Chicago Marathon Guest Post

A few weeks ago my wife ran the Chicago Marathon…I watched. I thought about posting a recap of the marathon from a spectators perspective, but I thought that may be boring. Instead…. my wife will be a guest ICEdot blogger this week! Enjoy!

The Bank of America Chicago Marathon…

It was a solid race. I had heard so many fabulous stories about the race from people cheering you on the whole time to there are no hills. Of course, my expectations were high after hearing all of this. I mean I have never met a soul who doesn’t think Chicago is awesome.

The city greeted us, along with 44,999 other race participants with a huge smile. I had received kind e-mails from our hotel , The Hyatt Regency (which I recommend) weeks before prepping us. The restaurants were prepared for large, crazy crowds. Residents and employees would ask if I was running the race and when I replied “yes” they gave me a pat on the back, encouraged me, and said “Congrats!” before I had even started the race. It was great.

The organizers for the marathon were super organized. Duh, right? Well, when you are managing such a large group, I was expecting mistakes and mishaps, but nope! I even decided to bump up corrals the day before and it took a whole 3 minutes without and hassle. I met my pace team leaders, had complete instructions on where to be and what time race day, and knew that at each mile I would be provided with gatorade and water. Everything went exactly as planned.

The volunteers had the biggest servant’s hearts I had ever seen. There were tweens all the way up to grandmas and grandpas serving water, Vaseline, oranges, bananas, you name it and it was there. Oh, and some “volunteers”, aka the cheer section, were serving jello shots and beer! I mean can it get any better?! I passed on the later and my stomach thanked me for that. It is tough being a race-day volunteer because lemon-lime gatorade is being thrown back at you, there are mounds of paper cups to rake up, and the spit- ugh, disgusting. I honestly think it is harder to stand for four plus hours and volunteer doing that than it is to run the 26.2. Thank you to all that helped make my Chi Town Marathon possible.

I do have a few critics for the Chicago Marathon. A. Don’t tell me there are not hills and then have hills. That last .2 was all hill and my hiney was screaming “Don’t do it!”. B. Yes, there are people standing on the side the ENTIRE 26.2, but no they are not cheering the whole time. They cheer when they see people they know. This is totally fine, but you better believe next time I am writing my name on my race bib or run t-shirt so they will say “Go, Kali, Go!”. Yes, I am that person that needs to hear my name. No shame. I did get to see my husband and fam five times and I soaked in every second of ‘KAAAAALLLLIII GOOOO GIIIRLLL!”. Soaked it all in. C. Have more waves in the start line. Two start times was not enough. I felt like I was a cow being corralled for 26 miles. Not a fan.

I really enjoyed this marathon and how the Chicago community comes together to support their visitors. Funny story time: Except this one older man on the CTA (bus system). We were on a bus going back to our hotel and it had been sitting for about 10 minutes do to race traffic. He said “Why in the heck would they let a marathon happen downtown Chicago, those are supposed to be in the country. This is ridiculous!” Obvi he doesn’t understand.

I’m already looking at running the OKC Memorial Marathon in April. Three marathons in three different states is sounding pretty cool!

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