Rest Day

After granting myself a generous extra portion of sleep by not waking up until after 10:00, I headed out to run some errands on Michigan Avenue (Chicago's Magnificent Mile). I replaced my iPod charging unit (if you have an iPod, I suggest doing so - it's free and apparently the old ones can break off in an outlet), bought some shaving cream, and continued to strike out in searching for a pair of jeans in my size that I like both the fit and wash of. Along the way, I ran across the Nike store. I thought it was really cool that the day after the marathon they had covered their storefront with a large mural/poster that included the names of all the 45,000 or so runners.



We met back up at our hotel to walk to lunch. Along the way, we saw the most striking view of the new Trump Tower yet. I definitely agree with Nate that in a way it's an eyesore. It's so much mirror-glass and modern design, it doesn't quite fit with the flavor of the city. It's definitely quite the building regardless.



For lunch we had some Chicago-style hot dogs with all the fixings. They weren't particularly memorable, but now I can say I've had them.



We followed up lunch with some melt-in-your-mouth Garrett caramel corn.



After lunch and dessert, Nate and I walked back to the hotel, where we proceded to do nothing (which in this case includes watching cable news channels and surfing the net) for hours until dinnertime. It was refreshing to sit around and do nothing for a while after basically not having had a true day off for 11 days.



For dinner, we went to Gino's East (a pizza place, of course). The pizza was very tasty. They use one large sausage patty covering the entire pizza much like some of the other pizzerias in they city. Now our Chicago style pizza tour is complete. We've hit the most famous three: Lou Malnati's, Giordano's, and Gino's East. The walls at Gino's East are covered with writing and etchings. It's ironic that they encourage it, yet the bathroom door has a sign on it asking customers to avoid writing anything on the bathroom walls.



After dinner I relaxed in the hotel's hot tub for a bit (I should really be making more use of these since most hotels we stay at have them) and wrote the weekend event recap. Tomorrow we'll head into Michigan, where eventually we'll end up in Detroit for the Detroit Free Press Marathon.

Too much of a good thing

Meet Heidi. Heidi works for another marketing agency representing Snickers Marathon Bars. We see her at many events, and she's been friends with Stephen for a while. I ended up running an errand with her to go pick up a package, and when she found out that the package had not arrived, I saw first-hand that she is someone who will get what she wants regardless. Here she is on the phone(s) with FedEx discussing said missing package.



Anyway, jump a few hours forward in the expo. We needed to get into our storage to get more shoes and bags, and I went to the union services desk and talked to two different people, both of whom gave me the run-around and made countless excuses for why we couldn't get into our storage. Stephen asked Heidi to get us into our storage. I had my doubts, but she threw on a Crocs shirt and two minutes later we were in a freight elevator headed towards our storage.

I was impressed. Then again, guys are at a natural disadvantage (or girls are at a natural advantage) when it comes to dealing with union workers.

Much of our time at the expo was also spent writing directions on raffle tickets. Next time we'll think ahead and get tickets pre-printed. My hand didn't last long in this age of computer-written everything.



And here's a shot to give some perspective on just how huge the expo was. This is maybe half of it. Note how huge Nike's presence was (the big white hanging sign area). Our booth is right above the black REI tent in the foreground.



There's always something interesting going on at the expo.



And compare these shots to the last post. Much like the amazing transformation from load-in to expo-ready, breaking down happens amazingly quickly. This is about an hour after the expo closed.





After a really lousy cab ride punctuated by slamming into the side of a curb, we went to bed early since we had a 4:00AM wake-up this morning.

We got to the Crocs store on the race course at about 5AM and immediately began transforming the area into our "Crocs Block" theme. The stencil and spray chalk worked amazingly well.



People made cheer signs until they were gone, and then we gave out probably a thousand or more pieces of swag (keychains, iPod armbands, etc.) in about 15 minutes. This job is definitely a great way to learn about the psychological impacts of mob mentality. That and people just want free stuff.



Since we were at mile 2 on the course, 45,000 runners came and went fairly quickly.



The chalk on the roads actually held up to all the runners amazingly well.



