Chicago Marathon

As promised I've finally gotten a chance to upload some pictures of my recent trip to Chicago to share with you. Here's a quick glimpse at some of my favorite photos from the Marathon Weekend. I had an awesome view of the city right outside my plane window as we were preparing to land. Look at all those sky scrapers, what an amazing city!

Right after arriving in Chicago we headed over to the marathon expo to pick up our race packets. This is a picture of me and Thomas, one of our Mobile participants who was going to be running the race. I was the Alabama Team in Training coach for the marathon weekend so I had the privilege of running along with and encouraging all the TNT participants along the marathon course! I can honestly say this was the largest race I have ever seen, with 40,000 people taking to the streets of Chicago, it was unreal!

The day of the marathon was 10-10-10...how cool is that?

Posing for a picture with the jumbo 10-10-10 structure before leaving the race expo.

We headed to Gino's East Pizzeria for dinner. Chicago pizza is a must on every visit to the city!

We got the traditional deep dish pepperoni...YUM!

I loved the restaurant atmosphere with all the graffiti on the walls. This is a picture of my friend Jennifer, me and Thomas.

This was the view right across from our hotel, the Wrigley Building! I love how the top was lit pink for breast cancer awareness month!

Saturday morning we took a 4 mile jog and went over to the big bean. Love seeing the building reflections in this silver structure, this is such a cool piece of art.

Sunday was the day of the marathon. I don't really have any pictures from the race because I left my camera in the hotel room. So just imagine 40,000 runners and 1.5 million spectators lining the streets of Chicago for about 6 hours! It was crazy!

Dinner on Sunday night after the marathon we went to Mindy's Hot Chocolate. Just the name alone, got me excited. The atmosphere was quaint and dark, lit by candles and the menu was amazing with fresh local ingredients! I was so hungry I wanted one of everything but finally settled on...

The flank steak with applewood bacon smoked cheesy potatoes and broccoli. Delish!

And of course for dessert we had some hot chocolate. Check out all the variations.

I got the light hot chocolate....white chocolate with a touch of milk chocolate, vanilla bean and malted milk. There was even a homemade marshmallow!

Monday morning before heading to the airport there was time to squeeze in a quick architectural boat tour on the Chicago River to check out the history of all the buildings. This is the Wrigley Building again and the Trump Tower. Just beautiful!

Jennifer and I on the boat tour. She is one of my best friends in Mobile and decided to tag along for the weekend in Chicago because she actually owns a condo there. She was a great tour guide for the weekend and her condo is 1 block off Michigan Ave, so it's right in the heart of the city!

Check out the street we rode under on the boat tour...Randolph Street! I just couldn't resist getting a picture taken in front of it given my husband's name is Randolph! I swear we kept running into this street all weekend long, it was right around the corner from our hotel! And every time I saw it I took a picture!

The magnificent Sears Tour!

As our boat tour was coming to an end, we had a slight delay since the Centennial Fountain was going off. It goes off on the hour for 10 minutes so we got a great view of the arch of water.

And the last stop before heading to the airport was this fabulous little gourmet deli in Bucktown right by Jennifer's condo, The Goddess and Grocer.

I had the California Dreaming sandwich, honey maple turkey breast with avocado, swiss, sprouts, lettuce, tomato and lemon mayonnaise on multigrain. This sandwich was unbelievable and was the perfect way to gear up for my next weekend trip to San Francisco!

And in case you are wondering, there were of course tons of cupcakes on this trip when I visited the famous Sprinkles Cupcakes shop. These cupcakes deserved a post all of there own, which you can check out here if you haven't seen it already.

So as you can see Chicago was fabulous, I absolutely LOVE the windy city, there is just never enough time to see and do everything the city has to offer. I'm already trying to figure out how I can go back soon!

Next up a recap of my weekend in San Francisco!