Race Report

Abel KiruKirui... was well able to beat me in today's Chicago Marathon. "[He] won the 26.2-mile race in a time of 2 hours, 11 minutes and 23 seconds."

He beat the number two guy by 3 seconds. He beat me by a little more.

Timothy Enright beat me too. He's not a relative as far as I know. But when I searched for my results with just my last name, he popped up.

The race results come with a very nice split chart. If you just look at the miles/h (mph) column on the far right, you can see that I slowed down a lot, with a particularly slow pace on the line that says 35k:

Split Time Of Day Time Diff min/mile miles/h
05K 08:53:26AM 00:32:46 32:46 10:33 5.69
10K 09:26:47AM 01:06:06 33:21 10:44 5.59
15K 09:59:41AM 01:39:01 32:55 10:36 5.67
20K 10:33:16AM 02:12:36 33:35 10:49 5.55
HALF 10:40:49AM 02:20:08 07:33 11:04 5.43
25K 11:08:00AM 02:47:20 27:12 11:13 5.35
30K 11:46:28AM 03:25:47 38:28 12:23 4.85
35K 12:34:28PM 04:13:48 48:01 15:28 3.88
40K 01:17:04PM 04:56:23 42:36 13:43 4.38
Finish 01:35:11PM 05:14:31 18:08 13:18 4.52

You can also see I really slowed down all the way to 3.88 mph, but then picked up the pace again. That 3.88 mph period was my "slough of despond" stretch. As usual lately, the culprit was cramping in the legs. Ouch.

My wife and daughter and son-in-law were waiting for me very close to the finish, cheering on Michigan Avenue, giving me high fives. I think the expectation of seeing them helped re-lift my spirits.

The crowd excitement through-out was great.
But the family greeting was truly first rate.