead of me I saw a little yellow dot with a familiar running style. It was Brad. Maybe if I can hold this pace, I can catch up to him and we can finish together, I thought to myself. Mile 23 was, to my disbelief, a 6:24. There was a time when this was my 10K pace and here I am running that in the last 10K of a marathon. I turned the corner at the Beer Stop (I’m not kidding, there really was a race sanctioned water stop serving beer, but I was too parched to take any at this point) and saw that I had closed the gap on Brad a little more.
My mental state was beginning to crumble and, as such, my brain started to strip off any ancillary input. It’s almost as if you have tunnel vision. You’re so fatigued, so exhausted, and in so much pain that you can only focus on a handful of things at once. All I could focus on was the bobbing patch of yellow that was Brad’s shirt. Had he worn any other color my delusional brain might have not seen him at all. In what felt like forever and in reality was only a couple minutes, the splotch of yellow grew closer and closer until it was right in front of me. Even though he’d never looked back to see me coming, Brad said as I pulled up next to him “I knew it was you.” Since all the energy in my body was being diverted to my legs to keep me running, I could only muster up a mumble to say “Let’s finish this, Brad.”
I sensed that Brad was doing everything he could to stay with me but as slowly as I approached him, I just as slowly pulled away from him. As we pulled apart from each other, I turned in a 6:26 for Mile 24. I was a little more than 2 miles from the finish and it started sinking in that I was about to run a race that was a dream come true. From behind my Nike Tarj running shades, tears began to well up in my eyes. I held them back enough to run another 6:26 for mile 25, leaving me with only one mile and 385 yards away from the biggest personal victory of my running life.
Keith seemingly appeared out of nowhere on his bike to shout some last words of encouragement to help get me to the finish line. Good guy, that Keith. It would be a shame that I wouldn’t see him or Greg again. I kept pushing forward and as I reached the final straightaway to the finish I waved my arms up to get the crowd going and they responded with cheering and yelling. It was exactly what I needed to get me to the end since I was practically running on fumes. Seeing the finish clock I gave it one last push to get in under 2:53 and finished in 2:52:58. Holy shit, I did it.
Brad was less than a minute back and congratulated each other for running huge PR’s. Brad lopped over 20 minutes off his marathon time, and I had run my best by over 14 minutes. A couple minutes later Steve arrived also carrying a PR by over five minutes. A great day indeed.
The three of us, who had together fallen to a crushing defeat at the Chicago marathon three weeks earlier, stood at the finish line watching the rest of the runners file in. We saw a lot of happy faces strolling by except for the fourth member of our crew, Shelley. As the minutes ticked by we traded excitement for worry hoping that Shelley would come in soon. When her goal time was ten minutes passed and then her current standing PR came and went, we figured something had to be wrong. I said “I’m going to go get her” and Brad gave me a nod. I jogged down the course as much as my lactic-full legs could carry me. I few more minutes passed and still no Shelley. And then suddenly there she was all smiles, guiding in a fellow runner to a PR of his own. Once she realized that it wasn’t her day she gave it up to help someone else achieve their goal. If you ask me, that in itself is a victory. It turns out that Shelley has caught a cold the week before the race. She was sitting in 5th place before succumbing to the effects of her cold. On any other day she would have darn near won the race.
After a finish line beer, a bowl of chili (hits the spot on a cool autumn morning!) and checking the race results (turns out I took second in my age group for the second year in a row, although working a helluva lot harder for is this time!) we hobbled back to the car and drove back to the hotel. Since this trip was all business and we only had one night in the hotel, we had to bust ass to get our bags packed and get out of the hotel. Thanks again for a great race, Grand Rapids!
While on the way home we stopped at an Applebee’s somewhere in Michigan for some much needed grub then down the tollway to a Starbucks for a celebratory mocha. We made a few phone calls to fellow runners to spread the news of our race successes. Everyone was happy for us and a few people even said it inspired them to start training again. I was happy to have run one for the “team” of my friends and training partners who might not have been able to run the race they wanted to because of the incredibly extreme conditions at Chicago.
Brad, Shelley, Steve and I were all in varying states of consciousness (due to lack of sleep from pre-race jitters or from complete physical exhaustion) so I put Shelley’s “Booty Shakin Hits” CD in to help us survive the rode home in Chicagoland traffic. I was impressed at how deep Steve’s knowledge or 80’s and 90’s hip-hop went. It was almost as if he was playing “Name That Tune” and was able to name each song in just a few notes. We made it home in the late afternoon and we all immediately departed and headed home. We were all dead tired.
