Race Report by Nils Krichel
My 2026 in running started strong and kept on giving for a long time. Going to Tokyo in March was a trip to remember – certainly not only because of my new PB! – and as I type this, the Carnegie Marathon Award adorns my figurative mantelpiece. In May, I ran the inaugural Fife Pilgrim Ultra (definitely in my top three favourite ultras!), and my reward was a mostly lazy early Summer holiday to regroup, followed by the Lairig Ghru race to get back into the swing of it.
I am proud to report that I then made it all the way into July before the road marathon itch needed scratching again, and I found myself committed to the Chicago Marathon three months later!
Plenty of time for a decent training block, and given my earlier success in the year and maintaining a decent base mileage, I dove into a somewhat shortened version of Jack Daniels’s 2Q plan. I was progressing just fine (i.e., I found myself suffering twice a week with no seeming end in sight), and was very much looking forward to a welcome distraction in form of the Carnegie Tour of Fife in early August. Unfortunately, it turned out that all my mileage maybe didn’t make me invincible after all, and after a tough shift out at the XC-style Battle of Inverkeithing on day one of the Tour, I woke up the next morning with the familiar and entirely unwelcome feeling of an injured calf muscle. In 2024, it took me many months of false starts to get over this same injury, so at least I knew this time that there was no way around giving it the proper time and space to heal.
And so I found myself replacing the majority and peak of my training block with rest, walk/jogs, easy bimbles, an infinite number of calf raises, to eventually trying back-to-back runs and re-building some mileage. I don’t think I could have progressed any faster and while it always feels frustrating at the time, a proper rehab block is a genuinely difficult thing to pull off!! Running a pain-free Perth 10k with a self-imposed speed limit 5 weeks after the injury was a confidence booster, and I managed to scale up to a 32k/20mi long run just before it was time to taper again. With that, I felt reasonably confident that completing a marathon wasn’t entirely off the cards.
I arrived in Chicago on a direct flight from Edinburgh on Thursday, giving myself time to get acclimatised and even squeeze in a shakeout run on the same day. Expo visits always result in way more steps than is sensible ahead of a race, so I was glad to get that out of the way on Friday instead of the day before race Sunday.
Returning from the expo with a big pile of absolutely essential merchandise that I of course couldn’t live without, I had a day-and-a-half to explore Chicago whilst trying to not strain myself too much. Making the most of the rather confusing public transport system, and being booked on a riverboat cruise to take in the architecture of downtown Chicago and beyond, I got a positive impression of a welcoming city that seems like a great pace to live, with plenty of green spaces and a great atmosphere. With about 56000 runners, there’s a lot of lycra-clad tourists about, and it certainly feels like the centre is taken over by clueless visitors trying to orient themselves between the skyscrapers – yours truly included!
As a firm believer in pizza-based carb loading tactics, Chicago is rather a good place to find oneself running a marathon in. Stuffed with delicious, circular food items (bagels, said pizza etc.), I did for a change manage to fall asleep at a sensible time the night before the race, only to be rudely awakened at 5am by my alarm clock.
The race itself is exceptionally well organised. My tour operator advised that leaving the hotel at 6am for the 20 minute walk to Grant Park and my start in wave 1 at 7.35am would be plenty of time, and I’m both glad and surprised to report that that’s true! Security lines were non-existent, the bag drop was efficient, and I had enough time for everyone’s favourite – the endless toilet queue – before making my way to the starting corral.
The weather forecast was for a start in fairly perfect early conditions, followed by an uncharacteristically warm, sunny and cloudless day. This turned out to be true – I was comfortable in my running vest in the start corral, but the temperatures picked up relentlessly, and by about 11am the event’s warning system upped its alarm level from yellow (you might be too warm) to red (you will be too warm!). Many participants were seriously struggling with this, compounded by slower runners starting in later waves and spending more time out there. Aid stations were very frequent, and the fire brigade did even turn on a few sprinklers along the course, but nonetheless many folk looked a lot worse for wear, and many a target time was missed on the day.
As for my own race – I didn’t have as much of a tight race plan as I usually try to have in place. Given that I missed most of my training block I knew I wouldn’t get anywhere near my PB from earlier this year (3:18). To avoid getting too confused by imperial distance markers, I decided that 3:30 – i.e., a nice round 8min/mi pace – would be an ok speed to aim for, and if it weren’t meant to be, then that would not be the end of the world either.
The start is of course extremely busy, but at least in wave 1 was not so crowded as to require a lot of dodging and weaving. The course wiggles through the urban skyscraper canyons of the Loop and Near North, before doing a northbound out-and-back, followed a counter-clockwise loop around a lot of Chicago’s neighbourhoods. The atmosphere and cheers were fantastic, and spectators feel less separated from the race than at other major marathons – both for better and worse, with a lot of folk crossing the course at random points with not always sufficient amounts of foresight. The crowd energy was great throughout, and the madder bits of the city offered a wide choice of beers and harder stuff to so-inclined runners. I did decide to stick to my gels and lots and lots of Gatorade to keep the electrolyte levels up..
While not typically the best tactic, banking some time early on while the weather was still friendly seemed to be the wise thing to do, and half way through the race I had built a comfortable, 3.5 minute cushion against my tentative target. Taking my shoe off to deal with a toe issue cost me 30 seconds, but otherwise I kept things mostly steady until about mile 20, at which point temperatures were properly on the rise and very few runners around me looked unaffected by the conditions. A south-to-north out-and-back of four miles compounded the mysery, and I started to loose some of my time cushion. Luckily, the atmosphere really picked up again on the way back into Grant Park, and with a strong-ish finish, I managed to turn this into my third-best marathon time at 3:28:14. With the conditions far from ideal, and missing out on most of my training with a lingering injury, I was very pleased with that indeed.
After picking up my medal, various goodies and a beer, I managed to spot Joy, who ran an excellent 3:48:17 in these tough conditions. Comparing notes over a coffee the day after, we agreed that we had a fantastic day out and could be proud of our achievements!
After a few hours in my (air conditioned!) hotel room after the race, I made it out to an after party and started the crucial post-race binge eat, before flying back home late the next day. It’s been a great trip, and my second Major in the box!