Jill Geer running the Bank of America Chicago Marathon

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"Off The Record"
A Blog by Jill M. Geer

At the Crossroads, Part II - Chicago

Monday, October 12, 2009

Editor's note: The following race report is not for those with the attention span of a newt, nor is it for those who enjoy holding their breath while they read a story. Pull up a chair and grab a cup of tea and try not to doze off …

THE LEAD-UP

In the days before the race, my illness, which I can only describe as an Ubercold, had continued to morph. I could now barely speak, and on Friday night I starting hocking loogies in the middle of the night while enjoying a resting heart rate of 75 beats per minute, more than 25 bmp higher than normal. In part because of that fact, I got 4 hours of sleep on Friday, three on Saturday. Yippee!

In addition to the great advice for racing strategy I got via the comments section of this blog as well as via Facebook, I also got other kinds of feedback as well. My older brother, who for the record has never seen me run, read my blog. I was touched that he had read it, and touched that he cared enough to email me his thoughts and suggestions for surviving 26.2. Those thoughts were: Jill, you're old ("you're not 21 anymore!"), fat ("I remember those girls on the Arkansas team, they were 5-foot-nothing and 80-something pounds") and slow ("don't try to run with your Arkansas teammates!"). He meant well.

I spent Saturday afternoon at the O'Hare Westin, at a USATF Board of Directors meeting. At the meeting, I told my colleague, Mike McNees, about how my right ankle had been throbbing ever since my 3-mile jog that morning, and how I'd gotten little to no sleep the night before. "Our college coach always said you could deal with not sleeping the night before your race, " he offered, somewhat less than helpfully, "but it was two nights out that mattered. If you didn't sleep then, you were screwed."

I kindly let him know he could stop talking.

MORNING OF

I woke up the morning of my race at 12:30 a.m. I was not able to return to sleep, and I'm not too proud to admit that, because of this inability to welcome the Sandman, I was on the verge of crying several times. Finally, when I went to the bathroom to start getting ready, I took a good look in the mirror. Holy cow. After taking a shower, I applied some under-eye makeup. Not to look good for the public, but so I wouldn't be so freaked out about what I saw in the mirror. It was that scary.

After applying a cold compress to my sleepy eyelids to reduce their sleepless puffiness, I headed to the elevators, where I and several others waited approximately 3 hours and 41 minutes for a lift.

THE START

Less than a mile into the race, I realized my pre-race hydration was a little too good. Pit stop. Take care of it early, I thought. Luckily, a journey through an underpass provided an opportunity to do my duty away from the prying eyes of too many fans.

Former teammate Joell Reina and I ran together for the first three miles, commenting on the people ahead of us, and picking out which ones we'd be seeing again. (Read: why in the heck are you passing us? There is no way you're going to keep this up for 26.2.). Being a metronomic runner, at about mile 3 I need to lock into what will be my base pace. So at around that time, Joell and I bid adieu and embarked on our individual runs.

At least one person had suggested I join a Nike pace group for this race. I didn't do that for three reasons. The first is that I had no idea what I could run. Before my race-week illness, and given my training or lack thereof, I figured 3:40 was my absolute, all-out max. But come race day, I was looking to simply finish the race, preferably without having to stop and walk. The second was there was no way I was going to advertise what my goal pace was by pinning my desired finish time to the back of my shirt. That would just invite people to snicker.

The third reason was that I wanted this to be my race. I wanted to own my race, to know that whatever I did or didn't do was because of what was going on internally. I never have been a runner who could get 'pulled along' by somebody I didn't know. As my mother would say, it was about me, myself and I.

THE MIDDLE

This was the part of the race where I had all kinds of random thoughts and observations. So here they are, in scattershot form.

I saw a dude running in water shoes. As in, aqua socks. Like, the things you wear to the beach so you don't cut your feet on shells. Even better: His footwear had individual toe holes. Dude, where are your running shoes?

