This past Saturday I ran in my fourth runway run of the year at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport (ORD).

I ended up flying to Chicago for a quick, mini-trip with my brother. You can read about it here. 

It was a pretty chilly morning but once we got moving, the weather wasn’t a problem. 

This was possibly the busiest runway run that I participated in to date. It was announced that over 2,500 runners & walkers participated and over $25,000 was raised for the Wounded Warrior Project. Nice job race organizers!

Some of the pre-race crowd

It was so busy that it took a while to get going and separate from the traffic (people) jam.
(No I am not saying that I am super-fast runner but I do like to run, not walk!)

The main problems were:

• So many people participated (also a good thing)
• The starting point was not such a wide path or actually on the runway
• The participants that were walking should’ve started after all of the runners had passed

Runway Run Schedule

Beware!

Besides the crowded starting point, the race was a really fun time.
United Airlines was the co-host of the event. They strategically placed a 747 airplane along the runway. From the start- more or less, you could see the plane in the distance. On the loop back we got to pretty much run under the wing! (I don’t have any photos of the plane because I didn’t want to stop running during the race.) It was a really cool experience and lots of people were stopping to take pictures.

After the race, there was a trolley back to the plane (it was a little under a mile from the race starting point) for a photo-op. We didn’t hang around to take advantage of this opportunity as there were other things we wanted to do before heading home.

Post-Race Jump

For the community day event there was a bunch of tables set up with food vendors and sponsors. Notable tables were United and Wounded Warrior Project. United gave away luggage handle covers and some reusable water pouches.The WWP gave out pins and had some information about the charity.

Overall the Chicago O’Hare 5K Runway Run was a really nice event that I am glad I took part in. I can’t say that I would recommend flying to Chicago just for the race but if you could make a little trip out of it then it is definitely worth participating in!