Posted by Jim at October 29th, 2005

Kristen’s running the Grand Rapids Marathon tomorrow morning.

She’s run the Chicago Marahon twice. She ran her first marathon during the year following the miscarriage (at 22 weeks) of our first attempt to have a child. She ran her second Chicago marathon last year. Her account of running in the first marathon was actually published in the Salvation Army’s national news magazine. I may write about it (and what led to it) myself someday.

Each time, I’ve gone with Kristen to pick up the registration items. These usually include some information, the timing chip, and a shirt. At Chicago, this generally turns out to be a massive event with people from all over the world crowding an enormous room filled with booths and exhibitions. Chicago attracts 30,000-40,000 runners. Grand Rapids attracts approximately 1000.

The registration room was correspondingly smaller. The few vendors were in a separate room. Unlike Chicago, the only language I heard was english. That being said, Kristen and I were amused to run into Deborah Henson-Conant, a Jazz/Blues harpist who inexplicably performs in Grand Rapids every so often. She’s an entertaining musician, and as it happens, we’ve already got tickets to see her the next time she’s in town (November). Apparently she was in town this week and decided to run the half marathon.

In some ways, I would be less surprised to run into a musician I liked in Chicago than Grand Rapids. On the other hand, given Chicago’s size I would never have picked her out from the crowd.

I imagine that size affects this marathon in a number of ways. First of all, I’m betting that the runners will be running to achieve a personal best time as opposed to running in costume as Elvis, a mariachi, or as a cow (all of which I’ve seen in Chicago). Second, I’m betting it will be much easier to take pictures of Kristen here than it was in Chicago where she would often turn out to be one of hundreds in the street at a time.

Perhaps I’ll write more about it tomorrow after the race.