I decided to run this marathon with a good friend after she signed up early in the year. I absolutely loved running the Chicago Marathon. The Chicago Marathon is well known for it's crowd support and flat course.

At the expo, there were tons of vendors with the Nike Chicago store being the largest one. There were many fun booths and a lot of awesome merchandise. The set up for packet pick up went flawless and the lines were very long despite the large crowds. There were also several convenient shuttles to get to the expo.

The t-shirt for the race an average well fitting t-shirt. There were many options for Chicago Marathon swag from Nike, Saucony, North Face, etc to purchase at the expo as well.

I can't review transportation or parking for the Chicago Marathon as I walked to and from the race. I purchased a public transportation card $30 prior to the race, but did not use it and probably would not purchase it again. We stayed at a hotel about 1 mile from the race, and there were many hotel options on the Chicago Marathon website.

Despite the race being in October, the weather can be very unpredictable in Chicago at that time of year. It was warmer than what we were hoping for this year. The race course was flat and had great scenery overall. The biggest issue for the course was the inaccurate GPS tracking in the city with the tall city buildings. My pace and timing were quite off in some miles, which I wish I had known about before the race. Because of the heat, I didn't run my best and missed my goal of being sub 4 hours by a mere 4 seconds. It was still a new marathon PR, and I hope to hit my goal of being sub 4 at my next marathon.

There were plenty of aid stations throughout the course for the warm day and even fire truck hoses spraying to help keep people cool.

I ran for Team Word Vision, which is the largest charity for the Chicago Marathon with about 2000 runners so there were several charity tents for Team World Vision. World Vision is worldwide humanitarian organization seeking to bring clean drinking water to communities in need.

I love reminiscing over this race still, and I am having a really difficult time not signing up for this race again next year. I will definitely be running it again, and looking forward to fundraising for World Vision once again someday!