Naperville marathon team pushes for sub 3-hour finish

Five or so men in shorts and compression socks are running hill repeats on the aptly named Tuthill Road in Naperville.

It's 5 a.m. on a Wednesday and the ambient light is barely enough for the men to see.

Most of them aren't out there by choice; they're following orders.

They have Kevin Madden of Naperville to blame.

Madden is the CTO of Team Sub 3, an informal yet serious training group for Naperville-area runners who aim to finish a marathon in less than three hours.

The title of CTO means Madden is in control, at least for this training cycle, as the runners prepare for Sunday's Edward Hospital Naperville Marathon.

The acronym stands for chief training officer, and it's an ode to the corporate background of most of the eight Team Sub 3 members, who are mainly Naperville men between 35 and 55, with one Wheaton resident and one woman thrown in for good measure.

When a runner takes his or her turn as CTO, team member Brian Kearney of Naperville says, "your job is not to be overthrown because there's a lot of mutiny talk."

The early start time for the weekday training runs has surprisingly little to do with the sarcastic yet friendly talk of overthrowing the CTO. The 5 a.m. runs are agreed upon so everyone can make it to work on time, as at least two members work in Chicago.

Team Sub 3 participants describe themselves as "social runners," but say they're intent on hitting their time goals too. Using a different training plan for each race, based on the preference of the CTO, the runners aim for a race day pace of roughly 6:50 a mile.

"We each have our strengths," said Madden, a 54-year-old financial analyst. "Brian's is strength training, Chris (Johanneson) and Tom (Zielinski) do nutrition."

Madden's might be making his friends run hills.

"Sometimes you're like 'I don't feel like going out for a run, but I want to go out for a chat with the guys,'" said Kearney, a 55-year-old computer systems analyst. "So you go out."

And they become better runners in the process.

"I was getting slower, not faster," team member Bill Akins, a 46-year-old account manager of Naperville, said about his running status before joining Sub 3. "Now I'm a believer in the power of the group because I'm definitely improving."

A man who organizes weekly track workouts at North Central College sent out an email almost eight years ago trying to gauge interest among local runners in training for a sub-three-hour marathon finish.

"It was kind of a joke, but three of us responded. We were serious," Madden said.

Madden and Team Sub 3 member Tom Zielinski of Naperville were among the three who said they were in, along with former member Mike Schmidt, who now lives in the Northwest suburbs.

None of the runners had beaten that mark when they started practicing together in 2007. Not everyone has achieved it seven years later. But they're all gunning for it Sunday during the second marathon in their hometown.

"A bunch of us, if not all of us, are going for under three hours," said Zielinski, a 53-year-old financial analyst.

The members consider themselves fortunate in their quest for a speedy finish.

They all have "running builds," tall or tallish and relatively thin. They've avoided major injuries or long layoffs without training. They have the support - if not always the complete understanding - of their families, who sometimes think they're crazy. There might be a little judgment for their intense running habits, but there's "no drama," team members say.

Just early bedtimes and a lot of running - between 40 and 60 miles a week most of the year to train for spring and fall marathons, including the Boston Marathon this April.

"We probably wouldn't be running this many miles if it wasn't for the group," Zielinski said. "It's a lot easier in the group, especially those early morning weekday runs."

Camaraderie, unfortunately, doesn't make the 5 a.m. start time completely palatable.

"The single biggest drawback is getting up so early," Akins said.

But the biggest benefit is the friendships, forged as runners help each other keep pace during difficult training sessions, and strengthened with humor as members complain to the CTO after Saturday runs over bagels and coffee.

"It's amazing the commonalities, the things that you share that you can talk about and help each other with," Madden said - even among guys whose ages vary by two decades. "It's just amazing the benefits you get from running with a group of guys in a big age range and a lot of different backgrounds."