OK, thanks for your patience while I collected my thoughts about the Chicago Marathon and figured out how I wanted to write about it.

Here's what I’m going to do:

Today I’ll give you an overview of what went well, what maybe didn’t (spoiler alert: not much), and how I feel about it all.

And then tomorrow I’ll get into the details a little more and break things down into how the race went on Sunday.

Everything went pretty well in Chicago. (Up until the flight home, which was delayed for 3 hours.)

I didn’t run the perfect race - but I came about as close as I ever have.

For the past two training cycles, all I wanted was to re-create my 20-mile training run from two years ago, ahead of my first Chicago Marathon.

My thinking was that if I reached 20 miles in 3 hours and 45 minutes, I would definitely be able to cover those last 6 miles in an hour and fifteen minutes and finish in less than 5 hours.

Last November in New York, I came very close to that time goal at mile 20 - I might have even hit it - but I had already started to fade because I had taken those first 16 miles too fast.

On Sunday I nailed those 20 miles.

And I was fairly correct about the final 6.2 - I did manage to get through them before the clock struck 5 hours…but only barely.

As I mentioned the other day, I met my big goal of running a sub-5 hour marathon - I did it in 4:59:20.

I’m really happy about it - that 4 in the hour column is something I kind of got obsessed with since I started running marathons. (Which, fun fact, began with my first marathon 4 years and a day before I ran this year’s Chicago Marathon.)

I’m also really happy that I had enough in the tank to pick up the pace over my last mile, because if I had barely missed the sub-5 and fished at 5:00:20 or something like that I think that would have been pretty hard to stomach.

Strava doesn’t have it exactly right - I’m pretty sure I didn’t run those first 3 miles that quickly - but you can see that middle chunk where I really nailed my pacing.

There was a lot that went right on Sunday - I paced myself really well, I did a really good job of fueling myself both over the entire weekend and on Sunday morning, and I focused on what I needed to do and not what was happening around me.

I enjoyed the vibes of the marathon, but I enjoyed everything a lot more because I was still able to zero in on what I needed to do to have a successful race for myself.

The GPS in Chicago can get weird - miles 1 through 3 really mess with the watch, and then again at around the halfway mark I lost connectivity - it has to do with the big buildings around that part of the course - but I didn’t change my pace or worry about it. When the dust settled and when my watch came back I was still in the ballpark of what I wanted my pace to be.

On Saturday we ordered a pizza and some pasta and that was a pretty good day-before meal, and then on Sunday morning I had a bagel before we left the hotel room, and then brought another bagel to eat while we were sitting and waiting for our start time.

It took a while for our corral to get going so I also had a Honey Stinger oat bar and then my waffle before the start…and then I took my gels every 4 miles once we got going.

I also took water at every station, and then Gatorade and water at every station after the halfway mark.

This was the healthiest I ever felt going into a marathon, and although I’m sore, it’s also the least sore I have felt after a marathon. I think all of the above contributes to that.

About all that went wrong on Sunday is it got very hot towards the end of the day. The forecast that morning said it would be about 54 degrees or somewhere around there at the start, and reach a high of 68.

As best as I can tell that’s what happened - I looked up the weather after the fact - but by mile 21 it was hot. Maybe there was less shade on the course? I am not sure why that’s when I started to feel it, but that made the last 6 miles pretty difficult. (I have it on good authority that a lot of people started feeling muscle cramps around that part of the race too.)

Which leaves me with my conclusion - I think I can probably run a faster marathon.

I’m not going to be singularly focused on it the way I was these past four years…I’m just stating it as fact.

I think there are a few ways I can build up to a stronger final 6 miles, which as you see with my splits above could have gone better.

I could try the run-walk method, which I’ve thought about but hadn’t tried because I wanted to run a race where I actually paced myself correctly from the start. Now that I have I can mess around a little.

I also can go back to including a 20-miler in my training. After Sunday I have confidence I can do 20 miles more than once a training cycle, which was really psyching me out these past couple of years.

Turns out, if I pace myself from the start, I have a good shot at a good run.

And I think cooler temperatures would make a difference. Sunday wasn’t bad, but it did have an impact at the end.

I’m not ready to say when that next marathon may be. But I think I have at least one more in me.

Tomorrow we’ll take a more detailed look at my Chicago Marathon.