Three weeks ago I wrote the following draft of a blog post entitled “Is It Better to Fail Spectacularly?”.
I am having a lot of doubts. I’ve been training for the Chicago Marathon in earnest since June, but in reality the preparations began a year ago when I was accepted based on my qualifying time from the 2023 Ventura Marathon. I don’t have doubt that I can run a marathon. I have run three in the last year and a half, and I routinely go on weekend long runs that approach or surpass 20 miles. In a way, I think doubting if I was able to run a marathon at all would be easier. The goal would be so much simpler: survive.
No, I am having doubts about a very specific goal: running under 3 hours. My finishing time in those three marathons have all been between 3:03 and 3:08. I feel confident I could run a sub 3:10 time even with extremely poor preparation. However, the tricky thing about aiming for under 3 hours is that it will require me going out at a much brisker pace than I have in other marathons, where my general strategy has been to have a massive negative split (i.e. second half significantly faster than the first half). Going out hard at the beginning increases your chances of blowing up and either running a slow time, or, at worst, not finishing at all.
As I sit just under two weeks out from the race, I can’t help but think I haven’t done enough. I didn’t make enough sacrifices, I wasn’t disciplined enough in my training plan, I — the list goes on. The reality is that my job has been more demanding than ever, my Fall travel schedule has been exhausting, and in the last few days I have come down with an illness that I am having trouble kicking. If I was going to do a better job of handling these variables, the time to do so was months ago.
I think when embarking on most difficult journeys in life there is a thin line between delusional and daring. You have to believe that you are capable of something that you have never done before, while also ensuring that you are not reckless in your attempt. While courage is required to face situations with unfavorable odds, there is no valor in attempting a feat with an expectation of failure.
Last week I ran the Chicago Marathon and finished with a time of 2:55:34, a nearly 8 minute personal best. Upon re-reading my draft above, one could expect my takeaway to be “shoot for the moon”. After all, I took a big risk and it paid off. However, I think that outlook is too reductive. In reality, in the days before the race I constantly modified my plan, and I ended up failing to adhere to the final strategy I had settled on. By all accounts, I ran a gritty, but undisciplined race.
Leading up to the race, I had put together four separate pace plans:
- Steady: consistently cut down pace, shaving a few seconds off every couple of miles. (Predicted Finish: 3:00:00)
- Big Negative Split: keep a relatively relaxed pace (7:05 min/mi) for the first ~10 miles, then make an aggressive move over the middle miles of the race and run a significantly faster second half. (Predicted Finish: 2:59:55)
- Best 10K of My Life: keep a very relaxed pace (7:15 min/mi) for the first half, start a steady cutdown over the middle miles, then aggressively cutdown the last third. Finish off with a 10K that would be good if I hadn’t run 20 miles beforehand. (Predicted Finish: 3:00:07 — “Surely I can find 7 seconds somewhere!”)
- Dan Runs a Marathon: keep a relaxed pace through 16 miles, slowly cutdown pace the rest of the way. Play it conservative. (Predicted Finish: 3:04:31)
While conventional wisdom would be to go with the Steady plan, the doubts enumerated in my draft blog post weighed heavy on my mind. As I got closer to the race, Best 10K of My Life started to look more and more appealing. The plan would essentially be to put myself in position to have the opportunity to run under 3 hours, even though there would be a low probability of success. However, the evening before the marathon I felt as though none of the plans felt exactly right. Best 10K of My Life felt like feigning courage, saying I would “go for it” but knowing deep down that I wouldn’t have the legs for the 10K I needed at the end. Both Steady and Big Negative Split felt like I was going out too hot and and had a high probability of blowing up early. I couldn’t live with myself if I played it safe with Dan Runs a Marathon.
I ended up designing one more strategy: Burn the Ships. It fell somewhere between Big Negative Split and Best 10K of My Life. I would go out with a relaxed pace (7:10 min/mi), start a slow cutdown after 8 miles if I was feeling good, then a more aggressive cutdown through the last ~10 miles of the race. Predicted finish was 2:59:51. I still had my doubts, but I felt like this plan was daring, but not delusional.
