Friday, October 12, 2007

Thank you, Chicago People!

Well, we were pretty warm.. so not too sure of locations.. but maybe on Clark ... and Wells ... Boystown... many spectators sprayed us with hoses... someone handed us bottles of water... and there was the young man who came out of Starbucks with a huge tray of paper cups of water.. just as we came by.
Water stops had no signs and seemed to appear irregularly... but by one way or another we did stay relatively hydrated during that part of the race course.

Cheering by specators was ... well, cheering our spirits.
Thanks Chicago.

As we ran, it was fun to see the Red Fish restaurant where we had enjoyed jambalaya (hold the seafood to avoid too much protein) for pre-race dinner the previous evening. Proved to be a good place to eat and a good carbo load for the race.
Sweet Pea running past our pre-race dinner place

6 comments:

Backofpack said...

The enthusiasm of volunteers and spectators is amazing. It always restores my faith in others and in the general goodness of people.

Speaking of that - did you see that the Denver marathon (tomorrow) waived the fee for entry for anyone who was unable to complete Chicago? How nice is that?!

Nat said...

I love your post. I wish I would have known you were going to be in Chicago as well! Glad you and your family are fine and made it out of Chicago!

Sunshine said...

Nat.. Now I see that Des Moines is... Next weekend.
Hope you have a good time.

cat said...

Welcome home intrepid runners!!!

I salute you!! I'm sure I would be one who couldn't finish the course in a calender day, but one day I hope I can.

Thanks for sharing this wonderful glimpse of a world I would never otherwise see xxx bless you xx

Cat :-)

Vickie said...

I have heard first hand over and that it was the citizens of Chicago who saved the race that day. It was just an unfortunate mess all the way around. My opinion, while not having been there but hearing and reading many accounts, is that the problems were with mismanagement of how and when to distribute the water. They said they had 80,000 bottles of water at the finish line. That's great, if you actually finished. Better they had shipped that water immediately to the water stops that were out and get more for the finish area later. Glad you are coming to Grand Rapids. I'm pretty sure it won't be 87 degrees that day.

Mr. Satan A. Chilles said...

Thanks for reiterating how great the people of Chicago were during the marathon. They really were. It can't be said enough. I love the NYC Marathon, and the quantity of crowd support there is unbelievable. But in terms of quality of support, Chicago outdid New York, and I should know, I live there and I've run that marathon once or twice...