Scroll down one post for my race day view of yesterday's cancelled Chicago Marathon.
Fully knowing that even under the best conditions I wasn't going to run a fast marathon yesterday, I decided to turn my 18th Chicago Marathon into a fun experience--taking my digital camera along for the ride. It remained enjoyable, until about Mile 16--when I saw my first collapsed runner, a likely victim of heat stroke.
People run marathons for all kinds of reasons-- to prove they can do it, to lose weight--or to raise money for charity. Some run it to honor the memory of others.
This post is devoted to these athletes. The runner pictured on top is Californian Tim Borland, who in Chicago yesterday to run his 35th marathon in 63 days. The Chicago Sun-Times profiled him yesterday. Borland is running to raise money and increase awareness of ataxia-telangiectasia, a rare genetic disease that a daughter of a friend of his suffers from.
The pair of runners on the upper right were running to raise money for the American Cancer Society. The ribbons pinned to their shirts are not awards they've won in previous races--each ribbon has the name of a person who succumbed to cancer.
The man in the photograph above doesn't have any message on his shirt, but he's running despite the fact he has just one arm. He may not have been among the leaders, but he was ahead of me.
Below are some more photographs I took while running in yesterday's race, and snapping on my digital with sweaty hands. If you can't read the message, click on the photograph to make it larger. I want to point out that the one on the top left of the collage reads, "Now do you believe in global warning?"
The elements had worn away the runner's felt tip message on the bottom left, I took this photograph at Mile 25. It reads, "Mindy, Five Year Cancer Survivor."
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