Slightly jetlagged I woke up before the alarm went off, though at that point I had had more than 10 hours of sleep, so one could argue it was time to go.
Leaving the hotel I found my way to Millennium Park to figure out how long it would take to get to the starting area on Sunday, and from there slowly made my way to the runner’s expo. Walking the main concourse in the massively huge facility I passed multiple ridiculously large halls (several of them were larger than the hall at Royal Arena in Copenhagen) before crossing a walk bridge into an equally large building where the expo was held.
When I arrived there were multiple long queues to get in and they didn’t move at all. It took me a moment to realize that today, on the first day of the expo, they didn’t open until 1100 and I arrived maybe 10 minutes before that. When they did open the queues started moving at a decent pace which effectively funneled people through security before being directed to the booth that had your bib. After having received my bib I also picked up my kit for the 5k morning run on the day before the marathon before entering the expo hall. Here I picked up the marathon kit (which contained my t-shirt and mostly just vouchers) and had a walk around looking at the booths of various more or less running-relevant stuff. There was nothing really interesting, though I did leave with two boxes of energy bars which were pretty much tossed at me when passing by the booth.
Leaving the expo I wandered through Chinatown before circling around and ended up back in Millennium Park and seeing The Bean (I am a tourist after all). And while the official name is Cloud Gate everybody calls it The Bean, and seeing it that name makes perfect sense. Crossing through The Loop and walking the Chicago Riverwalk brought me to the waterfront where I continued a bit north before crossing through Millennium park and returning to the hotel. Perfect timing, as it had just started raining when I entered the building. A few hours later I left for dinner, something I had been looking forward to; Chicago style pizza. It’s basically a cheese pie with pizza toppings, so when you cut it the melted cheese, while still relatively firm, lightly oozes out. For dessert I had a cookie which ended up bigger than I would ever been able to imagine. It turned out it was made in a individual-size pizza pan (6 inches), filled up the pan and topped with ice cream and whipped cream. Just like the pizza it was disgustingly obscene and I loved every single bite of it. And I am pretty sure it’ll prevent me from getting a sub-4 hour time on Sunday.
When leaving the hotel the following morning I went to grab breakfast nearby; 2 pancakes, sausages and eggs before heading north. My plan was to go along the waterfront but the weather made that a miserable idea. It had gotten windy from east-ish and it varied between drizzling, pouring down and the occasional break until past noon. So instead I wandered through the city streets until crossing the Chicago River where I headed towards the water to see Navy Pier. It is basically a large recreational area built on top of a very large pier, but as it was out of season and morning everything was closed, and the few other people out there looked like me; having a look around trying to ignore the disappointing weather.
I continued north and found myself up alongside the zoo which is free to enter which meant I ended up entering and had a walk around to see what they had to offer. Nothing really spectacular, but I assume if you have a zoo which rely entirely on donations it does limit you one way or another.
Returning south towards downtown I took a couple of hours rest in the hotel before returning outside to grab dinner. It was surprisingly hard to find an Italian place with room for one (third time was the charm and I still ended up sitting outside) so when returning to the hotel in the evening I found a place online and secured myself a table for Saturday night. Or tried – it took half an hour just to find a place that had room for one and was willing to book only one! The dinner was pretty great, but I am baffled by the size of the desserts. The piece of cheesecake was enormous – and dense – and I am sure the calorie contents dwarfed that of the creamy pasta with bacon I had as a main.
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