Chicago Marathon Recap

I had been planning to run the 2012 Chicago Marathon for well over two years, and in short, it was everything I thought it would be and more.

We flew into Chicago with two of our best friends from college, who were also running the marathon. After arriving on Saturday morning (it would have been better to go a day earlier), we went to the expo and got our numbers. While I used to enjoy marathon expos, the crowds are starting to get to me, so I mainly wanted to get my number, t-shirt, check to see if there's any cool official race merchandise (they were sold out of everything but XL) and get out of there.

Before dinner we headed into Grant Park to do an easy 20-25 minute run. It was cold out, but there were a lot of people running and it was still beautiful in the park and around the lake. The excitement was in the air, especially as we ran by the starting line and saw everything being set up.

When I woke up the next morning I was pumped. The great thing about the Chicago Marathon is that you can stay in the city, roll out of bed an hour before the race, and leave the hotel just 30 minutes before the start. And that's wat we did. 30-35 minutes before the race we left the hotel, walked into the park and checked our bag, then made our way to the starting line. The starting area was huge, which have us space to move around, which was nice to do since it was about 40 degrees. When the race started there was plenty of space as the roads were wide. We then began a 26.2 mile journey through the city of Chicago that had fans cheering every step of the way - which was really awesome. Also, like I and everyone else had been told, the course is completely flat.

I felt really good through most of the race, but around mile 22 my quads got really tired and I ended up doing everything I could to hang on. I ended up finishing the race in 2:59:11, good enough for a 12 second PR!

After the race I quickly put some extra clothing on (it was cold out) and made my way to the massage tent, which was filled with really amazing people ready to help warm us up and relax our muscles. I really want to run this race again and beat my time, probably in 2014.