Bowing out of Chicago

Sunday was a huge red flag for me and after a bad year of running I have decided to back out of running the Chicago marathon. It started in January with tendonitis holding me back from starting my training early. I trained for the San Diego marathon but lacked the discipline of last year when I ran San Francisco so my marathon suffered, turning in a time nearly an hour slower than last year at 5:00:49. After the race I suffered another injury that kept me off the path four or five weeks into my half marathon training with my wife. I was able to pick it back up however and we ran the Chicago Distance Classic in 2:12 but it still didn't feel great.

I laid out a careful plan to increase my mileage up to the full including a taper but I failed to hit my mileage week 2 while on vacation. On Sunday I broke the golden rule of 10% per week mileage increases and tried to push on with my program despite a bad week 2 and at mile 13 I was spent. I struggled through 3 more miles and then had a rough couple of days with tired legs and nausea. I woke up at 5:50 this morning to run 5 to try to push on and couldn't do it. The sickness in my stomach and dead legs a sure sign of overtraining, I decided to cut 5 miles down to 3 and pull the plug on my Chicago dreams for this year. Living in Chicago and knowing how flat it is I was hoping to beat my 4:06 from San Francisco but at this rate I'd be lucky to finish.

For the time being, I'm backing right off to 3 miles on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday with a long run of 9 miles on Saturday. I'll probably still add 1 mile a week to that long run as we push into winter and see if I can find some 10k races to keep me motivated.