Race Recap: Sue Walsh at the Chicago Marathon
Chicago Marathon 2021 - Running, Parenting and Love
Training
When I started training, I had one question - “How do you train as a parent?” There is no time to sip coffee post run, do elaborate (or most of the time … any) stretching, lay on the floor and space out after a hard workout, watch tv with your eyes closed all day post 20 milers. All gone. Good bye to that! But hello to my now 2 year old daughter Maria, and hello everything that came with her, including a new register of emotion about her and all things that I love–including running.
I worked with Emmi Aguliard, who was my postpartum PT from Finish Line, as a coach for the first time marathon training. As a parent who works a lot, I wanted someone to say ‘Sue, do this.’ and I would just do that. No thinking or questions. Easy! And someone who knows that you need flexibility, as a parent, for training. Basically, when you have a child, you surrender your own destiny. More on that later.
Weeks looked the same - two quality sessions - one on Wednesday, one on the weekend. The other days would be easy runs with two strength training sessions fit in somewhere. This was a new schedule for me, which meant I ran alone most of the time, except for my long runs.
Our household starts at 7am (meaning when Maria gets up, dog(s) have to be walked, breakfast and lunch have to be made, etc). I always train in the morning, so no matter what, I need to be home by 7, except fortunately Saturdays when there was more flexibility. If a workout is 14 miles, then I need to wake up at 4:15, give myself 30 min for coffee and cereal and then start a few minutes before 5, getting in 5–7 minutes of drills or a warm up session and be home by the day’s start time 7 am.
This meant lots of miles running alone in the dark. Like lots of lots of dark, solo miles. I missed my NBR training crew, but this was the only way to make everything work. “I don’t have to do this, I get to do this,” I told myself. Shalane Flanagan posted that somewhere and she is right.
Behind the scenes - total exhaustion
How do you train as a parent–when your child is sick and crying and cranky with the third virus (none covid!) in a month, your wife is working all weekend as a Captain in NY Harbor and you are at your peak training mileage? That was the real question I found myself searching to answer. And I guess the answer is … you just do the best you can, thank God for Elmo on Sesame Street, feel guilty about using so much energy on yourself, for something that only benefits you, and wishing you were 10 years younger.
Before training, I had one race goal - finish, feel pretty good (for the end of a marathon) and sweep my Maria into my arms and feel some jolt of euphoria. My original love (marathons–I ran my first one in 1997) and my deepest love (Maria) colliding. I wasn’t thinking about time.
A few weeks before the race, after the bulk of the work was done, I realized I had done workouts that rivaled my best fitness–before I tore my ACL, before I had a C-section, before I became a Master runner, before I had to be home everyday by 7am. Thoughts of a PR (sub 3:26 something) entered my mind. It seemed completely audacious to even put that on the table as an idea, but training is the closest thing to truth and that’s what it said. I felt like I better make this race worth it, for all of the sacrifices for my family, all of the energy put towards it. I talked to my wife Kelli and told her I felt pressure to make sure I had a good race. She helped clarify things and told me the race was for one person–me. It was a great thing to hear.
Race week brought something I had not thought about into a bright focus - the weather! It was supposed to be hot, 72–75 degrees at the start. I had only run one of my 21 marathons with a temp hotter than that, and ended up in the ER from dehydration after being forced off the course at mile 23. What is so beautiful and alluring about the marathon is that it’s like a master puzzle - you control the parts that you can, then you hope for the best, for the marathon Gods to answer all of your prayers. That would not happen on race day.
One thing parenting has taught me (or perhaps more realistically...forced me to learn) is to be flexible with your plans. You could have everything ready to go for a beautiful day in the park - lunch packed, diaper bag packed, dogs in their crates, you somehow dressed in an outfit that matches - and then your child has a massive diaper blow out and there is poo everywhere, even on your matching outfit. That’s sort of like what happened with marathon day weather.
Emmi and I spoke and we agreed to go out slower than PR pace … she even said ‘Don’t think about time! Celebrate your training cycle!’ That’s why I love working with her. A blend of reality and ambition. I said goodbye to the potential PR and said hello to my original goal - the moment of colliding the marathon and Maria after the finish. That was enough for me. I heard other parents say that “my kid(s) are my everything” before becoming one myself, and you’re like ‘Huh? What do they mean?’ But now, I know.
Racing
I expected some kind of epiphany during the race - after a baby, ‘after’ or during whatever phase of covid we are in, in the sea of runners on a course I had run now 12 times. Like I would learn something about humanity, or at least something about myself. That never happened. The race never felt in flow. I started out with the 3:30 pace group - their pacing was all over the place and by mile 5, and I made a decision to run alone and just stay on the blue line.
What you can’t see in this picture is Maria crying - :)
Every mile I dumped water on my head and drank gatorade and heard Maria’s little voice in my head - ‘all done!’, which she says when she is done with anything. Mile 3, ‘all done!’. Mile 11 ‘all done!’.
Mile 13 I saw Kelli, my sister, Sarah and Maria - who cries because it’s so loud and she is over it. I felt like I was running around 8mm pace but never looked at my watch. I planned to see Kelli at mile 21. Now that’s what I’m running for.
The miles are unremarkable – I’m thinking ‘am I drinking enough? What will happen next?’ But I feel so good in the streets of Chicago – my hometown race, which has been a character in my life for 24 years. After our covid era began, I never want to take the familiar for granted again. I love seeing the street signs, going through the neighborhoods, hearing the Chicago accents.
I remembered Paula Radcliff saying that her first marathon after giving birth (8 months postpartum?!) when she won NYC, she repeated her daughter’s name over and over during the final miles. I tried that but my mind fell flat. I tried to smile but it only sort of worked.
My body wanted to slow down around 20 and I let it. I had stopped sweating and that made me nervous. Was I giving up? Did I have more left? It’s always tricky to know. I lost track of what mile I was on and was a little too generous with my walking at each water station.
The final miles gradually came, North on Michigan Ave with more spectators than I ever remember. Mile 25, an announcer says ‘Are you ready? Are you ready to be DONE?!” I’m like yeah. I am ready. I can’t remember what it feels like to finish. I haven’t looked at my watch since mile 5.
The finish happened and it was unremarkable, as well. I slowly make my way to my family – my sister, wife and Maria. For the first time in all of the years I have run this, my Mom is not there as age has compromised her mobility. I thought it’s like the passing of a torch - from my mom to my daughter, who met me post-marathon for the first time.
My people
I find them in the crowd – beaming at Maria with my slow and achy post-marathon steps. And euphoria did come. So much love to feel in the span of a minute.
An hour after the race, I was at my parents house, in the kitchen that I was raised in. My Aunt brought celebratory cupcakes and Maria was eating one for the first time, calling it ‘cuppy’. Frosting was all over her face, she crumbled the cake in between her fingers, creating the kind of mess that toddlers excel at.
I felt so truly grateful – to be with my family, to still have the physical ability to run this irrational distance of 26.2 miles, to have all of the support that I had, to combine so many loves into one heart.
Maybe that is why I’ve run the marathon all of these years. To feel something extraordinary … or at least the potential to feel something extraordinary. To allow yourself to feel alive in ways you usually don’t. Similar to being a parent - a marathon opens your heart in ways that you didn’t think that it could.
Maybe that’s what love is – abandoning yourself to the weather, to the whims of a child, to something outside of yourself in exchange for the deepest of feelings of which no words can accurately describe.