Speaking of footwear, at about the same point in the race, I saw a middle-aged man wearing what looked like Etonics, circa 1982. In fact, it looked like he had run in those shoes every day since 1982.

I saw several women wearing running skirts. The most memorable was probably a red with white polka dots, which its owner wore over black tights. It is the outfit Maryann from Gilligan's Island would wear in a marathon, if her shorty white shorts were dirty.

Around the 10k mark: I'm hungry. And my quads are starting to feel a wee bit heavy. I choose to ignore both sensations. My husband later reported that, thanks to text message updates he received from the Chicago Marathon, my 10k split time was 53:40. Projected finish: 3:46:20.

7 miles: I gotta take a leak. Again. But I don't want to stop, since I don't want to interrupt my mojo. When running long, I am a perpetual motion machine. A slow perpetual motion machine, but still. If I interrupted it, I had no confidence the motion would return. So I decided to hold it.

Mid-race: I turned a corner and got a head-on view of the John Hancock building. I remembered fondly when I was four or five, on a family trip to Chicago, and I got to "drive" the elevator in that building. That was, like, huge. I DROVE AN ELEVATOR! Wowee. I celebrated by buying a cheesy white plastic wallet with scenes from Chicago on the front, including the Hancock building.

On Sedgwick St., some guys were blaring Metallica's "Enter Sandman". The first of several big grins crossed my face. I raised my Nike armwarmer-sporting arms and black-and-white striped gloved hands, lifted my index fingers and pinkies heavenward, and enthusiastically threw them the goat. That's heavy metal hand signal-speak for "Rock on, my brothers. And thanks for the pick-me-up."

Mile 10: No more looking at my watch. No more looking at the clock at mile markers. I decided I was just going to run. Turn off the brain and Just Do It.

Oh, and in case you were wondering: I still had to go to the bathroom.

MILES 10-16

During the race, I realized nothing has prepared me for Chicago so much as having run indoor track. Why? Because it is a full-contact sport, full of jostling, changes of direction, and roller-derby moves. It's fun.

During this part of the race, I just enjoyed what I was doing. I occasionally chatted with fellow runners, looked at the people lining the street, and got used to seeing familiar butts and singlets in front of me: a group of runners from Spain. A woman running for Autism. A guy in a t-shirt that had something to do with free rent. A girl who reminded me an awful lot of my college roommate. A 240-pound guy.

Somewhere in this stretch, as I ran in the middle of the road, I heard "JILL GEER!" from the right side of the road. It's more Arkansas alumnae, including Michelle Byrne (the Irish one, not the Texan) and Julie (Dias) Taylor. Very cool! Big grin #2.

I pass the half-way point. Big grin #3. Halle-freakin'-lu-jah!

Half-marathon split: 1:51:17. Projected finish: 3:42:24.

MILES 16-23

OK, this is where the real running started, and this was where I had to gird my loins just a bit. Somewhere around mile 16 or 17, my right leg started to seize up. Ankle, calf, hamstring, periformis. A real bottom-to-top case of a leg doing the "tighten up". I did my usual search for my happy place and reminded myself of the words of Deena Kastor, as imparted to me by journalist Jim Gerweck: every runner of every ability goes through bad patches in a marathon. So I switched where I was running on the road, did a quickie rubdown of my upper hammy/periformis, and went on my merry way … holding my breath.

The most telling and memorable moments of the marathon also occurred during these miles.

Some Mexican fans chanted the Obama-inspired phrase, "Si, se puede!"

I came upon a girl whose shirt bore this magic marker-scrawled message: "Brain Tumor Survivor. Carey." As I approached her, I choked up a bit, and as I passed her, I gave her a soft touch on the shoulder and looked her in the eye.

A man on the left-hand side of the road held a sign that read "Pain is temporary. Pride is forever." As I passed by, I pointed at him emphatically. Given that pride, as I recall, is one of the seven deadly sins, and seeing as how I wanted to avoid a date with Beelzebub, I altered this saying in my mind. Kara Goucher assigns a key word to all her races, and in Boston this year, it was "Courage." So in my mind, the sign read "Pain is temporary. Courage is forever." I told myself that others on this day will be faster than me and feel better than me, but none will run with more courage. "The wheels won't fall off," I told myself, "because I won't let them."

