The Blanchard Family: The Chicago Marathon 2012

Back in February, Erik and I signed up to run the Chicago Marathon. We had been thinking about running a marathon, and decided this was a good time to do it. Both kids are fairly young, but still pretty self-sufficient. We had thought about doing the Twin Cities Marathon in Minneapolis, but my brother really wanted to do Chicago, and since we needed my parents to come along and watch Kyler and Norah, we ended up deciding to do Chicago. My parents had actually run Chicago about seven years ago and Erik, Ben, and I had gone along to watch, so we kind of had an idea of what it was going to be like. The marathon was the 7th of October. We left to head to Chicago on Friday afternoon right after lunch. We stopped at one of those oasis places over the highway to eat dinner outside of the city. After dinner we continued on into the city. Our hotel was right downtown on Michigan Avenue. It took us a while to figure out where our hotel was in comparison to where we were going to park, so we finally got to our room about 9:30 at night.

Saturday morning we got up, ate breakfast and then took a school bus to the Marathon Expo. Kyler and Norah both thought it was pretty cool to be able to ride in a school bus. :) We checked out the expo for a while, got our race packets and then loaded up the bus again to take it back to our hotel. When we got back to Michigan Avenue, we found a Noodles and Company and got some lunch to take back to our hotel. After lunch the kids took naps and we just relaxed a while. After naps, we got ready to head out to dinner at a place just around the corner that we had made a reservation at back in August. We enjoyed a great pasta carb-loading dinner and then came back to the hotel to get ready for bed and to run.

Sunday morning came nice and early. Our alarm went off at 6:00 am so we could get up, get dressed, eat breakfast, and then walk to the start of the race. The start line was just a few blocks down the street from our hotel, so we were able to walk there. We had to be in our "coral" by 8:45. Then at 9:00 our "wave" (the non-professionals) was off! Ben took off and we lost him as soon as the gun went off. Erik and I ran together for the first 3-4 miles, and then his knee was starting to bother him, so he slowed down a bit. Erik ended up making it to mile 12 and then his knee was hurting him so bad, he was walking and limping, so he stopped and took a bus to the finish line. Ben finished the race in about 3 hours and 50ish min. I finished in 5 hours 12 min.

Overall the race was a great experience. Erik and I had always said we had wanted to do a full marathon. We have done the 1/2 at Sturgis Falls several times. I have done it 4 or 5 times and Erik has done it twice, so we wanted to do the full. Erik was disappointed that he wasn't able to finish, and I was sad too because I wanted to be able to say we had done it together; but he just couldn't do it. His knee started to hurt him towards the end of our first 18 mile training run. He made it 3 miles into the 2nd 18 mile training run, and then went home to get his bike and bike the rest of the way. He had been going to physical therapy for the few weeks leading up to the marathon, and we were hoping that would have helped him enough to finish but it didn't. He wasn't even able to walk without limping so he knew finishing wouldn't happen. I'm really proud of him for making it as far as he did though, almost 1/2 way! I am excited to say that I finished!! I was hoping to run it a little faster, but after talking to people who have run multiple marathons, they have all said, "oh for your first one you just go to finish". The amount of people along the way was crazy! If you ever want to try a marathon, Chicago is a great one to do because there are SO MANY PEOPLE along the course. There are people the whole way, and most of the way they are 2-3 people deep, more in some spots. And they cheer and yell at you too. There are bands playing and people playing loud music to encourage you. There were definitely times along the way where I wondered why I was doing this and wondered if I could make it to the finish, but I just kept going. I did walk along the way, and then would run and walk some and then ran the last couple miles. It was a great experience and I haven't quite decided if I want to do another one yet or not....I'm guessing I probably will at some point!! Here are some pictures from our weekend!