After the crowd died down in front of the store, we moved to the finish line area to give away our remaining gear. This is where all of us pretty much simultaneously hit a wall and were ready to be done with a very long weekend. I definitely think Crocs are comfortable, but like any good thing, too much can ruin the experience. I needed to get out of Crocs for a while. My feet are in rough shape.

After finishing up and getting back to the hotel, Nate and I intermittently napped and watched football all afternoon. At 6PM, we headed out for a nine mile run (this was planned ahead of time - we didn't just decide running a bunch while already worn out sounded like a good idea). Regardless, it felt really good to get out and exercise, and helped wake us up at least temporarily. Now that I'm halfway training to be doing distance running, I'm hoping to be able to get in at least one more half marathon before the tour is over.

And even though it took three days in Chicago, we treated ourselves to pizza at Lou Malnati's tonight. The pizza arrived and Nate, Molly and I all simultaneously whipped out cameras to take pictures. We're blog nerds I suppose.

"expo"sé

First up, a nearly 3'x3' Duke logo that has been cut out and turned into a stencil which, when combined with some nifty spray chalk, will be used to mark up the race course in front of the State Street Crocs store for our marathon raceday grassroots efforts.



This event is by far the biggest event we've had since I joined the tour, and the scale of everything is probably ten times that of any other event. Just check out this expo floor plan.



The expo is at McCormick Place, which has 4 main buildings all individually larger than most convention centers, a hotel built in, a food court, two Starbucks, two FedEx Kinkos, and much more. The massive buildings feature glass fronts and appealing architecture.



Oh, and I should mention that the last photo is approximately where I was nearly run down by an umarked police car this afternoon. I was crossing (with the crossing guard waving me on) when we both heard what sounded like an ambulance siren start up nearby. I figured my best bet was to run to the other side of the street to get out of the way since I couldn't see the siren source, but just as I began to do so the unmarked cruiser whipped around a car at the light at high speed and missed me by perhaps two feet. Yikes. The crossing guard's jaw dropped.

Anyway, more architecture.



One of the buildings had a very simple, elegant fountain that is one of my favorite fountains of all time as of today. It was simply arches of water that would shoot out of a shallow pool and form an arch back into the water. The clean, crisp look and sound of the fountain was very refreshing.



Now, the expo itself. Dealing with union labor wasn't great, but was still an improvement over Philly. It struck me during load-in just how much transformation the expo room undergoes in only a day. Take these photos as examples.

A complete mess.



No mess whatsoever.



Did a tornado come through?



And today.



The size of the event brings bigger vendors with better booths to the expo. Some of the highlights were VW filming personalized commercials that get posted online for viewing...



Bank of America filming the entire race course by car and running it as a time-lapse style video (also interesting to note: I was confused when I watched the vehicle filming repeatedly cross into the wrong side of the road until I noticed police cars creep into the edge of the picture from time to time. That's a pretty serious effort if it involves getting a police escort just to drive the course)...



Nike has a space many times bigger than any other vendor, but their area was packed the entire day. Hundred upon hundreds of people made it impossible to move around their area. I'd call it a booth, but that wouldn't even begin to describe it. They had at least 20 cash registers. We have one.



And for further comparison, our setup during load-in:



And the finished product (you can play "where's Molly?"):



Cheer signs are often popular, but today things devolved into an all out kids coloring party at one point. We're having to ration greatly because we only have 400 for the weekend though we could easily pass our 1000.



After a long expo day with some rush hour driving, parking tickets, and arguing with various people, we finally got back to the hotel and went to a place called Big Bowl for dinner. You know this city takes its marathon seriously when restaurants provide high-carb menus for carbo-loading atheletes. I didn't order off this one, but I can think of many times in the past where I would have.

Going for Speed

After dropping off the trucks for service and going back to sleep for a bit, Nate, Molly and I took the train into downtown Chicago. We started off with a brief stop at the new Crocs store on State Street.



Following that we stopped at H&M for some brief clothes shopping. Then we went back to Weber Grill for lunch. This time around it was an applewood smoked bacon burger with fries for me. Following lunch, we wandered over to Millenium Park, where we saw the sights including the bean, which lends itself to interesting photos.



Yeah, that's me.



We also saw the creepy face fountains again. Just as odd-looking the second time around.