In the weeks after the race, every time I recounted the story I kept going back to those 13 or so miles I ran with Greg and Keith as the enabler to my fantastic race. I took it upon myself to make “good” on my word and treat them to a beer. I looked up Greg’s full name in the race results, then looked in the online white pages to find that there was only one Greg in Kalamazoo with that name. So, since the odds seemed in my favor, I wrote him a letter and enclosed a fresh Andrew Jackson, thanking him for his help during the race and that I hope he can take himself and Keith out for a beer, my treat. Keith (calling himself the Equipment Manager and Cheerleader to the [Running] Stars) and Greg both e-mailed me back a few days later thanking me. It was a fantastic experience for everyone.
So now what? Since I’ve shattered my lifetime goal of 3 Hours, I was left to dig up new motivation. After taking a couple months off and talking with friends, looks like I’ll hold off on another marathon until next fall and instead focus on shorter races. Who knows what the future hold, but I think after the 2007 I had that this is only the beginning! 
DNF
The Chicago Marathon was this morning and I want to blog this while the experience is still fresh. It was, again, an adventure in marathoning.
The Fab5 (minus Roger who is on sabbatical) trained religiously all summer. Six a.m. long runs. Two workouts a day. Evenings at the track. Seventy, eighty, even ninety mile weeks for some of us. Steve, Brad, Shelley, and I had all set pretty audacious goals for our fall marathon (Shelley at Milwaukee, Chicago for the rest of us). We were all happily tapering and ready to get the show on the roads until the weather forecasts started looking unfavorable. And not just “less than ideal” but after a few days things were looking downright bad. The expected temperatures at the 8:00 am start was expected to be about 70 degrees and possibly going over 80 a couple hours into the race, with very high humidity.
E-mails and phone calls went back and forth between us and many of our other training partners regarding race conditions, goal times, expected pacing, and contingency plans. That’s right, I had started to entertain a backup plan should, god forbid, I have to drop out of the race.
Part of me said there was no way in hell that I’d ever drop out of a race. I mean, come on, I’m just too dang tough for that! With Noah’s arrival I thought this may be my only chance at running a marathon this fall. But, the realist in me (and the rest of us) realized that we have too much at stake to “gut it out” just to save our egos the embarrassment of not finishing. We all have young children at home, none of us wanted to end up in a med tent…or worse. And we had all trained just too goddamn hard this year to come home with a finish time 30 minutes slower than our goal. That would be a waste of a race effort with a two month recovery time.
We all agreed to help each other out logistically (taking care of the kids, finding hotels, etc) if we needed to run another race two or three weeks down the road. Races in Indianapolis. Detroit, Des Moines, and Grand Rapids (which I ran last fall and loved) came up as potential alternates. It was good to know that a plan was in place, but I hoped to the running gods that I wouldn’t have to implement it.
I woke up this morning ready to run the race of my life. I was going to finish and My goal was simple: 2:55 or 6:40 per mile. Brad met up at my place and 5:30 am and we were off. We ended up meeting up with Rob, Mark, and Miki in the lobby of the Hilton (along with a hundred other marathoners) at around 6:30. Using the marble floored bathrooms of the Hilton sure beat waiting in line for a fiberglass porta-potty.
We made our way to the Start Corral “A” and just happened to meet up with Patricio and Steve along the way. It’s really amazing how many people we knew. Seemingly every runner we knew in Chicagoland was there. I opened my Red Bull, popped a gel pack and turned on my Garmin. Just my luck, the batteries in my Garmin were dead, even though I charged it last night. Patricio, being the experienced marathoner he is, offered me his so that I could keep track of my splits and heart rate during the race (which is what I really only need it for.) I owe him one on that.
Bang…we were off.
Chicago, being as huge, fast, and crazy as it is made it hard to keep track of friends. I latched on to Miki, Patricio and Brad in the first mile. Kevin and Brad broke off feeling strong in the first mile. Patricio, Miki, and I ran together through mile six feeling anywhere from Good to OK. Miki peeled off wishing us luck. I tried to hang on the veteran Patricio as long as I could but that feeling of “this isn’t my day” started creeping in on me. The air temperature was already getting warmer. My mile splits were getting a wee bit slower. And I had a general “blah” feeling in my gut. Even thought he was urging me on, I lost Patricio somewhere around mile 8.
