We arrived early Friday having to fly in from Atlanta we didn't want to take any chances on missing anything. A quick lunch and then to the expo we went! A lot of security a lot of people but still very organized. We quickly went up and down each row looking for our souvenirs for this trip. Fleet feet Chicago nailed it and we really were finished. Nike left us pretty disappointed everything felt low quality and overpriced but maybe I'm biased to Adidas, Brooks and New Balance. Finally we escaped the expo without spending hours and hundreds of dollars.
The city in general was electric with the marathon in town. Runners everywhere you looked, banners on every light post, the infamous blue line waiting for Sunday. A quick and easy 3 miles by the lake to adjust to the elevation and evidently temperature drop was achieved before dinner time.
Saturday was a great sightseeing day for us. The architecture tour on the river was fantastic!
Anyways time for the actual race!
Cold temps came in full force or as what everyone kept saying perfect temps for a marathon. It was not perfect temps for waiting in our late corral for almost 1.5 hours. We met a couple other people from Atlanta Track Club that were on their 1st and 2nd marathon. 830 finally rolled around and we were ready to get started and warm up! Throw away clothes were discarded and we were off. Sticking to the plan was extremely hard on this course for the first 4 miles being spent up for so long and then released I just wanted to take off. Luckily I was with my wife who I was pacing to her PB so restraint was my main operative anyway.
Miles 1-8 were glorious huge amounts of crowd support everywhere people on bridges, streets overhangs, under bridges, everywhere you can imagine! 8-13 were equally enjoyable as we settled into a nice and easy pace. My longing for an incline was only relieved over the small bridges.
13-16 was my wife's first real struggle with the distance. Legs were being pounded in the same spot over and over again. We slowed down.
16-22 were our slowest miles with a few walk breaks unfortunately. Crowd support was still really strong. The different neighborhoods all showed up to represent themselves. Lake View and old town were great! Every crossroad had a huge gusts of wind to snap you back but the miles were still rolling off of us.
Huge shoutout to the gang handing out PBR at mile 22 and Goose Island for the 312! They brought me back to reality!
22-25 Chinatown with dragons and still more crowds!
25-the finish the countdown at the end was very cool I've never seen that before in a marathon and I seriously enjoyed it and kicked it up a notch. We finished arms in the air, victorious!
We didn't quite get the time we wanted but my got her PB. This is one of my favorite runs I've ever done and would love to do it again given the chance. My wife has also vowed to never do another one but that quickly changed the next day. My only negative comment about this race and honestly it's not completely negative is that crowd control was somewhat lacking pinching the runners in on the course sometimes over the tangent line but how can you complain about too much of a crowd right? Thank you Chicago for a great weekend!