Long Train Running: A Chicago Marathon Story | Chapter 9 — The Unfinished Line
David Himmel David Himmel David Himmel David Himmel

Long Train Running: A Chicago Marathon Story | Chapter 9 — The Unfinished Line

By the time this is published, the Chicago Endurance Sports (CES) training group I’d been running with this summer will be gathering at the Ben Franklin statue in Lincoln Park getting ready to have their last long-ish training run before Race Day. I will be asleep. Or maybe I’ll have dragged my fickle body out of bed to bang out some work before the kid wakes up and the dog needs to be taken out and the wife needs her coffee. The point is that I won’t be at the Ben Franklin statue in Lincoln Park getting ready to have a run. Because I’m not running the Chicago Marathon.

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Long Train Running: A Chicago Marathon Story | Chapter 8 — Broken Down?
David Himmel David Himmel David Himmel David Himmel

Long Train Running: A Chicago Marathon Story | Chapter 8 — Broken Down?

At the end was when something hurt. This was new. This wasn’t sore. This was different. Yet, I chocked it up to, well, just having run twenty glorious, goddamn miles. I guzzled water, I stretched, I ate a banana, I rode my bike home. At home, I stretched, I took an ice bath for ten minutes, took a nap. Katie and I hung out at the 312 Block Party at Goose Island for a bit before calling it a night at nine. All day, my right leg would blast with pain at every step.

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Long Train Running: A Chicago Marathon Story | Chapter 4 — Why We Run
David Himmel David Himmel David Himmel David Himmel

Long Train Running: A Chicago Marathon Story | Chapter 4 — Why We Run

Jim Von Handorf ran marathons for the same reasons he climbed mountains: to escape and to conquer.

A career fireman in Nashua, New Hampshire, Jim was an outdoorsman to the fullest. He climbed mountains, bouldered, swam, bicycled and ran. His daughter, Amy explains that her dad could never really sit still. That he had a constant need to just go, go, go. He grew up in a small, Boston apartment with a lot of people. The bustling tightness of the city drove him to get out. It was always in his nature to escape. He was into Thoreau and Kerouac. He needed space. So he headed into the wild. His mountaineering expeditions he made with his buddies took him to peaks all over the country where he would test his mettle against the elements and his own limits.

He even showed esophageal cancer that he was not one to go down easy.

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Long Train Running: A Chicago Marathon Story | Chapter 1 — Ready, Set, Ouch
David Himmel David Himmel David Himmel David Himmel

Long Train Running: A Chicago Marathon Story | Chapter 1 — Ready, Set, Ouch

What was I thinking?

I’m running the Bank of America Chicago Marathon. Why? Because I’m forty. Because I haven’t run a marathon before. Because I need an excuse to get off my writer’s ass and move so I can live long enough to not die. Because I believe in the mission of Gilda’s Club Chicago and fundraising by running seems to be a pretty great way to get money out of your friends and family. So I am running as a member of Team Gilda.

But my god, I’m behind the ball on this.

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