And how could I forget Chinatown. The crowds were thick and the streets narrow, making for a great experience. But I've got to tell you, the neighborhood's permanent residents of a certain age didn't really seem to be down with a marathon coming through their streets. On two separate occasions, two people – a little old lady, and then a little old man – almost caused me to come to a screeching halt as they strolled across the street. They weren't dodging their way through. Oh no, my friends. It was as if they were crossing the street on a quiet Sunday, with no traffic and nary a stray dog to impede their path. Just getting from point A to point B without a care in the world. Causing a mid-race collision was much farther from their minds than I was from the finish line.

At some point during these miles, it occurred to me that I was surrounded by runners I didn't recognize. I then realized I was right behind a 3:40 pace group. How did this happen? I guess I was passing people, or something. I can assure you it was purely accidental.

30k split: 2:36:07. Projected finish: 3:39:21.

Mile 21 was do-or-die time. My right gastroc suddenly twinged in a way that portended very ominous things. So I did what I always do to try to get out of a rut: I changed my posture ever so slightly and altered my footfall by the minutest of margins. I also dusted off that dime-store meditation that had served me so well on my fateful 18-mile treadmill run. I knew that if the calf seized up, it would be almost impossible to make it through without walking. Whatever I did seemed to work well enough to keep me moving forward, in a running motion. I won't let the wheels fall off.

On the bright side, I no longer felt like I had to pee quite so badly.

THE END

With three miles to go, I was in lockdown and lockup mode: I bore down mentally as my body locked up. I became "That Girl." You know, the one everybody starts passing. I am sure it wasn't quite as bad as that, but it is how I felt. Each step was an exercise in getting my legs to move when they really didn't particularly want to. It wasn't a glycogen-depletion hitting of the wall, it was a case of my body taking me about as far as it could. It was Jill becoming the Tin Man.

It was about this time when I thought back to some late-training massage therapy . I had gotten several massages from a wonder woman name Natalie, seven or eight years older than I, who in 2001 had decided to run the Boston Marathon. She told me about how at about mile 19, she thought she couldn't take another step. But then "the endorphins kicked in" and she felt great. Just you wait, she said, until those endorphins hit. It's awesome! You'll love it!

Yeah, um, Natalie? That whole endorphin thing? Yeah … that never happened.

At 40k, I was surprised to see a mother-daughter team from my hometown of Ripon, Wisconsin, who yelled "JIIIILLLLL!" when they saw me. Recognizing Ellen Shattuck and her daughter Alison Dawson, I enjoyed Big Grin #4. And boy, did I need it.

THE END END

Who in the hell decided to put a hill at mile 26? Sure, it's the kind of hill that a marble would need a good nudge to roll down, but it was a hill nonetheless. Note to self: Carey Pinkowski is a sadistic SOB! (I say that with much affection and gratitude.) But the end is almost here. Thank god, because these legs have had it.

Another flashback: When I was in college, my coach, Bev Lewis, used to observe that I had too much of a kick at the end of my races. It showed I wasn't running hard enough during the race, she conjectured.

She would have loved my finish on Sunday morning. There was no kick. There was only survival. I had left every bit of effort I had on the course. Some people were passing me, and I was OK with that. I could not move my legs any faster. As I approached the finish, I knew I gave everything I had, and I knew that I could not possibly have done any better on this day. By that measure alone, it was the best running performance of my life.

I crossed the finish line and stopped my watch. It read 3:41:30.

For complete results from the Chicago Marathon, visit www.chicagomarathon.com.

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Jill M. Geer is Chief Public Affairs Officer of USATF. She recently completed her first marathon at the Bank of America Chicago Marathon, where she qualified for Boston. Follow her professional exploits as the USATF spokesperson and her adventures as a mid-pack marathoner -- Off The Record.