Chicago Marathon 2010

All I can say is WHAT AN AWESOME WEEKEND!!!!! I'm going to have to break it down into parts. This will be part One.

Matt and Rebecca arrived from Colorado at around 12:30 a.m. on Saturday. Michael picked them up at the airport and they stayed that night at Michael and Bern's house. I didn't get to see them until Saturday afternoon when we all got together at Tresa and Chris's condo in Chicago for a nice pasta dinner. We had to get Matti ready for his loooonnnngggg run the next day. It was so good to see them and to have our family together. We all took turns holding the baby and chatting, but we made it an early evening because Tresa is still a bit sleep deprived and Matt needed to get his rest. A friend of Matt's from Colorado that was also running the marathon came by to say hi. It was great to see him.

On Sundays the trains from where we live that go into the city don't run very often, so in order to get to the marathon by start time, we had to get up at 3:00 a.m. and catch the 4:53 a.m. train. Man was that early! We got to the city and immediately started texting with Matt and Rebecca to see if we would be able to find them before the race. We didn't. They actually were exactly across from us at the starting area, but this is what it looked like.


First of all you couldn't get around the fence and second of all, that sea of hats that you see, are all of the runners. So we were on this side of the runners and Matti and Rebecca were on the other side. Matt was in with the runners and Rebecca was outside the fence on that side. It was nuts and oh so exciting. It was so hard knowing that Matt was so close, but oh so far away. I wanted so badly to give him one more kiss and hug and one more good luck, but there was no way.

It was so emotional waiting for the race to start and then watching them all start walking...slowly....waiting for the runners up front to move far enough forward so the whole group could start moving. It took Matt 20 minutes to actually reach the starting line from where he was!

As soon as the runners were off and running we managed to locate Rebecca. Thank goodness for cell phones and texting! The three of us went to grab some coffee and breakfast to go and started walking to the half way point of the race in the hopes of catching a glimpse of Matt in the sea of runners.

Irv and I actually did a LOT of walking. It wasn't a simple task to get around the throngs of people and all of the closed roads. We walked and we took cabs, and eventually we got to the 13 mile mark and stood and waited with Rebecca. We watched runners go zooming by and other runners trotted by. There were lots of signs and cow bells and yelling and cheering. There were runners in tutus and super hero garb and runners in regular running clothes. It was a sight to see. We got dizzy watching the bobbing heads of thousands of runners while we watched for Matt. Then Rebecca saw him and he saw her and waved. Irv and I didn't see him and he quickly scoured the crowd once he saw Rebecca, but he didn't see us either. She said he looked strong and really good.

We made our way to the finish area. We met at our prearranged spot and it was just so cool. Matt had done a fantastic job.

Remember when I told you he had hurt his knee when he ran the Imogene Mountain Run...well both of his knees started bothering long before the marathon...but he ran anyway and did it in 4 hours 8 minutes and 25 seconds!

To put it in perspective.....there were a total of 35,763 runners and Matt came in 9955th! Out of 19769 male runners, Matt came in 7173rd. Out of the 3001 male runners in his 25-29 age group, Matt came in 1153rd. The winner of the race was a 23 year old Kenyan who ran it in 2 hours, 6 minutes and 24 seconds! It just blows my mind.

We had just the best day. Michael and Bern came down and we met up with them after the race at a bar where we could all sit, have something to eat and watch the Bears game. We caught the 4:30 train and got home around 6:00. It was a long day, but a fantastic day. I am so proud of Matt and of all of the runners. They just amaze me with their strength and their dedication to a sport they love.


I will be back later this week with some after the marathon pictures, some Graham updates, a little bit about my terrifying Chicago Cab ride and about all the work we are doing on our vintage etsy shop. I hope all is well with you. I will chat with you real soon.