In part 1 of my writeup of the Chicago Marathon I detailed what happened before the marathon. In part 2 I covered everything up to about mile 16 — also known as the fun part of the race. Part 3, this part, covers what went so terribly wrong.
Mile 23 of the Chicago Marathon. I'm Not Looking so Happy.
2011 Chicago Marathon Runkeeper Splits
Shortly after mile 16 I started to feel some burning in my chest. I knew this was not a good sign and recognized it from previous marathons. I knew that the hiccups were coming, and when the hiccups come then often times vomit isn’t far behind.
When I get the hiccups during a marathon they’re progressive. When they start out I can run for short periods. By the end of a race I just want to stop and puke all over the place. This really wasn’t any different. By mile 18 I was struggling to run more than 2 minutes at a time without feeling like I was going to puke. By mile 23 when I saw Kristina around Illinois Tech, our undergrad alma mater I could barely run at all. Luckily, I just happened to have a little bit left in me when I saw Kristina.
It was now 3:37 into the race and I had 3.2 miles left. I had resolved that I wasn’t going to make it under 4 hours. Maybe I could still beat 4:07 if I could run the whole way. However, that wasn’t going happen. The hiccups were become more profound and were now hitting while I was walking. It felt like my entire throat was burning. What has been a great race had gone horribly wrong.
I ended up walking almost the entirety of the next 3.2 miles. I was crushed. Somehow I managed to summon enough strength to ignore my overarching desire to vomit and run the last 200m to the finish line. After a 1:50:13 first half I finished the marathon in 4:20:16. Runkeeper worked okay, but because part of the beginning of the race is on the lower level of streets in Chicago, it lost GPS and said I ran about 28 miles. In reality I probably ran about 27 miles. Any way you slice it, it was a long day.
When I look back it I had three goals for the race:
- Run under a 3:45
- Run under a 4:00
- Not puke, not pee my pants, not poop my pants
Framed through that lens I suppose I didn’t do horrible. Heck, any day in which you don’t poop your pants counts as a good day, right?
2011 Chicago Marathon Official Splits
Completely Exhausted at the End of the Marathon
After the race I decided that I should finally look up what causes these hiccups. It turns out that it could be a lot of different things. It could be related to a mild case of ulcerative colitis (it’s okay, insert a poop joke here). However, I haven’t tracked when that’s been giving me problems around the time of marathons. It could be something related to the mixture of the Gatorade Endurance Formula used in marathons. It might just take a while longer for it to hit me. It could be related to me drinking on the run. It’s all very hard to say. Clearly this is something that I should work on debugging more in future runs.
Despite all the bad stuff that happened in the race, I was still able to crack open a smile at the end of the race. It was a wonderfully well organized race, especially given the size. Quite simply it was the most well managed race I have run in. Despite the crowds, it seemed like you should easily be able to PR on the course. However, that was not in the cards for me. Now it’s time to try and figure out what has made me hiccup so badly during four of my seven marathons.
Me and My Wife at the End of the 2011 Chicago Marathon
Keep Running.
Twenty Six and Two 
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