All right, so I was going to try to recap the whole marathon in one post, but when I was already at over 1,000 words and hadn’t even got to the point where I was in Grant Park yet, I figured I should probably break this up into parts if I expected anyone to read it. Let’s start with the expo!

I spent nine hours there on Friday. That’s a lot of hours. Six of those hours were working, two of those hours were me browsing like every darn booth/spending all of my birthday money and then some on overpriced souvenirs/taking pictures with freaking everything, one of those hours was me (of course) having the best CTA day of my life and getting to the expo an hour before I needed to because the ONE TIME I allow myself more than enough time to get to my destination was of course the ONE TIME I don’t have to wait for the CTA. Life. Arriving early, however, allowed me to check out the #ownchicago…sculpture? Larger than life hashtag? Whatever you want to call it…that Nike had out, where they may or may not have printed the names of the 2012 Chicago Marathon runners, not the names of the 2013 Chicago Marathon runners.

Oops.

This led to Nike painting over the entire thing during the expo, with an end result that looked like such:

when I left on Friday. This also led to Nike being very nice to me on Twitter, which I appreciated. I showed them my appreciation by throwing my credit card at them later in the day to buy their sinfully overpriced official marathon swag. This was my third straight Chicago Marathon expo and I’ve been waiting two years to justify buying myself the official gear, so needless to say there was no love lost between the two of us.

ALSO this #ownchicago appeared on the marathon course at mile 2? and had signatures all over it, which must have been their Saturday solution to their itty bitty (major) error. This was one of very few things that made me smile at mile 2?. But we’ll get to that later.

I also hope I didn’t accidentally make someone at Nike lose their job. If so, I AM SO SORRY. I really just wanted to let my friends know there was no point in looking for their names if they didn’t run the race last year, because their names wouldn’t be on there. Please don’t hate me!

Anyway. I bought a lot of crap at the expo. And by crap I mean swaaaag.

A fair portion of this was free. I am now *that girl* with a Chicago Half shirt, even though I didn’t run the race. But who am I to turn down a free long sleeve tech shirt? Note to all event management companies: my e-mail address can be easily acquired with the promise of free clothing. I bought a 26.2 sticker (not gonna not…even though I don’t have a car. Someday!), a Nike half-zip pullover, a Nike long sleeve tech shirt, an AWESOME Asics “Chicago run” shirt with the coolest back ever:

And a snazzy little Christmas ornament to commemorate The Biggest Day Of My Life Up To This Point:

They were also handing out these awesome “Chicago Runs For Boston” bracelets at t-shirt pickup. As soon as the bombings happened at Boston earlier this year, I knew I wanted to some way make my Chicago Marathon about or for Boston, and this seemed like the perfect way to do so.

After the expo I came home, watched Spirit of the Marathon for the first time (LOVED IT. Also, I think I cried more during the scene that features everyone finishing than I’ve ever cried in any movie, ever, in the history of my life. Like a freaking baby.), and tried to get a good night of sleep (I failed. But at least I tried!).

…to be continued!