Chicago Marathon

The course

An Abbott World Marathon Major.

Grant Park, and a city that opens up immediately. The opening miles cross the river three times and thread the Loop, canyoned by towers, before the course turns north through River North and Old Town into Lincoln Park. Lakeview and Northalsted, around mile eight, are the loudest thing you will run through all day. Then back south on Wells, through the Loop again at halfway, and west into Greektown and the Near West Side. Little Italy and the Medical District follow at seventeen and eighteen: flat, exposed, thin on noise, with less to hold onto. Pilsen arrives at nineteen with brass bands and families at the kerb; the Chinatown gate at twenty-one. After that the race gets honest. Armour Square, the turn at 35th Street, then Bronzeville, and the emptiest stretch of the day on Michigan Avenue, until the road swings north and the noise comes back for the final miles. Roosevelt Road is a rise of twenty-five feet, beginning around six hundred metres out and cresting with three hundred to go. On any other day it would be nothing. Then Columbus, and Grant Park closes the loop it opened.

Start

Grant Park, Chicago

Finish

Grant Park, Chicago (Columbus Drive)

Shape

loop

Terrain

Flat. Roughly 187 feet (57m) of cumulative climbing across the 26.2 miles, and the same again lost, so the finish sits at effectively the same elevation as the start. The only rise of consequence is about 25 feet on Roosevelt Road, beginning around 600 metres from the line and cresting with roughly 300 metres to go.