Race Report: Chicago Marathon with the photo I was waiting for

Date: October 13, 2002 7:30am Finishers: 31,107

With an injury I planned to walk the whole marathon with the 6:00 group. My goal was to finish right before 6:00 showed up on the time clock and since it took me 19:43 to cross the starting line, that meant I'd have to break a sub 5:40 marathon.

The problem was, the '6:00' group don't really 'walk' they would walk-run-walk-walk-walk. If I wanted to talk to any of them, I had to do the same thing.

I found out that it hurt the outside of my ankle less if I ran a bit. 'Ran' well, I can't really use that term because my fastest mile was only a 10:03.

A few people have already posted that cramping might have been caused by running and then walking. I cramped up pretty bad on this run, and it started about the 3 mile marker. I thought it was just because I hadn't run at all in the 5 weeks before this race, since I was treating an injury.

If the pain I had on the inside of my ankle had returned, I would have walked from that moment on, but it didn't come back.

There was one stretch where I tried to run as hard as I could, to catch someone that passed me, and it only made the cramping worse.

I was reduced to walking later in the race, but I felt I still had plenty of energy, it just hurt too much to try and run.

A very short story is with the photos at: http://roger2k.home.mchsi.com/LBCM2002

The photo I was waiting for is the very last one on the page.

The splits, well, if you really want to know, they can be calculated from the photos of the time clocks.

If you have any questions please refer to the number that follows the 'DSCN.'

Note: If your browser lets you display the 'Alternate Text', the 'Race Time:' has been added to every photo taken during the race. Just leave your mouse cursor over a picture in question and the text should show up.

Thanks, Roger

Cam,

Naw, she lives too far away.

Roger - 23 days left and counting -

If you go to http://ChicagoMarathon.com then click on '2002 Results', it will take you to a place to look up all sorts of things.

Then, once on that page, you have to go all the way to the bottom of that page to find where they list the age groups.

There is one person listed in the group you are talking about and he is from Montréal with a Clock time of 7:21:28, but I wonder why there is a 4 on the very left like he was in 4th place for his division, when there is only one name.

I did- I'm just slow to get back to the newsgroup. The pictures are great! Thank you for sharing them with us ... I didn't pay enough attention to the sights during the race, so it was nice to see what I actually ran by/through.

The finish line is inside? How enlightened.

Thanks marisa and that is just because you ran faster.

It is a lot easier to see things when my fastest mile is only a 10:03 and my average mile was 12:22. Ugh, that is almost as slow as I was in my first race ever.

Yes, the Omaha Marathon finishes inside. It has done that the last two years and from what I hear they used to do that a long time ago also.

Yes, the Omaha Marathon finishes inside. It has done that the last two years and from what I hear they used to do that a long time ago also. <<

When I ran the Memphis Marathon in 1997, it finished inside the Pyramid.