chicago marathon 2012 spectator recap

I don’t even know where to start. How does one give a recap of a weekend you wished would never end with one of your very good friends? After I dropped Tina off at the airport yesterday evening, I felt like I needed a shroud to cover myself with. The two of us had so much fun this weekend – I can’t even handle it!

There’s just too much to share, so you’re going to have to deal with two posts about all of this for the week. I think I’m going to start with the marathon because it was SO much fun! Even though Tina and I didn’t run, we loved being spectators and cheering on the runners.

On Saturday we had the thought that we should definitely make a sign that made all of the runners laugh while they felt like they wanted to give up. Katie had previously said that getting a handful of candy corn would be the best thing ever, so we decided we would help out.

Tina did a great job on our sign while I whipped us up some dinner, but that side wasn’t all!

Do we look tired? We felt it! We were going non-stop all weekend long, and our 5 AM wakeup call was brutal on Sunday morning! We left my house around 6 AM and stopped for coffee at Starbuck’s before heading down to the city. We hit no traffic at all and were able to find relatively reasonable parking about a mile north of the starting line which was great.

We had grand plans of watching the start, but we left to go to the bathroom and a security guard was standing where we snuck through to leave so we couldn’t get back in. Instead we high tailed it to mile 2 and kept out watch for our friends who were running. At this point I saw my high school swim coach and Jess, but we must have missed Katie! Once we realized we had probably missed her, we decided to walk up to mile 11 (it wasn’t 9 miles away, I promise – about 2 miles!) to cheer everyone on and bust out our signs.

It was so fun to hear the runners laugh at our sign and point and laugh. We even got flashed a few times by some male runners. I loved putting a smile on their faces at the almost half way point. At this point we spotted Katie! I was so excited to see her, and she was looking incredibly strong. She almost missed us,but thankfully she saw us and gave a little wave.

We stayed at mile 11 for probably another half hour and then took the subway to the south side of the city and walked over to mile 20. When we got there, we tried to hand out our candy corn but it was pretty unsuccessful. A police woman kept making us get really far away from the course, so it was almost impossible to hand it out. We did get a handful to Katie though (she looked pretty pumped!) and a few other runners. Before we left, Tina and I got a big surprise when Molly stopped to say hello and to tell us she reads our blogs! Great job on the race, Molly! You did great!

Once we saw Katie and Jess, we tried to high tail it to the finish. It was about a mile and a half walk from where we were, and unfortunately we missed our friends finish. We wanted to stick around to wait to see them, but the crowds were huge and we had no idea where they would be. Instead, we went and finally grabbed something to eat. We were starving! You know, because we didn’t run a marathon.

Earlier in the day I had suggested breakfast for lunch since our Kind bars and bananas didn’t count as a “real” breakfast. We saw West Egg Cafe earlier that morning when we parked, so we walked about another 2 miles to get breakfast (at 2 PM)!

We couldn’t decide if it was because we were incredibly hungry, but this place was amazing. I ordered their veggie omelet with guacamole (it was listed as an ingredient in one of their other omelets) with a side of breakfast potatoes and fruit. You better believe I ate every single last bite! (except for the fruit which I shared with Tina)

Once we got back home we mapped out how far we walked and it was over 9 miles! We were pretty surprised, and our legs were feeling sore. Of course though, we couldn’t complain since we hadn’t just run a marathon.

Overall, the day was so great (despite the cold temperatures in the early morning), but we were wiped! We both willingly went to bed at 9:30 and slept until 7 the next morning. We both said how Chicago is on our bucket list – although I can’t see myself running it until at least 2014 or 2015. I know I will eventually though!

Question: Have you ever spectated at a race?

Tagged as: chicago marathon, chicago marathon 2012, race, recap, weekend