I've been around running for most of my life, and have seen a lot of races. But I've never 
seen a race grow as quickly, and explosively, as the Hot Chocolate series. It starts with their slogan: 'Will Run For Chocolate'. Well, yeah! Who wouldn't? Really, isn't that one of the benefits of running, to be able to indulge, without guilt, in our favorite foods?
Saturday marked the 4th running of the Hot Chocolate 5k/15k races in Chicago. The folks from RAM racing started it with a run along the northside lakefront path. In the first year, I believe it caught them by surprise, drawing more than 10,000 runners. That forced some last minute changes to accomodate the large crowds. Last year, the field doubled in size to more than 20,000 (if memory serves) and they moved it to Grant park. For the route, they started south using a good portion of the lakefront path.
This year, they claim to have doubled the field once again, with an incredible 40,000 runners participating. But that's not the most incredible part. This year, that have taken the race to other cities for the first time. Already, they have sold out the race in Washington D.C. with 20,000 runners for December. In Dallas, the race is in February, and I'm told they may get 50,000 runners!
In Chicago, Saturday morning, it had that 'big race' feel from the moment I arrived downtown at 7am to find lots of traffic in the loop, which is pretty unusual on a weekend morning in November. Then as I made my way over to Grant park, it seemed like crowds of fit-looking men and women in colorful jackets and tights had taken over the city.
There are a few other huge races downtown in Grant Park, including the Corporate Challenge, Shamrock Shuffle, the Rock N Roll half, and probably others that escape my memory right now. Obviously, the marathon is bigger than all of them. But Hot Chocolate is approaching the field of runners who sign up for the marathon. But this is almost entirely local runners. It seriously seemed like most runners and even occasional runners I know were signed up for this race. And there was huge contingent of local media runners as well.
And after some growing pains, it's appears like the race organization was up to the task this year. They had an unfortunate problem starting the race on time because a truck got stuck under the el tracks on Wabash at Randolph, along the route for the 5k, but that was out of their control. So they quickly made a couple changes to reroute the course. I am told, however, the revised route may have been a bit longer than 3.1 miles. They have a few weeks to get the course certified by USATF after the fact, but it's possible they might have to adjust the times accordingly. It's unfortunate, but organizers had little choice at the time.
As for my race, I was using it as my weekend long run, but still trying to run a strong pace. I figured 7:15's would be a good goal. Unfortunately, it was pretty cool at the start, and standing around in the starting area for a long time cooled me off from my brief warm-up. So I went out the first mile in about 8:00. My friends and I were running together, and we picked it up after that, running 7:15 or better for most of the rest of the race, but it's tough 
to recover from a slow start like that.
Not that it mattered much. It was still a good enough effort, and nice enough morning to justify gorging on chocolate after the race! Why not?
See you on the roads....
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