New Course Record Set At Chicago Marathon

This year's marathon at Adams and Halsted, photo by valvin47

The crisp, clear weather this morning was perfect for the 40,000-plus runners participating in this year's Chicago Marathon. As we write this, several thousand runners are still out on the course so watch out for those road closures which continue until mid-afternoon. But it didn't take long for the elite runners to cross the finish time. One, in fact, did so in record time. Kenya's Samuel Wanjiru blazed the course with a time of 2:05:41, breaking the course record by one second and capturing the men's title. Russia's Liliya Shobukhova had an impressive race of her own to take the women's title with a final time of 2:25:56. Shobukhova had an impressive split, running the second half of the race almost six minutes faster than the first. She was locked in a group of four runners late in the race but around the 25th mile, she surged away from the pack to claim the title. We'll have more on the race, including more photos, tomorrow. If you've got some you'd like to share, be sure to drop them off at the Chicagoist Flickr Pool. And a big congrats to everyone who participated in this morning's race!