I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but I had to start entertaining the thought of dropping out. Steve caught me at mile 11 and said he was planning to drop at the halfway point. I decided I had to at give it one more go before throwing in the towel. I thankfully saw Annie at mile 12 with a fresh Red Bull. I had hoped that seeing our training partner in the crowd and a cold can of my rocket fuel would recharge my spirit and keep me going. I felt a bit of a boost but a half mile later my buzz evaporated and I was left to try and stick it out again.
The race made it’s way back to the Loop where I surprisingly caught up to Brad. I knew he was more than determined to finish the race too. I asked him how he was going and he said “Not good, I’m dropping at 13.” Brad and I continued on together to the chip mat at the halfway point and called it quits. Steve was 20 seconds behind us. And that was it.
I slammed my half-full can of Red Bull into the ground in disgust. Steve unpinned his race number and Brad darn near tore his off. It was a hard pill to swallow for all three of us and we wanted nothing more than to just vanish. I borrowed a cell phone from a friendly spectator, called Olivia, and darn near broke into tears. I felt like a complete failure at that point.
We decided to jog it back to the finish and try to catch the leaders coming in. Amazingly, Annie and her son Cooper found us a block later and jogged the rest of the way back with us. She said we all looked like death in the race and made the right call to pull out. We would later realize how right she was.
After watching and exciting finish and feeling dejected, Brad and I started making our way back to the car. We had seen some of our friends from the running club finish in times way slower than what their goals were. We noticed the sirens of ambulances coming from all directions. The sound filled the air and at times it was all you could hear. We walked by the med tent and there were dozens of ambulances parked nearby unloading runners on stretchers, wheelchairs, or stuck with IV’s. One runner collapsed like a sack of potatoes right in front of us screaming in pain. Both of his calf muscles had locked up (no doubt due to dehydration) were cramping horribly. Brad jumped up to help him stretch it out for about ten minutes before a paramedic arrives to wheel the runner off. It was at this point that the medic informed us that race officials had just closed the course. We were in total disbelief, things were going from bad to worse.
Apparently the Executive Race Director and Medical Director of the marathon had enacted their own contingency plan and called the race. The air temperature was now pushing 90 degrees. Runners were dropping like flies. The “carnage” was overpowering the medical staff. Medical tents were full all over the course. Water stops had reportedly been running out of water (my guess is from runners taking more than the usual one cup of water to drink and pour over their heads). There weren’t enough ambulances to keep up with the demand (we later would find out that EMT’s from suburbs 40 miles away were called into the city). We were told that anyone on their feet was going to be turned away at the med tents in favor of runner needing more dire medical attention. Everyone we saw had a look of “what the hell is going on?” on their faces. No one had ever seen anything like this.
After getting back to the car we got a call from Shelley. Although the Milwaukee marathon isn’t nearly as big as Chicago, they had to race in the same conditions. Shelley wisely pulled out of the race at mile 14. Even though she was running in the top ten women and could have placed really high in the race, her pace was slipping (just as ours had) and didn’t want to push herself to the limit (again) just to finish a race in horrible conditions. She was on her way home having expended not much more than the effort of a mid-week tempo run, as were we.
I spent the rest of the ride home and remainder of the afternoon getting or making phone calls to make sure everyone we knew either finished or at least called it quits on their own. The conditions were just so unbelievable. It made the decision to drop out a little more palatable for all of us. It was the hottest Chicago Marathon ever. Over 11,000 runners of the 36,000 that started (meaning 9,000 opted to not even run the race) either dropped out or were removed from the course after it was closed. And, almost inevitably, one man lost his life from heat exhaustion. A truly tragic day for one of the greatest marathons in the world.
So here I sit 14 hours after I dropped out of the race. It’s the first DNF (”did not finish”) I’ve ever recorded. Hopefully the last. I know it was the smart decision because I was probably going to end up dehydrated (I peed four times in the three hours before the race and once in the 12 hours after the race) and my asthma was starting to flare up from the humidity. We all ended up walking back to our cars unscathed and under our own power. But it still stings a little since I’ve never “quit” a race before. I’ll get over it. At least I’m here to talk about it.
Last night our country witnessed history. Olivia and I couldn’t help but get a bit teary eyed at the monumental change in the political landscape. My congratulations to Barack Obama on becoming the 44th President of the United States. He ran a smart campaign, took the high road when others didn’t, persevered when others counted him out, and brought out more voters in an election that will be remembered and talked about for the rest of our lives. 
