Kristi Campanella
- Oct 7, 2018
- 4 min read

Another One Bites the Dust

Well, I am back at my hotel and have taken a nice, hot bath after running the marathon this morning. Can I just say that as soon as I got into the bath I noticed the chafing!!! Oh my goodness, it was real and it was spectacular! (Hopefully you Seinfeld fans remember that line!) It burns the precious!! That is enough said to let you know where I am feeling some pain!!

Anyway, I could tell I haven't run more than a couple of miles in the past weeks because the marathon was a little tough. I am a big, whiny baby when it comes to rain as you all know. I thought it had stopped so I took off my poncho right before the start. Well, it hadn't. I got drenched for about the first 8 miles!! I just stayed calm and did not get pissed at the rain Gods because I knew it wouldn't do me any good!!

My watch was totally messed up today. I don't know what happened because it is always so right on target it seems. I am thinking that maybe when I was in tunnels I lost gps. This made my watch show me incorrect data. I wanted to be conservative and run around an 11:00 minute pace. I wanted to run the first mile at 11:30, the second at 11:20, the third at 11:10 then try to dial into 11:00 for most of the rest of the race.

My watch clocked my first mile at 9:16 so I was like, dang it, I better slow way down. So I went super slow and it clocked my next one almost the same. By mile 3 my watch thought I was awesome and I was like, what??? I started to notice by mile 4 that my watch was way ahead of the mile markers. Then I got scared. I knew that I was probably running stupid paces and that I could no longer trust the watch.

I just tried to stay slow for the first half or so then gradually pick up the pace if I could but I did not do a very good job of that. My husband tracked me and said I ran fairly even splits but they were slow. My watch got me at 4:32 for the marathon and the clock got me over 5 hours. Here is a sad little point: I barely did any training for the Rome marathon because it was such a spur of the moment decision. It was 79 degrees and beautiful in Rome when we finished (so, it was hot for a marathon) and I ran a minute faster there then I did today!!! Maybe I don't really need to train?? I can just be happy with the slower time and not put in the time training!!! LOL!

It turns out that not only is rain my nemesis, but so is the marathon!!! I swear, I cannot run a decent time in these things anymore! I know I let other things get in the way of my training, but this time I didn't really have a choice. I had to make these trips to TN and be in the car for 2700 miles at a crucial time in my training. I could feel that today.

The good news is that I finished and also that my New Balance shoes felt really good, even wet. I did start to feel a blister near the end but nothing show-stopping. Of course, I was not very show-stopping today either. One girl did tell me afterwards in the hotel that I looked way too good to have just run a marathon!! Thank you nice stranger!

I am bummed that I didn't run better but there is nothing I can do about it but learn and move on. We will be running Vegas in a month so I have a chance to run better then hopefully!! It is also good that I ran a fairly even pace once I figured out my watch was off. I have to admit, I had to walk a fair amount after mile 20. (Probably because I ran too fast at first! Dang you watch!!) Another good thing is that I am in first place for the challenge my husband started in our Garmin group to run the most miles this week!!

Well, besides it being rainy and cloudy (two things I hate for running), the Chicago marathon is a cool race. The course is super nice, flat except maybe one or two little hills, one near the end. The race is very organized. The spectators are great and line the entire course but definitely a few too many crossing in front of runners!! What is the deal with that?

Maybe one day I will run it again. For now, I think I will take a break from marathons and run mostly half marathons and try to improve my time at that distance.

Here are a few photos from the expo and race.