Chicago Distance Classic

First off, thanks to everyone for your well-wishes and comments over the past few days. They mean a lot to me and I truly do appreciate it. I think now that the official shock of the whole thing has worn off a little, we have all resolved to fight this thing and to just put it all in God's hands.

Today was the Chicago Distance Classic. I felt like this was the first race all year that was actually something that could show me how my new high-mileage training philosophy was working out for me. Before this, the longest race I ran in '06, excluding a low-key marathon I ran in April, was an 8K, which is kind of like buying a hybrid car and then bringing it to the dragstrip for races. I have definitely been training for the long stuff, but racing at the short stuff. Today was a true healthcheck at a distance that I should be able to feel a difference at.

As usual, I felt pretty bad before the race started. I've pretty much just learned that for whatever race, pre-race jitters make me feel sick and usually once I start whatever race I'm doing that day, I'm fine. Today was no exception.

I didn't wear a watch, so I don't have great splits, but I know that I came through the first 3 miles in 16:40 (5:33 overall pace) and was through the 8K split in 27:50 (5:35 overall pace). From there I don't really have any official splits, although I do remember thinking that at the 10 Mile mark, I had to do an 18 minute 5K on the dot to break 1:15, which was my secret goal I guess. So I guess my 10 mile split works out to 58 minutes (5:42 overall pace). So as you can see from my falling pace, I did slow down on those later miles, but I was still moving along faster than I ever have for this distance.

Just past the 10 mile mark, the 2nd place girl in the race came up behind me to pass. At this point, I was really starting to hurt and was willing to just let her go, but then she challenged me, with a "Let's go Man!" I guess the extra prodding that late in the race helped a bit, because from there we pushed each other through the final 3 miles and I broke the tape in 1:14:41 a PR by 2:26. The second girl pulled away in the last half mile and wound up beating me by about 6 seconds.

So I am happy with the effort and happy with were I'm at right now. I think that I could have possibly run a little bit of a smarter race and taken a few seconds off my time, but for the most part, I think this is a pretty accurate indication of my fitness level right now. According to the McMillan Calculator this predicts a marathon time of 2:37:30, so I'm pleased. I still have some work to do in the next 8 weeks if I want to hit my goal of a sub 2:36, but this was a good intermediate step.