As Blink 182 blares from the speakers of a champagne-gold Chrysler early Sunday morning, Northwestern students Matt Scharf and Adam Bienvenu discuss racing strategies for the LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon. The two Weinberg sophomores are among a handful of NU students who made the decision to test their limits – and sanity – by running in one of Chicago’s major events.
A tradition since its 1977 inception, the marathon drew 37,500 competitors to downtown this year. The race offers serious runners a chance to achieve glory by setting records in front of 900,000 spectators, and young novices an opportunity to say they completed their first 26.2-mile course.
To prepare for the challenge of finishing the race, the NU students swallowed seven to nine ibuprofen tablets two hours before the marathon. Scharf and Bienvenu, both Weinberg sophomores, pondered if they were ready to run on one of the fastest courses in the world.
“No, not at all,” said Bienvenu, when asked about his racing confidence. “I’m not a Kenyan. I haven’t been running since I was two. It’s all a matter of will and endurance.”
A self-proclaimed beach bum, Bienvenu’s longest previous running experience was making the 10-mile trek to Wrigley Field from NU earlier this year. After “aimlessly” training for the marathon this summer along the sandy shores of Melbourne, Fla., and in his backyard, Bienvenu said he had only one regret.
“Can I tell you my one regret?” he asked Scharf. ” I didn’t train harder.”
As the runners drove past rows of ambulances on the way to Grant Park, Bienvenu joked about which one of those emergency vehicles would be his after the race.
After the initial group of elite runners took their fast four-and-a-half minute mile strides to the scenic Chicago course at 7:30 a.m., the remaining competitors in the field began sifting through the streets. As the race wore on and their body temperatures rose, runners started to shed excess clothing, tossing sweaters, shirts and plastic bags into the air and on nearby sidewalks.
Sgt. Frank Skroch of the Chicago police, in charge of supervising the first corridor of blocked streets near the beginning of the race, said security was running smoothly. With entrants from 74 countries and all 50 states, the marathon is Chicago’s largest international event since the Sept. 11 tragedy.
“(The police) is here to make sure everything’s smooth,” he said. “We’re just here for precautions and everything has been okay.”
Beginning in Grant Park, just north of Buckingham Fountain, the record number of runners took to the streets. They headed up north through Old Town, Lincoln Park and Wrigleyville, and after crossing through the Belmont El stop, traveled south through some of Chicago’s historic neighborhoods.
In one of its final loops, the race headed back downtown along Lake Michigan and finally wrapped around to its starting destination of Grant Park, where the finish line awaits.
The two NU runners, although not quite in the top ten, accomplished their goal of finishing the grueling race. Scharf’s time of four hours, 10 minutes and two seconds placed him as the 12,758th person across the finish line. Bienvenu ended behind him, with a time of four hours, 35 minutes and 24 seconds, for 18,846th place.
“It was like a festival,” Bienvenu said after the race. “The fan support was incredible. You feel great when people are running with American flags. With all the pain and all the grueling aspects, I know that there’s a lot of people in unity, chanting, ‘U.S.A,’ like a festival.”
For Matt and his sister Sarah Scharf, who also ran in the marathon, the race was more than just 26-plus miles of hard concrete pounding through Chicago’s scenic neighborhoods: It was another opportunity to catch up on old times.
“I spend a lot more time in Chicago and we haven’t seen each other for a month,” Matt Scharf said before the race. “When we were younger we could not get along. We spent two weeks on a road trip this summer … and we had our best runs in national parks.
“We got a lot closer.”
