Catching Up With the Crowd

Dearest Rachel –

Twenty-two miles in, and I haven’t seen hide nor hair of Erin – which, if she’s wearing that bright orange kerchief she’d been sporting at church last night as part of her running ensemble (an eminently suitable choice, being both brightly colored and a unique combination), she really ought to be easy to spot. So why haven’t I?

I suppose you can tell that this letter is going to have a different tone than the first; as much as I don’t really want to admit to myself that I’m down here primarily because of her, to get through the entire route without at least seeing her would rather defeat the purpose of being here. I may not want to cheer her on exclusively (and I’m pretty sure neither would she, which is part of why I insist on it), but I want to be able to at least cheer her on, and I hope she would feel similarly. So yes, at this point I’m going to admit that I’ve got my eye out for Erin, especially since I’ve gotten the attention of others on the team thus far.

Supposedly, I have time to observe the crowds – and find a place to fit in amongst them – when I arrive in Chinatown. In fact, I manage to eventually finagle a spot right at the fences, and hold up my sign for a good fifteen, twenty minutes, checking my tracking app occasionally to ensure that I haven’t missed her (although this section of the route is narrower than others, allowing a fairly complete view of the runners as they pass by).

It’s not long before I start wondering how the Statue of Liberty does it, holding up that torch for so long without her arm getting sore. I’ve heard that, if one holds one’s arm up for too long, it actually becomes impossible to bring down – although that process takes days, if not week, months or years, and can be excruciatingly painful, even more so that what it is I’m dealing with.

Of course, what pain I might be dealing with is nothing compared to some of the runners at this point. At least one person collapses only a few feet in front of us; while they manage to get to their feet with sufficient assistance, and are escorted off the street and out of the way of the rest of the oncoming traffic, at least one person runs ahead of the crowd of assistants all but carrying them, asking for medical attention be brought over quickly. I suppose I could have taken a photo (or several) of the whole incident, but I didn’t think it right to do so, to be honest.

At the same time, I’m dismayed to watch her avatar pass by, and even turn the corner without me ever spotting her. As I mentioned earlier, she should have been all but impossible to miss; and yet, here I was. My frustration is audible enough for someone right by me to point out that they’ve had a similar situation with the app, and that, even as the avatar went past, the runner they were tracking came by a few minutes later. This sounds all well and good, but it doesn’t make sense to my mind; one would expect the computer tracking to have a little bit of lag, and come behind the runner.

But oh, well, it turns out that my unnamed friend is very much correct, as I spot a head scarf going past and call out to her. She even waves for my photograph; very out of character for her.

At this point, I could consider my mission accomplished; I’d been able to offer her encouragement (not that she seems to need it, from the look on her face and the pace she’s been able to keep up), and she’d been made aware of it. But of course, the race isn’t over until everyone crosses the bridge into Millennium Park, and gets their own chance to break the tape.

It’s on to mile 25 for me, and the hike to the end.

As I mentioned to the woman from Rotterdam earlier, it’s only a few blocks over from Chinatown, as the contestants take Michigan Avenue south to 35th Street and the United Center, before circling back north via Indiana Avenue and merging back onto Michigan for the final stretch.

There is a bit about this that feels like the writer of Hebrews was at a similar such event at some point; it is here that we come across ‘a great cloud of witnesses,’ here to exhort the runners as they make their way up the final mile of the journey, often with signs directed toward one runner in particular:

But in other cases, it’s just in good, clean fun:

You’ll notice that one of these shots has a guy dressed as Santa walking past; while I didn’t see as many particularly remarkable costumes this time around (possibly because Erin has graduated to ‘serious’ runner at her pace, and ‘serious’ runners don’t generally dress like clowns, apparently), the crowd is under no such compunctions, and you have it brought to mind frequently just how close we are to Halloween.

At 13th Street, there was an ingenious system of intermittent corrals for pedestrians to fill and empty, depending on which direction across the street they were trying to get. Runners would be directed to the east side of the road, and then to the west as organizers guided spectators from one side of the street to the other. I was watching this ingenious system for a while, holding out my sign and cheering on team members as they went by, until I spotted a distinctive orange kerchief yet again.

I called out to her again, and she waved with both hands as she passed around the opposite side of the pedestrian corral. “I’ll catch you up at the tent after the race!” I practically bellowed, in order to be heard over the crowd.

Once I got through this crowd, it was an easy (if long – but who am I to complain about that?) traverse up the length of Grant and Millennium Parks, where I asked a volunteer at an information booth about the World Vision tent. After some confusion on her part, I was directed to Randolph Avenue (which, from Michigan, is some distance north of both parks)…

…except I didn’t quite get there, as this time around, Erin spotted me. While she didn’t exactly latch onto me, she seemed grateful to have me there as she made to find her parents and sister in the midst of this ever-growing crowd of finishers and supporters. We talked as we doubled back to make the connection; she had nearly, but not quite, made it across the line in only four hours – and while content with that time, was chagrined to admit she hadn’t taken the opportunity to look around as much as she would have liked as she ran, focused as she was on her pace (which, in fairness, she had brought down to 4:07 from somewhere in the four-fifties two years ago).

Eventually, we found her parents, and, eventually, her sister, as intended. Pictures were taken and hugs were exchanged, as well as congratulations and expressions of appreciation.

We hung out together for several hours; time enough to greet several others of the team, even as she and her parents were going over the vacation they would be taking in barely twenty-four hours’ time. She still needs to pack, notwithstanding her dad’s facetious suggestion that she was all set and ready to go already.

At least with any luck, she might be tired enough to actually get some sleep on the flight; she’ll definitely need it.

Eventually, her dad suggested (well, ‘suggested’ is too mild a word, but ‘insisted’ seems overly harsh. I’m sure there’s a word that straddles the line between the two, but I can’t think of it at the moment) that they make their way back home, or what passed for it, as some of them (not saying who) still needed to pack for tomorrow. They made their way to the Metra train station, while I tagged along until I could spot a blue line subway entrance.

I don’t know who spotted it first, but upon doing so, I was given a half dozen hugs from Erin. “They aren’t all for you,” she emphasized, “you’ve got to remember to give one to Daniel, one to Ellen, one to Kerstin, and one to Logan.” Not sure who the sixth hug was for, but I wasn’t about to complain about the possible error in her calculations.

So that concludes my story of the day that today has been. I hardly need to tell you, I’m looking forward to the night’s rest, honey. I may not have run a marathon myself, as Junior suggested, but I got in just under twenty thousand steps, seven and a third miles of walking, and climbed twenty-two flights of stairs in the bargain; all on the strength of a single cup of coffee for the entire day. Pretty energy efficient, if you ask me; that, or I still have plenty of excess storage to burn, and burn it I have. We’ll see if I cross the next threshold some time either this evening or tomorrow morning.

Until then, I’m going to get myself some rest. Keep an eye on me, honey, and wish me luck. I’m going to need it.