Travel and Preparation Link to heading
Katie and I flew out to Chicago on Friday night, arriving at Midway Airport at 9:45 PM. We were staying about an hour away from the start / finish line at Grant Park and we ended up not getting to our AirBnB until after 11:00 PM. In hindsight, arriving on Thursday and going to the expo on Friday would have allowed for more rest and less stress, but getting in on Friday night meant that we could both work a full week, and we didn’t have to pay for another night of lodging.
On Saturday morning, I went for a short 2 mile shakeout run. The pace was probably a little spicy for a shakeout, but I allowed myself to do whatever felt good for those 2 miles. Going a little faster helped calm some of the nerves that were starting to build precipitously.
Afterwards, Katie and I, along with Katie’s family, who we were staying with, went out to brunch. My least favorite part of racing is fueling both before and during the race. I typically feel as though I am overeating and end up feeling uncomfortable all the way up to the start. For Chicago, I focused not on eating more, but being ruthless about cutting out everything but carbohydrates. At brunch I started off the day with a big bowl of breakfast potatoes at Smack Dab.
Following brunch we started the journey down to the expo at McCormick Place at 11:00 AM. Traffic around the venue was chaotic, and we ended up having our Uber driver drop us off a few blocks away as it was faster to walk than ride. I was willing to be on my feet a little longer rather than sit in the car for 30 more minutes.
Katie snapped a quick picture before we entered the madness of the expo.
The expo was the first moment in which the size of the race hit me. Saturday is typically the busiest, and though the packet pick-up was extremely efficient, the large crowds started to get uncomfortable quickly. Katie was amazing the entire weekend, per usual, but it was especially nice to have her by my side during the expo. After getting my bib and t-shirt and taking a quick tour of the vendor booths, we were back out and on our way to meet up with my parents, who had arrived Saturday morning, for a late lunch at Quartino Ristorante at 2:00 PM. The restaurant had a marathon weekend buffet, and I made sure to take advantage of the bottomless spaghetti and bread without filling up too much. It was special to spend time with both of our families together before the race.
After lunch, I headed back to my parent’s hotel, which was less than a mile from Grant Park. They had been able to get a room only a few weeks before for a reasonable price. This ended up being extremely helpful, as I otherwise would have had to travel more than an hour to the start line on Sunday morning. I continued drinking water and started to mix in some Gatorade. I did some stretching in the hotel hallway, was in bed by 5:00 PM, and had a “dinner” of a few slices of white bread. It took me nearly 2 hours to fall asleep, which was expected, but we watched some college football to help keep me distracted from the task ahead of me.
Race Day Link to heading
I woke up to my alarm at 3:00 AM. I have always preferred waking up well before a race so that I have time to properly fuel and not have food in my stomach at the start. I immediately ate 6 slices of white bread, drank 1 cup of coffee, drank 1 bottle of gatorade, and started sipping water. From 3:30 AM to 4:30 AM I sat in a chair with my feet elevated, listened to music, and repeated the race plan over and over again in my head. At 4:30 AM, I put on my shoes and went out into the hallway to start stretching. By 5:00 AM I had returned to the room and started to get ready. My mom and I started the walk to Grant Park at 5:45 AM. I arrived around 6:00 AM, 90 minutes before the Wave 1 start at 7:30 AM. I handed off my sweatshirt to my mom, decided on a post-race meeting spot, and headed into the runners-only area.
I was in Corral C, which meant that I would run with Wave 1, but likely wouldn’t get going until a few minutes after 7:30 due to the rolling start (the elite runners, as well as Corrals A and B would start before us). Chicago was more than 20x larger in terms of number of participants than any other race I had previously run. The sheer magnitude of the event leads to a number of logistical challenges. I ended up sitting on the road for more than an hour as more and more Corral C runners poured into our chainlink fence enclosure. By 7:15 AM, there were inches between me and the runners that surrounded me, and this continued to the edges of our large confines. The nervous energy was overflowing.
