Hot Chocolate Chicago

Hot Chocolate Chicago

Hot Chocolate Chicago

( 64 reviews )
81% of reviewers recommend this race
  • Chicago,
    Illinois,
    United States
  • November
  • 3 miles/5K, 9 miles/15K, Virtual Race
  • Road Race
  • Event Website

Martha

Chicago, Illinois, United States
3 4
2014
"Hot Chocolate Chicago"
Overall
T-Shirts/SWAG
Aid Stations
Course Scenery
Expo Quality
Elevation Difficulty
Parking/Access
Race Management
Martha 's thoughts:

Expo/Swag: The expo was at McCormick place so it was pretty easy to get to. Considering how many people were there, the wait time was pretty great...in that there wasn't one! I was able to get my bib and bag right away! They have a try on section where you can make sure the hoodie you ordered fits and if not you can swap it out which was really nice. Although be warned that they don't guarantee that they'll have the size you want to swap out for. The zip-ups are dark grey with pink (womens)/green (mens) lining and are super soft on the inside. I'm a big fan of them! They're light weight but still keep you pretty warm. The expo was in a separate room and honestly I wasn't all that impressed. It was SUPER congested and hard to move around. Also I usually buy my GU products at the expo and none of the vendors had any. As guessed they do give out cups of hot cocoa and chocolate dipped marshmallows.

Parking/Access: The race starts and ends in Grant park so it's really easy to get to. I took the L and was again pretty disappointed. At the station they said that they had extra trains running to accommodate for the race and we had to wait for about 15 mins and the people on the platform said that they had been waiting for at least 10-15 mins as well. This really messed with our timing and we almost missed getting into our corral. We could have drove and paid $20 for parking but that just seems crazy to me, but if that's your thang do it!

Race area: There were a TON of port-a-potties around gate 2 (where the 15k bag check was). I didn't have to wait at all for one which was nice. Also they had a lot of people helping at the bag check so I only had to wait a minute or two for that. However, since the L was late we were late and didn't get our stuff dropped off until 6:40 which only gave us 5 minutes to get to our corral before it closed (we were in wave 1). We sprinted to the edge of the park and reached the entrance but it was PACKED full of people trying to get in though the small bottle neck. We finally got to our right corral and then got to wait for our wave to go (we were in the last section so we didn't start until 7:40). Also if you're interested in switching corrals it's pretty easy to move around and since there were so many people there it was pretty easy for people to just move up corrals if they wanted to.

Race Course: My biggest disappointment with this is that they start the 15k and 5k-ers at the same time so everyone is mixed in the corrals. This makes absolutely NO sense to me because as soon as we started we had to weave around people and pretty much had to do that until we split from them at mile 3. Since they already have two waves leave I don't understand why they don't separate the distances. As for the actual course I LOVED the first two miles. The first mile is run on lower Wacker (I pretended like I was in Batman the whole time it was great) and then the second mile you're running right through downtown. Then you mostly follow Michigan south for a couple of miles and then weave your way up N by the lake front. After mile 5 there are about 3-4 u-turns that I personally hate but oh well, they're there. They have aid stations at mile 1, 4, 5, and 7 and also have marshmallows at mile 4, 7 and tootsie rolls at 5 I believe. Another part I didn't like was that around mile 7 you run in the parking area of McCormick place and after being outside it was like running in pitch darkness. I could tell that the floor was un-even in areas but not enough to know where to run so I felt like I was high-steppin' it the whole time. The finish is also kind of weird because for the last mile you're running along a fairly narrow path and then all of a sudden you reach the end stretch and it's just HUGE! There are areas for spectators but only behind a chain-link fence (I'm assuming for security reasons) so it's kind of hard to find people who might be cheering for you. In the shoot just past the finish there is water, gatorade and ice available. I thought the race was huge and never ending but my friend said it didn't seem to long so I could have just been dreaming that. Also the 15k-ers got a pretty heavy medal that was shaped like a chocolate bar which was pretty nice. They definitely spend some change on the medals this year.

Post-Race: Bag pick-up was incredibly fast again and then you make a bit of a walk to the North side of the park to get to where they have the food. You get this massive plastic bowl/mug thing that comes with hot chocolate, a banana, rice krispy treat, wafers, pretzels and some chocolate dip. The line to get that was also super fast. They needed WAY more garbages though because there was garbage allll over the place!

Overall I thought the race was just kind of meh. There were SO many people that crowd control was basically non-existent. The one nice thing is that they had plenty of volunteers so there were practically no lines for anything. I liked the zip-ups but I don't know if the whole experience was worth the $70 I had to pay for it. I would say do it once just to say you've done it because just about everyone has at least heard of it, also it has some beautiful views of the skyline as you run North.

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