Local marathon

Most big sporting events in this college town have a spectator to participants of about 1000 to 1. Today's big event had a ratio closer to 1 to 1. Somewhere around 10,000 crazed souls ran the Illinois Marathon around Urbana and Champaign.

We walked the 1 block to the course between miles 4 and 5 just before 8 am, just in time to see the lead runner run past. He was running fast, by himself already.

The parade of runners near our house went on for about at least 45 minutes. What a trip to look down the street at curb-to-curb runners as far as we could see.
We cheered often and hard, and even more so for friends. The list we saw was Mike, Rob, Matt, Chad, Amy, Neil, Rachel. We might have missed a few during the tight groups.
After a quick return home, we got pastries from the Farmers' market and headed to Nina's house near mile 11. We only caught the tail end of the group, so we picked a spot near the finish, the football stadium.

This is where we learned that marathoning is difficult. Large numbers of people stopped, stretched, or walked even though they could see the finish about 1/2 mile away.
My favorite runners (in no particular order): Abe Lincoln costume, pirate costume, barefoot guy, walking cast guy (who carried a spare shoe), and Cal shirt guy.

In conclusion, we were impressed. We had fun. We're not convinced that we need to join the runners next year.