A few minutes later, the national anthem played and a moment of silence was held for the late Kelvin Kiptum, who tragically passed away after setting the marathon world record (2:00:35) at the Chicago Marathon in 2023. At 7:20 AM the wheelchair competitors started, and at 7:30 AM the elite runners that led Wave 1 took off. We slowly edged towards the start line, an army of volunteers standing between us and the challenge we had been thinking about for the past year. After Corrals A and B had gone, we finally got up to the start line. Race officials held us there for a minute to allow for the packs of runners who had just set out to separate before we joined them. Excited shouts emanated from the throng of runners as we anticipated the joyous suffering the awaited us.
I wish that I could freeze that moment in time. I am thoroughly convinced that in those 60 seconds of waiting I was surrounded by one of the most interesting groups of human beings I will ever encounter. People from all over the world, as evidenced by the many different languages being spoken, had trained countless hours, spent a significant sum of money, and travelled to this exact location knowing that peak success that day looked like running a time that was somewhat respectable for an amateur. It is a weird feeling to be in the top 0.1% of runners in the world, yet still be so astronomically far from being the best. It is unlikely that anyone from Corral C at the 2024 Chicago Marathon will ever run professionally. So many resources — time, energy, money — spent for what? So we could look in the mirror at the end of the day and know we pushed ourselves to our limit? In a vacuum, it honestly feels selfish. What gives me the right to do this? What sort of privilege have I been afforded that allows me to even make the choice?
I shouldn’t speak for everyone who stood beside me at the start line last Sunday, but I couldn’t help but feel as though we shared some bond. Maybe they also struggled to articulate why they wake up on weekend mornings to go on lonely 20 mile training runs. Maybe they also had vomited that morning, overcome by the anxiety of failing to meet a goal that only they had set for themselves. Maybe standing there at the start line, surrounded by people who had been on the same journey, was the most understood they had felt in months. Maybe… “Go!”
The race organizers dispersed and we all took off.
The Race Link to heading
Being at the front of Corral C meant that I mostly avoided heavy traffic out of the gate. As I started my watch and felt the adrenaline hit, I kept repeating to myself “not too fast”. My average pace showed 6:55 for the first tenth of a mile, which was within acceptable range of 7:10 as my watch adjusted and I combatted the urge to break into a dead sprint. Shortly thereafter, we went under a large overpass, and as we came out the other side I looked down to see my average pace sitting at 5:50. Uh oh.
I had read that watches typically struggle with the overpasses in the Chicago Marathon, and I thought that surely I had not made such a dramatic change in speed in a relatively short distance. At that point I figured I would not be able to trust my watch for much of the race. Sure enough, as we neared the 1 mile marker, my watch hit 1 mile nearly a tenth of a mile early. The pace read 6:25. Extrapolating that pace out for another tenth of a mile would have me just under 7:10, so I figured I was okay. I was trying not to look down at the watch too often, so I’m not sure what my actual time was at the 1 mile marker. Over the next few miles, it seemed like the difference between my watch and the mile markers started to shrink. However, my average pace stayed locked at 6:41. It was so consistent that I started to question if my watch had somehow gotten stuck despite the total time continuing to tick upwards. I felt great, but 30 seconds under my target starting pace would be a disaster. I could have tried to slow down dramatically, but I was afraid of clocking a very slow mile and having to make it up later in the race.
In hindsight, I should have calmed down, done the math on my splits, and slowly pulled back off my pace. Whether it was the thousands of screaming fans, the fact that I felt great, or some deep-seated hope that I could actually run much faster than what I had planned, I kept going. Around mile 8, I started to realize that, while my watch was a little fast, it wasn’t that far off. Looking back at the official timing, my 5K and 10K splits were both at 6:45 pace. My heart sank. I had made the classic mistake of going out to hard, and now I was faced with 18 miles of paying down my debt.
But what was the name of my race plan? Burn the Ships. I didn’t know how fitting it would be. While I had planned for the “burn the ships” moment to come closer to mile 16 as I aggressively cut down my pace, I was 8 miles in and had a choice to make. I couldn’t change the miles I had already run, and if there was damage done, I likely wasn’t going to undo it by trying to pull back now. I allowed myself to consider the possibility of holding this pace through the entire race. It would put me well below 3 hours, and close to the new Boston Marathon qualifying time of 2:55:00. Would it be daring or delusional? I knew it wasn’t impossible. Burn the ships. Let’s do this.
