Saturday, September 15, 2007

Chicago Half

As some of you know, I spent last weekend in the Windy City. Originally planned as a road-trip, it ended up that I flew in solo on Friday to get the weekend started a bit early.

It's exciting to fly anywhere new, and the quick jaunt to Chicago was no different. My goal was to visit a new city and to run the half-marathon on Sunday. Just a bit of time to mis-behave before the big race! I quickly hopped on a speedboat cruise of the river to get an idea of the history of the city and to see the architecture. Did you know that part of Chicago is built on landfill from the fire earlier this century? We had an amateur comedian as our docent so he kept us entertained.

Friday night I joined the rest of the hotel guests in the lobby for a wine reception. What a fantastic idea! I didn't meet them at this point, but apparently there were 15 other guests running on Sunday. I chose the chaise to relax on, put my feet up, go over my tour books. I've read somewhere that you're supposed to elevate your legs before a long run!

My hotel was dog-friendly, which I've only heard of never seen. I only noticed one dog and he was fantastically well-behaved and beautiful so I certainly didn't mind.

Saturday was jam-packed with tourist activities like Millenium Park (The Bean), the Shedd Aquarium, the Adler Planetarium, the Field Museum, a trolly tour of the city, the Magnificent Mile shopping district, deep-dish pizza....When I go "tourist" I really go at it! Really I was envisioning taking my boy back in a few years so I wanted to see as much as possible. I still don't see how random dots through the sky can create the entire astrological map...

How was the run on Sunday? Easy to get to, a flat course, our start/finish was at the Museum of Science and Industry (which I returned to later that afternoon, as a "tourist"). The run was well-organized and it was a lovely day. OK, maybe a bit hot, but you can't control Mother Nature. I saw my pictures through the marathon-does anybody look normal in those pics or is that just me?

The best view of the city was, without question, from the 96th floor of The John Hancock Building. We were looking down on skyscrapers, so it was a wild view, especially at night.
Tons of big black spiders hanging out on the outside of the building. Who knew?

I found the people of Chicago to be amazingly friendly, helpful, courteous, generous. I would go back in a second. Anybody in for the half in '08?

Thanks to the returning local who shared stories with me over the weekend, I'm so glad we had that time. Mountaineering in Iceland, marathons, triathlons. Maybe in a year or two...

Thanks for reading!

Sarah