On Saturday, the day before the Bank of America Chicago Marathon, I’ll join thousands of other runners on a moving tour of Chicago’s built topography: the cliff of historical high-rises across from Grant Park, the canyon of glass-sheathed skyscrapers on the north-south leg of Wacker Drive, the human-made mountain of Willis Tower.
Chicago, it’s often said, is so desperately flat that it had to build the peaks and plateaus that nature inconveniently left out. But when you combine the city’s made-for-speed flatlands with its upward-thrusting skyscrapers, and feather in the majestic blue and green foreground of Lake Michigan and Grant Park, you have a cityscape of enormous grace and power.
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I’ve run along that cityscape before in lakefront races but I’ve never run through it — unless I was dashing to catch a Metra or CTA train. That’s why I’m looking forward to Saturday’s race, the Abbott Chicago 5K.
This 5K — 5 kilometers, or a distance of 3.1 miles — is the hors d’oeuvre to the main course of the Chicago Marathon. Some marathoners treat it as a warmup for the intimidating challenge of Sunday’s 26.2-mile run.
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I’m doing it just for fun, simply for the experience of jogging through downtown’s forest of skyscrapers, many of which I critiqued as the Tribune’s architecture critic from 1992 to 2021.
Running the race without slowing down won’t be easy — because I may feel compelled to comment to my fellow runners on the latest changes to downtown. (Not quite drive-by criticism, but you get the idea.)
Thumbs-up to the new shops that ring the bottom of Willis Tower! They humanize the skyscraper’s once-fortress-like base and aren’t the silly-looking “skirt” that many feared would dilute the tower’s muscular design.
Thumbs-down to the bland new Bank of America Tower at 110 N. Wacker Drive! The western part of downtown already has too many anodyne blue-glass towers. But kudos to Bank of America for sponsoring the marathon.
Whether it’s the marathon or the 5K, the allure of these races isn’t just the individual quest to run a personal best. It’s the chance to enter into community, if only fleetingly, with thousands of other people and to be part of something much larger than yourself.
Unless they’re part of a team, belong to a running club or have a training partner, runners typically work out in isolation, pounding the pavement in solitude in places such as the Lakefront Trail or sidewalks that bypass two-flats and greystones.
But big races like the marathon and the 5K that precedes it give runners (and spectators) a chance to gather in vast numbers. And that chance is even more highly prized because the pandemic has forced many of us into isolation or made us think twice about partaking of communal experiences such as going to theater or attending a house of worship.
I could see the community of runners forming Thursday at McCormick Place’s Lakeside Center as I picked up my timing bib, B3386, which I’ll pin to my shirt Saturday. At an adjacent health and fitness expo held in an appropriately grand architectural setting — the center’s vast exposition hall — runners from around the world were checking out merchandise ranging from watermelon-flavored energy drinks to “race day throw-off tops” that they can wear to stay warm, then discard when the race begins. Price: 10 bucks.
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There’s nothing quite so inspiring as being part of a stream of humanity pouring through city streets normally reserved for cars and SUVs. For me, at least, the outcome of this 5K race, as measured by the clock, will take second place to the joy of taking part in it — and taking in Chicago’s magnificent cityscape along the way.
Blair Kamin was the Tribune’s architecture critic from 1992 to early 2021.
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