The Chicago Marathon will be my 25th marathon.
Running a marathon under 3 hours has been a goal of mine for many years.
A little bit of context:
I ran my first marathon in 2012, finishing in 4 hours and 18 minutes.
Picture from my first marathon in 2012
A classic first one: no clue about nutrition, gear, or shoes, and I spent too much time waiting in restroom lines during the race.
Since then, running became more about training than just running. I’ve been running since 2001.
Picture from second marathon 2013
Progress came along the way — in 2015, I ran Berlin in 3 hours and 15 minutes.
Picture from Berlin marathon 2015
That’s when the dream of breaking 3 hours was born, about 10 years ago.
Life, of course, was busy. I mixed in ultras, mountain climbing, and so on.
At some point, I started being afraid of running fast. The running community back in Russia was a little toxic — not all of it, of course, but I felt the pressure. I couldn’t stand the thought of not living up to people’s expectations. There was so much attention on me, and it was hard. So I wasn’t consistent in training for speed, and I made no progress.
Then life became even more unstable, and in 2017 we moved to the US. It was good for my training, but also very stressful. It wasn’t planned — we left everything behind in one day.
Running, though, has always been the one consistent thing in my life.
Eventually, I started feeling more confident about running fast again. In 2020, at the Houston Marathon, I ran a PR of 3:05.
Then the pandemic began.
Once again, I lost community.
2021 was the year of marathons.
I ran Chicago and Boston back-to-back, then NYC and CIM. But I did zero speed training, so I made no progress.
Pictures from Boston and Chicago Marathons in 2021 in the the fall
By 2023, I was ready to run fast again.
In 2024, I set a PR of 3:00:40.
I knew I was in the best shape of my life and decided to give it a shot at Chicago that year.
I trained harder than ever.
But I made the mistake of putting too much faith in one person. I was promised a Chicago bib and didn’t get it.
That was my mistake — my lesson. I should have had a plan B.
After realizing I wasn’t going to run Chicago, I signed up for the Las Vegas Marathon two weeks later. That was another mistake. The training block was too long, and instead of letting go of my peak fitness, I pushed further and broke.
The injury that followed became my nightmare. Physically, I just couldn’t run fast. I lost an entire year of speed training.
Now, I’m finally getting better — very, very slowly.
So here I am, running Chicago again, with a little bit of hope.
I’ll try my best, but what will it be?
I won’t lie: I’ll still try to shoot for my dream. But I also know it probably won’t happen this time.
I just need to see where I stand now.
Picture from NYC marathon 2016
Live an Active Lifestyle 