This is the day I've been waiting for ages—the 10-day forecast. Lame, right? No. In less than 10 days, I'll be running the Chicago Marathon. It can pretty much go 2 ways. The weather can be crappy, I may not eat enough, or my body just won't cooperate and I'll do worse than my PR of 3:39. OR, the weather will cooperate, my training will pay off and everything will go well for a sub-3:35 (or at least a PR) time.
Now I'm not saying the weather will drive any of these other factors. But I think I have enough control over them, that assuming the weather is good, everything will go well. Now the weather is another story. In this link, you'll find a mini history of each race since the race began. I don't want to bore you with all the details of the weather, but will give you a quick snapshot of the last bunch of years, starting in 2007 when I ran my first marathon.
2007: Temperatures soaring into the high 80s combined with high humidity forced organizers to halt the race for the first time in history
2008: With another year of hot temperatures predicted on race day almost 33,000 runners started the race and 31,344 recorded official finish times.
2009: In a welcome departure from the past two years, race day temperatures were in the low 30’s
2011: Climbing temperatures slowed thousands of runners in Sunday’s Bank of America Chicago Marathon
So yeah, you can see why I'm a bit nervous about the weather. At least NYC in November is predictably on the cooler side. Early October in the Midwest—not so much.
And now that it's 10 days away, I can stalk weather.com daily. Today, the forecast for October 7th is a high of 60 and a low of 47, mostly cloudy. Not terrible. And definitely not in the 80s. Here's hoping for an ideal race day—weather-wise.
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