I may have taken it too much to heart, as I actually picked up the pace through the middle of the race. Anyone who has run Chicago before knows why. Miles 12-15 were the most electric running atmosphere I have ever seen. Fans 5 deep on both sides of the road, music blaring from speakers, tall buildings piercing the sky all around you — I’m sure Boston, New York City, and all the other majors are great, but I can’t imagine they top this portion of Chicago.
I had already seen Katie and her family earlier in the race, but I saw them again here, then saw my parents a few minutes later. I was feeling good enough at that point to cross from one side of the road to the other and give my dad a high five as I passed. It was a special moment with my parents who had been in the stands for countless sporting events throughout my entire childhood.
I continued feeling good from mile 16 to 20, though the energy had died down a bit and my legs started to feel a little bit heavy. Nothing too bad though. If I held my pace to the end, I was looking at maybe even qualifying for New York City at 2:53:00. My legs continued to tire over the next 3 miles, but the excitement of what was ahead made me confident that I could push through any discomfort that came. And then everything stopped.
Disaster and New Life Link to heading
Near the mile 23 marker, I took a step and my entire right leg locked up. My calf and my hamstring both cramped and I couldn’t move. It didn’t come on slowly. It was immediate. I was fine one moment, then the next my race seemed to be over. A little more than a 5K away from the finish line, having the best run of my life, I was unable to take a single step forward. I started yelling, “NO! NO! NO!”. It was more of a cry for help than an outburst of anger. This couldn’t be happening. The joy I had been feeling for the last 23 miles turned into dread. Would I ever be this close again? Was this my one chance? I can’t let this happen.
I started trying to stretch as much as possible. My pace through the race thus far meant that if I could get to even a slow jog I would still have a chance at going under 3 hours. I was stopped for over a minute, but eventually got to a point where I could move forward. Every step came with the fear that it would lock up again. I made it to the next aid station and consumed as much Gatorade as possible. I was starting to feel better, and according to my watch, I had been able to keep my pace around 7:10 for mile 24. New life.
2:53:00 was out of the question, but 2:55:00 was still possible. The final few miles were a constant negotiation. Do I push it to make the Boston qualifying time and risk cramping again and potentially not finishing the race? Would it be daring or delusional? I had said daring for every decision thus far, but I knew the time had come to make the somewhat conservative choice. I love running, I would get my chance for Boston again. I felt terrible for those last 15 minutes. I had taken down so many liquids at the last few aid stations to try to stave off the cramping that I felt as though I was about to vomit. But a little over a mile out from the finish, I saw Katie.
None of this would have been possible without her. Always tolerating my sometimes disruptive training schedule, supporting me at countless races, flying to Chicago with me — this list goes on. This was the only time in the race where I saw her and she was alone. Her family and my family had gone to the finishing area and she had sprinted to give me one last bit of encouragement to finish it out. It was fitting. While we have incredible family and friends that support us in so many aspects of life, ultimately when we need it the most, we look to our left or our right and see each other. No one was more aware of my longing to break 3 hours than Katie. “You’re going to do it!”, she screamed over and and over again. With tears welling up in my eyes, I shouted back “I’m doing this!”.
I wish we had a picture from that moment I saw Katie near the end, but this one when I saw her for the first time after the finish will have to suffice.
With 400 meters left, my watch displayed a total time under 2:55:00, but I wasn’t going to make it even if I ran the fastest 400 of my life. As I came down the final straightaway, I lifted my hands to the sky and more tears came. I crossed the finish line. 2 hours. 55 minutes. 34 seconds. The emotions flooded in. An 8 minute personal best, going under 3 hours for the first time in my life, and missing Boston qualifying by 34 seconds. My exhausted body and mind could not sort through it all. I felt immense joy, mixed with pangs of disappointment and frustration. Most of all I felt gratitude. Grateful that I have an incredible life partner and family. Grateful that I have a running community in Durham with some of the most wonderful, supportive, and motivating folks I have ever met. Grateful that I have been given the privilege of the opportunity to choose to run a race like Chicago. Grateful that we as human beings get to set goals and chase them, then feel the full emotions of both failure and success.
