After 17 weeks and 792 miles of running, thousands of squats, lunges, deadlifts and 8 rounds of dry needling, the moment to lace up my new Vaporfly 3s came early on the morning of October 8. The weather was perfect and my recently strained glute was feeling better than it had since tweaking on September 22. All systems go!

Like all the Abbott World Marathon majors, this event is huge. It’s hard to describe the experience of being crushed among 47,000 nervous runners from more than 100 counties. It is both a lonely and a collective experience. You run for yourself, on your own and yet we are all feeling many of the same feelings—excitement, dread, concern about the length of the portapotty lines. I made some tactical errors in signing up for a starting corral. Because I was competing in the Wanda Abbott Age Group World Championships, I was assigned to the first corral with the fastest of the fastest. Staying there would have been a disaster. Most of my WAGC peers opted for corral E. I should have done that. I was worried about starting out too fast, but by the time I gave this my attention a month ago, corrals F and G were full. So I was in H.

Bad plan.

It took 2 miles on course to get to the 4 hour pacers—my plan was to run at 4 hour pace for the first few miles to settle in. What I learned is that the crowds at this race never really thin out. It’s chaos the whole time. Pedestrians cross the course, runners just stop in their tracks or cut across to high five someone. One needs to be continuously vigilant.

But it was amazing. On a day that saw a new men’s world record and the second fastest time by a woman, I was able to run my fastest time since my devastating hamstring injury in 2015 and to improve on the 3:58:28 that got me in the world championships. I clocked in at 3:52:32 and that included having to stop 4 times to uncramp my toes from my Vaporflys. I also managed to negative split with the second half 2.5 minutes faster than the first. Needless to say, I’m in post marathon bliss today. And not very sore—thanks, Chicago!!!