2005 LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon
By Chris Karr in News on Oct 11, 2005 6:40PM
If you wanted proof that you're a lazy hack that sits your butt too long and too often, this weekend was happy to oblige. Forty thousand (that's a 4 followed by four 0's) runners from all fifty states and all over the globe got together early last Sunday morning to run the 2005 LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon.
The race began at 8:00 AM at the intersection of Columbus and Monroe downtown. The runners ran as far north as Addison before heading back south as far as Cermak (and even as farther south as 35th, I'm told). During the race, spectators cheered the runners from the sides of Chicago streets while DJ's and bands provided the soundtrack for the run. The race ended in a grand orgy of a crowd (remember that there were several spectators for every runner) a few blocks south of the starting point in Grant Park.
Among the men, Felix Limo of Kenya finished with a time of 2:07:04. Second place went to his fellow Kenyan Denhamin Maiyo with a time of 2:07:11. (We would think that given a race the size of a marathon, there'd be a bit more spacing than seven seconds between the finishers, but no...) The third place went to another Kenyan, Daniel Njenga, with a time of 2:07:14. We could go on, but the short version is that the Kenyan males swept the top ten positions and they all finished within six minutes of each other.
In the women's section, American Deena Kastor finished with a time of 2:21:24 (Go USA!) and Constantina Tomescu-Dita of Romania finished five seconds later. The American women took four of the top ten places with the Japanese taking two places, and the UK, Poland, Australia, and Romania providing the rest of the winners.
If you're interested in knowing more, CBS2 blogged the whole event.
Looking at the results, Chicagoist is proud of our American women runners and we wonder what the hell they feed those guys in Kenya. However, what is clear is that our women need to start dragging our lazy male asses out to run at the buttcrack of dawn every morning. Maybe if our gals snapped their whips a bit more often, next year we might be able to write a much more interesting summary for the men than "The Kenyans kicked our asses."