Me and my incredible family after the race.
Takeaways Link to heading
A few days removed from the race, I have been able to process the emotions more clearly and more critically evaluate my performance. There are a few practices I have identified that went well in this race:
- My pre-race fueling strategy of not increasing the total intake, but trying to eliminate everything but carbs seemed to pay off. I felt like I had plenty of energy, and my stomach felt good the entire race, which is extremely rare for me.
- My fueling during the race, which I am notoriously bad at, was better than ever. I took Gatorade at every aid station and religiously consumed one gel every 4 miles. I used Maurten Gel 100’s because it is also what they had on the course. The lack of taste made it easier for me to get them down because I didn’t experience the flavor fatigue I have had with Gu or Honey Stinger gels.
- I spent more time on speed work in this build than I ever have. I even ran in a local 5K two weeks prior and set a personal best. I feel confident that my improved speed made it much easier to hold my ~6:40 pace for such a long time in the marathon.
- I had way more fun in this race than I typically have in the past. I allowed myself small luxuries, like greeting my parents and having a quick conversation with a runner friend I encountered around mile 16. While this may have consumed precious energy, I think the mental payoff was more than worth it.
There were also some clear areas of improvement brought to light:
- The obvious one: cramping. Given my consistent hydration before and during the race, I think the cramp was likely a result of not logging enough mileage during my build. I peaked at a 73 mile week, and my longest long run was only 20 miles. There were a number of constraints that impacted my training, but I paid the price for the lack of investment.
- My race plans were too conservative. I let the doubts described at the beginning of this post weigh on me when designing a strategy. While being a knucklehead and abandoning my race plan worked out in this case, it is not a recipe for success, and I don’t want the outcome to serve as positive reinforcement.
- Related to the previous point, I did not do as much planning at the beginning of my build as I should have. My vague goal of running “something under 3 hours” created too much ambiguity in training. I think in the future it would be better to set an explicit goal, then adjust as needed.
Overall, I feel proud of my performance. I believe that, for the most part, I was daring but not delusional. However, with Chicago also moving its qualifying time to 2:55:00 for 2025, I now do not meet the qualifying standard for any of the major marathons. It’s time to get to work!
A Random Anecdote Link to heading
The most unexpected part of the weekend was CBS News Chicago approaching us and asking for an interview as we walked back to the hotel after the race. I assured them they could find someone much more interesting, perhaps one of the 2,211 people who finished ahead of me, but they insisted. I imagined the footage would never see the light of day, but sure enough on the 5 o’clock news that night there was an interview with a “Marathon Runner from North Carolina.”
“Coming to you live from Chicago, we have the North Carolina runner who came in 2,212th overall!”
While there was no reason for me to be featured, I did relish the opportunity to talk about how incredible Katie and our families are and how lucky I was to see them so many times along the course.
Official Timing Splits Link to heading
| Split | Time Of Day | Time | Diff | min/mile | miles/h |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 05K | 08:00:09AM | 00:20:59 | 20:59 | 06:45 | 8.89 |
| 10K | 08:21:04AM | 00:41:54 | 20:55 | 06:45 | 8.91 |
| 15K | 08:42:05AM | 01:02:55 | 21:01 | 06:46 | 8.87 |
| 20K | 09:02:35AM | 01:23:25 | 20:30 | 06:36 | 9.10 |
| HALF | 09:07:04AM | 01:27:54 | 04:29 | 06:35 | 9.11 |
| 25K | 09:22:45AM | 01:43:35 | 15:41 | 06:28 | 9.28 |
| 30K | 09:43:01AM | 02:03:50 | 20:15 | 06:32 | 9.20 |
| 35K | 10:03:22AM | 02:24:12 | 20:22 | 06:33 | 9.16 |
| 40K | 10:25:33AM | 02:46:23 | 22:11 | 07:09 | 8.40 |
| Finish | 10:34:45AM | 02:55:34 | 09:11 | 06:45 | 8.91 |