The Marathon is a South Loop happening

and don't let anyone tell you otherwise

10/10/2011 12:02 PM

By Bonnie McGrath

4 Comments - Add Your Comment


Lots of visitors at the med tent



Shpritzing the runners with mist in Grant Park @ Congress (photos by Bonnie McGrath)

You can call The Chicago Marathon an international event, a sporting event, a Chicago event or even a Kenyan event (in honor of the most consistent winners). But let's face it: It's a South Loop event.


Where do the runners start? Finish? Win? Lose? Most often get sick? Even pass away? In the South Loop.

The Chicago Marathon may go as far south as 35th Street, as far north as Addison and as far west as Damen. But where are the most wooden horses, street closures, cops, crowds, disruptions and levels of joy and sorrow? What neighborhood is inundated with runners from around the country and around the world? What neighborhood really and truly plays host to the Chicago Marathon--one of the most famous competitions in the universe?

The South Loop.

The Chicago Marathon is one of the coolest feathers in the cap of (or the bane of the existence of) the South Loop. If you live here, you can't get away from it. You can't ignore it, censor it, cut it out of your life in any way. It's us who experience the tons of people, the tons of trash and the tons of excitement.

It's our neighborhood where the reporters gather, the friends and family reunite with their runners, the charity tents are constructed and packed--and where the dazed hobblings, the unpreventable collapses and the joyous finishings occur. It's our neighborhood where the most pasta is served. (The Hilton at Michigan and Balbo had a runners pasta special on Saturday night for $35--and it was even featured on the news.)

So if you are a runner, a spectator, a friend or family member of a competitor in the Chicago Marathon, just remember this: the South Loop is where it's at.


4 Comments - Add Your Comment



By Bonnie McGrath from South Loop
Posted: 10/11/2011 0:36 AM

Fluffy, my participation involves running around and seeing it all. It\'s a very interesting event to observe from various South Loop vantage points. They do offer the opportunity to walk the route--but you must finish in 6 hours. And I don\'t think I could walk 26 miles in the allotted time...


By Fluffy de Crossharbour
Posted: 10/10/2011 4:08 PM

From your article, I take it, B, that you did not participate? Was there an ole lady group? 50+ 60+? A goodly number of nurses at Lake Forest Hospital were talking bout it today, and they weren't spring chickens. Even though there is little publicity for older-chicks-as-runners, the nurses were in wholesale approval.


By Stephen Reginald from South Loop
Posted: 10/10/2011 12:36 PM

I love the Marathon and the fact that it's at its most dramatic when the runners run up S. Michigan Ave. toward the finish line.


By judy marcus from palatine
Posted: 10/10/2011 12:16 PM

$35 bucks for a pasta dinner!? That\'s quite a markup. It probably wasn\'t even whole wheat pasta!