Calm down, everyone, I haven’t earned the medal yet. This is from 2023.

My Strava app thinks I ran a sub-5-hour marathon.

I think I understand why.

Sometimes Strava recalibrates the running time if you stop for a bit.

I’ve seen it happen on runs where I stop at a lot of crosswalks for red lights.

The watch says one time…and then when the run uploads to Strava the time shrinks somehow.

In 2023 I ran Chicago in 5:03:42. (My personal best marathon, besting my 2022 Boston Marathon by 6 seconds.)

Strava, though, thinks I ran it in 4 hours, 56 minutes. (Also, my second-fastest time in the marathon? I have no idea why it thinks that.)

I was reminded of this because I went back to look at my training runs the couple of weeks leading up to Chicago in 2023 and saw I had a lot of 5 mile runs. I don’t normally run a 5-mile loop, so I wanted to look at Strava to see where those were. (I had forgotten it was when I was running Every Street in Framingham so they were a lot of different 5-mile runs.) As I was scrolling all the way back I saw the Chicago run there.

I know exactly what happened here. First of all, I had a little tweak in my groin area during the end of training and into the marathon and it felt really good to do a deep squat every so often.

So during the marathon I’d pull over to the side quite often - at least once every couple of miles - and do that stretch. It was quick, but that could add up over 26 miles.

The big thing though, is the quick detour you see at the left.

I had to pee. (That little veer to the right is not part of the marathon route.)

At around the 6-mile mark, I think, I saw the porta-potties and made a quick veer off the course and went to the bathroom.

Now, without getting too detailed, it was not the quickest pee I’ve ever had in my life.

It was definitely longer than a minute but, you know, I’m not timing my bathroom breaks. (I kind of wish I had.)

I don’t know where Strava accounts for the 7 minutes’ difference between its time and the official time but I would say it’s fair that between the stretching and the bathroom stop, I can account for three minutes.

So when I tell you I think I can run a sub-5 hour marathon, I’m not just pulling that out randomly.

Each of my marathons (discounting Wilmington, which was up at 5:23 but I’ve talked about what happened there) have hovered around the 5:05 mark. New York was 5:06, my best was 5:03.

I have made it through training feeling strong.

I’ve already run the Chicago course, which should count for something. (I shaved about two minutes off my Boston time the second time I ran that.)

It’s not a be-all end-all goal. I don’t think I will be shattered if I don’t break 5 hours…I wasn’t after New York.

But I think I can do it.

Let’s just hope I don’t have to use a restroom mid-way through.