Summary: This podcast is totally dedicated to my run of the 2010 Chicago Marathon. If you’d prefer to read a race report, I have written the highlights below along with some pictures. Enjoy!/ Andrew and I went to Chicago on Thursday, October 7th, so we could enjoy the city before the marathon. We came in through Midway Airport and took the Orange Line to a stop that was about four blocks from our hotel – VERY convenient! We checked into the Congress Plaza Hotel around 11:30 am. It’s an old hotel with some maintenance issues, but it was clean, centrally located, and about as close as possible to the start and finish line. Thursday was an exploration day. We hit some of the shops that we like, but don’t have in our little college town: Nordstrom’s and H&M. We also explored some of the clubs on Halsted on the North side of town. It was a lot of walking and a bit of dancing, but still within the “tapering” zone. I also unpacked on Thursday evening so I could lay out all of my running gear to make sure that I had everything that I needed. The logic of doing it so early is that if I had forgotten anything, I could pick it up at the race expo on Friday. As it turned out, I decided to buy some Tylenol, just in case I had pain during the race. On Friday, the main event was going to the race expo, which was about two miles from our hotel. Andrew and I spent a few hours there. We got my race bib, verified the D-tag (the chip they use to track runners), and then picked up the rest of my packet, which contained the official race program, race shirt, info about some other races, and some samples. We walked around the booths and eventually found the Newton booth, where the mighty IronBrandon (drink) was busy singing the praises of the shoes that he loves so much. We ran into the Running Laminator while we were waiting for him to finish talking to some folks. This was the first time I’ve actually had an opportunity to try a pair of Newtons on, so I listened to the pitch and tried on a pair. Brandon had us run around the expo a bit to see how they felt and I have to admit, they feel different than I thought they would – very light and very springy. So based on the recent discussion of the corporate responsibility concerns with Nike, I decided to buy a pair of Newtons and give them a try. I’d still run the marathon in the Nike Free shoes that I had been using. The Newtons would be for post-marathon training heading into the Goofy Challenge in January. After the expo, we jumped on a Metra train from the conference center and went to our friend’s apartment in Hyde Park. She (Terrie) is doing a post-doc with the University of Chicago. Her fiancee (Jonathan) came into town that night and we went to an Asian fusion place for dinner. After dinner, we got back on the train, which dropped us off about a block from our hotel. We were planning to go out again, but the lock to our hotel room wasn’t working correctly – so after an hour and a half of waiting for security and then maintenance to fix the issue, we decided to call it a night. On Saturday, I ended up having a burrito for lunch, shopping, and then doing Indian food for dinner. It wasn’t your traditional pasta-based carb loading, but it worked. Andrew, Terrie, and Jonathan stayed out while I went back to the hotel room to get ready for the next day. I double checked my running gear, pinned on my race bib, powered up my phone, set several alarms, and called it a night. I went to bed around 9:00 on Saturday and fell asleep closer to 10:00. On Sunday morning, I woke up around 5:15, which was 15 minutes before my first alarm was set. I checked the weather, hoping that the predictions would be wrong – but they were right on target. The temperature in the morning was in the low 60’s and it was going to be sunny and into the mid-80’s by the time I’d be finishing t[...]
