I ran the Chicago Marathon yesterday. Cool weather. 40s-50s. Very good conditions for setting a world record apparently, since a young woman from Kenya set a new women's world record on the course. She would have been about half-way done by the time I got started. The first wave started at 7:30 AM, and she would have been near the head of that. The third wave, my wave, started at 8:35 AM, and I was nowhere near the head of that.
I was very happy with my race, not because I was particularly fast, but because I did not struggle with leg cramps. I'm not sure what made the difference, to tell the truth. It's hard to do controlled experiments on yourself on an event that you do only a couple of times a year. But I suspect it helped a lot that I stopped taking my daily statin medicine for three days. Statins tend to do a great job of lowering your blood's lipid levels, but they can cause muscle cramps in some individuals. Normally, I'm not bothered. But I think that with really intense, long races, I may be vulnerable. So, having talked it over with my doctor, I took a few days off, and I think it made a big difference. Well, we'll see what happens during my next prolonged endurance event.
Avoiding pain
Is a kind of gain.
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