After a conference call in the park, we hopped a train north to Wrigleyville. There we saw Wrigley field and walked along Clark and Sheffield Roads through bars, shops, and housing. We had Mexican for dinner and took the train back south to connect with the train to O'Hare.



For some reason the train to O'Hare took a long time to show up, so the platform got rather full and we couldn't even get on the first train that came.




After returning to the hotel, I worked out on the treadmill. I was feeling great and apparently had some pent up energy to release, because I ran a six minute mile and upped my pace to attempt to break into the sub-6 minute mile range when the treadmill engine failed because apparently I was pushing it too hard. Regardless, that's the fastest mile I've run recently and possibly ever. And I could have gone faster. I ended up doing just under 5 miles, and now I'm headed to bed.

Tomorrow we'll pick up the trucks and start the drive to Virginia Beach. The Beach sounds like a lot of fun, but right now it's getting lots of rain from spin-off storms as a result of Hurricane Fay, so the weather may not be the best this upcoming weekend. Tomorrow night we plan to end up in Charleston, West Virginia.

Race day in the park

Today we got up early and finished set-up for the race-day tent. We spent a majority of the day there interacting with racers and then cleaned up after.



We'll be servicing the trucks tomorrow near O'hare, so we drove over to that area and are staying at a hotel right near the airport. For dinner, we ended up once again at Giordano's, and once again ate deep dish pizza. At least it's been 3 different varieties in the last three days. And I had a salad for some variety in addition to the pizza. Tomorrow we'll head back into downtown on the train to hang out while the trucks get oil changes and engine service. After a workout and hot tub tonight, I'm ready for some sleep.

Pizza and more Pizza

I got up today and did some laundry after finally learning of a nearby laundromat at another hotel.  The entire experience was unsatisfying, however, as my clothes came out with detergent still on them and they didn't completely dry after two dryer cycles.

After that, I rejoined everyone else at the expo.  We had a little change of pace today as Matty Reed (US Pro triathlete - just got back from Beijing) stopped by for an autograph signing at our booth.  I didn't meet him, but I did meet his wife who has an astounding story of her own.

After the expo, we set up at the finish line area which is also incredibly close to the hotel, and decided to go for dinner.  While waiting in the hotel lobby I again noticed how nice this hotel is.  It's an old building with plenty of class and history.

Molly didn't particularly feel like pizza, but Nate and I did so she tagged along while we had more Chicago style pizza.

I realized during dinner that I had pizza for dinner last night, leftover pizza for breakfast and lunch today, pizza for dinner tonight, and will likely finish off with leftover pizza for breakfast tomorrow morning.  Hey, I'm only in Chicago for so long!

Buildings, Bikes, Buddies

Today started out with a 45 minute walk looking for a laundromat that ended up being futile.  After returning to the hotel, I joined up with Molly and wandered through downtown on our way to eventually meet up with Nate at the Weber Grill just North of the river.  On the way, we found lots of interesting buildings, including the library,

the mostly completed Trump Tower,

And this one... not even sure what to make of it.

Lunch was tasty (Molly and I shared a meat sampler and I had some of the best chili ever).  The expo started in the afternoon, so we headed back to the hotel and finished setting up.  Much of my free time during the expo was spent lusting after expensive bikes.

Really expensive bikes.

Titanium bikes.

Carbon bikes.

Bikes.

Bikes.

Uh, yeah.

At the expo I also met a really interesting couple that had to have been some of the biggest Green Bay Packers fans ever.  They both had tattoos everywhere, and she had a pink mohawk (they were probably both at least 40-50 years old).  Then I noticed the what the tattoos were...

At first I only noticed the twin Favre tattoos, but looking back at the picture Lombardi is there too.

But that wasn't all.

I'm pretty sure he got that one just so he could strike that pose.  I was impressed.  

For dinner we went to Lou Malnati's and had some excellent deep dish pizza.  Afterwords, we stopped briefly at a VIP party for elite athletes and sponsors on the top level of the hotel.  The open bar was nice, as was the chocolate fountain.  I met a few cool people, one of which was able to give me some good ideas for locations for our upcoming grassroots marketing for the Chicago Marathon.

Tomorrow is expo day 2.  More good food is a no-brainer.