Chicago Marathon '07 + Heatwave

This weekend we had a great time with both of our families here for the Chicago Marathon. Unfortunately, it was pretty much the worst weather for a marathon, but all 3 of our participants made it to the finish- a Marathon Miracle! Read about all the drama here on the Chicago Tribune.

Here are our 3 runners moments before the race:


I had a hard time getting action shots of Bryan while running (because he was going so fast of course!), so here are two body part photos of him. First we have his left hand, waving at us at mile 2:

And here is his right foot (white shoe, red stripe), with his friend RJ in the blue shorts running next to him at mile 11:
We also found my dad eating Goo at mile 11:

... and my sister, looking perkier than anyone should while running in that heat:

At mile 17 we found Bryan and Laura again (my dad was nowhere to be seen), and Bry stopped and walked with us for a few minutes while taking a water break. This is also where he began cramping up, an unfortunately miserable turn of events for him. Mile 18 found him on the ground, unable to move. Somehow he managed to get up after a few minutes and run another 8 miles in to the finish. I have no idea how runners do these things!
After finishing our cheering duties at mile 17 we all piled on the train to head back downtown for the finish line. The train was quite packed full of very smelly, sweaty people:
At the very end, Kristin and I ran down to meet Bryan and Laura and run the last half mile or so in with them. We stared and stared at the runners passing us, with several false alarms of Bryan or Laura sightings. At first we were so hoping we hadn't missed them already. After a while, we were just hoping they weren't among the 300+ being taken away in ambulances (Bry actually saw someone getting CPR on the side of the road! Yikes)!

Just when we thought we couldn't take the waiting any more, there they appeared- running side by side! So Kristin and I jumped in and ran with them- past all of the people cheering and the swarms of photographers capturing all the runners' finishes (yes, I felt a bit poserish, but who cares at that point!). It was so fun to be able to find them at the very end and be there when they accomplished something so huge!


Here's Bry, moments before finishing. This was not quite the, "I'm so excited to see you!" face that I was hoping for, but I found out quickly that he was pretty disoriented from the heat and feeling entirely miserable, so I decided to not be offended.

And this is how the crowd in general looked after crossing the finish line. For me, this shot sums up why I have no interest whatsoever in running a marathon myself. This loooks like torture.

Too bad the marathon people had run out of ice already by that point- we certainly could have used it for their poor overheated bodies!

Overall, a good time was had by all, and Bryan is already scouting out the next marathon he can run to work on his time. Have I mentioned that runners are crazy people?!