[Race Report] 2025 Chicago Marathon

4 minute read

I ran the Chicago Marathon this year. It was my first major race. It did not end up how I expected. I will talk about the training period, the race itself and what comes next.

The first couple of months after the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon were quite painful and tiring. I passed 3 kidney stones ranging from 3mm to 8mm and ended up in the ER. Looking back, my water intake had been too low, and the LMNT electrolyte powders I had been using had too much mineral content. Drink your water people! The kidney stones put me out for a full week, and even on days I could run, I had to keep the efforts minimal (trying to run during this period was the first of several questionable choices you will read about in this post).

My goal for Chicago training was to hit 200km/week at peak volume. I had around 9 months. I got silly and I pushed too hard for too long, too soon, even though I knew it would eventually injure me.

It did. IT band syndrome kept me out for 6 weeks. You can see exactly when it happened here. 50% volume increase was not clever. Plus, I kept running for a couple of weeks despite the pain because it was manageable. Amateur mistake!

I went to physical therapy and started doing leg strength exercies. I also biked occasionally, but I lost quite a bit of fitness.

Training Block

Mid April, I started running 6 days a week again, and this time I made sure I ramped up slowly. It was 26 weeks of training. I hit 230km two weeks before the race.

Looking back now, here are the mistakes I made:

I thought just running more would suffice. I did too little speed work and too many junk easy runs.
Hit peak volume too late. I should have dialed back around 6 weeks out from race day.
Because I kept increasing weekly volume (I had a silly goal of keeping the Strava graph monotonically increasing, which I did reach), I neve got sharp enough heading into race week.
For the first half of the training block, my long runs were just easy runs with more mileage. I did about 10 weeks of long runs with tempo efforts, but the pace was too slow. The last two weeks before tapering, I did 4kkm marathon pace intervals, but it was too late. During those workouts, I realized I would not reach my secret goal of breaking 2h40m.
I did no hill sprints whatsoever. Chicago’s course is flat, but I needed hill sprint sessions to build strength and improve running economy.
I tapered for two weeks, which felt wrong. I think I should have done either 9-10 days, or 18-20 days.
I flew a red-eye flight. I did not eat well before the race. For example, I ate kebab. I also did some energy draining activities like waiting for buses, standing in lines for Nike merch.

Goal

At the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon expo, I attended a session where Cole Hocker spoke about how he broke the 4:00/mile barrier. He talked about writing an unrealistic time on his mirror, the idea being to shoot for the stars. I knew I could not reach it, but I set my A goal to 2h22m22s. I hoped that training with that in mind and simply running more would get me something below 2h40m. My B and C goals were 2h45m to qualify for Berlin and 2h48m to at least get a PB.

Pre-race

I could not sleep well the last two nights before the race, and I did not eat well either. At the AirBnB, I met a Russian runner and we took the train together around 5:15am. I waited in the porta-potty lines, I had plenty of time. I ran about 10 minutes to warm up. I predicted Jacob Kiplimo would win.

Race

I am writing this in December, two months after the race, so I do not remember much.

I remember the first kilometer was slower than my target pace (3:48/km), which was good. But my heart rate was too high, close to 190. Still, I was stupid enough to push and try to hold 3:40-3:45/km pace. I ran through the neighborhood I had lived for 3 years. I had no idea it was that hilly!

Around the halfway mark, my stupidity struck again. I pushed to hit 3:32/km, which was basically the end of the race for me. Everything fell apart from there. I missed all my goals and finished with 2h49m49s.

I took 4 Maurten caffeine gels and 6 GU gels during the race. I ran with a 750ml bike bottle. I need to work on fueling more effortlessly.

The Strava activity is here, splits & results are below.