Chicago Marathon8:13:09 AM

I spent the last weekend in Chicago visiting my parents and my sister's family and her three adorable kids.  (Hi Harper, Ellie and Tate!)

We combined this trip with my wife Rachel's first marathon!  We took the train downtown early on Sunday morning and got there in plenty of time for the start.  It was a complete mob scene.  There were 40,000 people signed up to run the marathon.  It took Rachel 15 minutes or so to actually get to the start line. 

I cut across the course and was able to see her run by at the halfway mark.  I then took my time walking to the finish line so that I could try to catch a glimpse of her on the home stretch.  I missed her there but was able to meet up with her in the park outside the finish.  Right after she finished she collapsed on me and said that it was the hardest thing she ever did and also the best.  That is something coming from someone who finished a medical internship.

I'm so proud of her running it!  Now all she has to do is let her feet heal. 

Interesting stuff:

• Everyone is timed with what is called a "champion chip."  This is a little device that you tie on to your shoe that marks when you step on checkpoints along the course.  They had 10 of these checkpoints total.  I'm not sure what technology they use, but it seems to work pretty well.  There would be no way to get an accurate time for 40k people without something like this.
• Right after Rachel finished someone in front of her called for a medic.  A woman and her father had apparently just finished together when he collapsed on the ground.  He was still talking but obviously dizzy and confused.  Rachel introduced herself as a doctor and volunteered to help.  She checked his pulse on his wrist and in his neck.  If you have a pulse in your wrist, your blood pressure is at least 90.  If it is in your neck it is at least 60.  Since the man had a pulse in his neck but not in his wrist he had a blood pressure under 90.  She sat with them until the medics arrived and he was wheeled away.  We both hope everything is okay!
• There is a company that tries to take pictures of everyone.  Apparently they just shoot away and try to sort it all out later.  Last night when we checked the site they had finished going through 22% of the photos they had taken and had three pictures of Rachel online.  I can't imagine dealing with that many pictures!  I'm wondering if they have some sort of OCR system to read the bib numbers off the runners.

I took some pictures but I haven't had a chance to sort through them yet.  Hopefully I can put one or two up in the next couple of days.