Skip to main content

NYC Marathon live stream, Soldier Field 10 mile and free Cubs tickets

Did anyone else watch the ING New York City Marathon Opening Day live stream yesterday at 11 (noon EDT)? I watched about ten minutes of it and got appropriately psyched for the race but then when they closed the login site so that you couldn't check your own status I decided to stop watching. 

Originally they updated it to say that the site would reopen this morning at 10am, but yesterday afternoon I tried again and was able to login to my account. That's when I found out that...

I didn't get in.

But then my wife logged in and she saw this little badge:
 
So she is in for 2012! 

Here's the funny thing: over the last four years both my wife and I have entered the marathon lottery. And somehow, one of us has gotten in each year: 
  • 2009:  Me
  • 2010: Her
  • 2011:  Me
  • 2012: Her
This back and forth has worked perfectly because it means one of us gets to run while the other one gets to enlist all of our New York friends in assisting us in a whirlwind marathon cheering tour of the city. If only we had this kind of luck in Vegas (or I guess in Chicago soon enough, if Rahm gets his way).

In other race news, Fleet Feet Sports Soldier Field 10 Mile announced a "draft" this morning where they offer a "signing bonus" to anyone who gets their friends to sign up for the race over the next several days, on the following referral scale:
  • Thursday, April 26th only: $15/per registration
  • Friday, April 27th only: $10/per registration
  • Saturday, April 28th: $5/per registration
  • Sunday, April 29th: $5/per registration
Very interesting marketing plan. I think I like it. But while I can definitely see this getting those already registered to promote the race to friends, I wonder if it's enough impetus to get people to register. I would think it would need to be combined with some kind of discount for the registrant as well.

Anyway... speaking of Fleet Feet, on Tuesday afternoon I was running home from work (stopped at Fleet Feet to pick up my race packet for this weekend's Ravenswood Run) when a guy in front of a building at La Salle and Division waved two tickets at me and yelled "Hey! You want Cubs tickets?!?" 

I stopped running and walked over to him. He waved them again and handed them to me, saying "Free tickets. I shit you not." 

Unfortunately the game started about 30 minutes after he gave them to me so I wasn't able to make it, but it was still cool to get tickets. And I heard the next day that the game went into extra innings, so I probably should have just showed up late. Oh well. 

Thanks for the tickets random guy!
"Free tickets. I shit you not."
Labels:

Comments

  1. Ginger FoxxxMay 1, 2012 at 2:28 PM

    Free tickets?? Now that is the life! I was once at a bulls playoff game, in like the very last row, and a guy who had to leave suddenly gave us his tickets - for the 6th row! It was insane.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chicagoland's First Annual February Fool's Goal Half Marathon/Debacle

A few weeks ago I was looking through the race listings for the month of February and noticed that there are three different races this coming Sunday. All in different cities. As I was trying to decide which one to run I realized that they're all taking place at different times... and then I started thinking... Why not just run all three? I talked to my running homey Antonio and after some discussion about logistics, we realized that based on the timing and location of the races, this would be an insane dash from Chicago to Highland Park to Hoffman Estates to Channahon and back to Chicago, with just enough time to park, get our bibs, run the races and (after carefully stretching, of course) head off to the next one. That's also when we noticed that by a pretty sweet coincidence, the three races just happen to add up to a half marathon.  So, obviously we decided that it had to be done. We registered for all three and created a new race: Chicagoland's First A
12 comments
Read more

Warrior Dash or It's Not Always About Speed

My parents were in town this weekend from Texas. We rented an I-GO (actually, even better than that, I won the WEGO 10 monthly competition for 10 free hours with an I-GO, which was very sweet) and drove out to Channahon, Illinois for the Warrior Dash . This was my first "mud run" and I was pretty excited about it, because I've been creating an image of the mud run in my mind as a pseudo-hardcore fun run. I would say that I still feel that after running it, but I think now I see it as intentionally not hardcore. They're asking people to have fun, not to kill themselves. My full review is up at Newcity - I ended up enjoying it a lot more than I expected, but most of that was just based on seeing it in a different way. This isn't really a run for runners. It's a run that tricks non-runners into thinking running is fun. More on that later (like several weeks from now later, not like later in this blog post). Anyway, I ran with Brynn, and we made sur
6 comments
Read more

Top 7 Chicago Race Shirts (and a Hat) of 2012

Remember when race shirts were pretty much guaranteed to be over-sized white cotton, seemingly designed so that you could wear them once (if you really wanted to show that you ran the race) and then probably never again? One side had the race logo and the other had about 20 sponsors. And the long-sleeve ones had little cuffs at the wrists to make sure you got that nice puffed sleeve look that no one has ever asked for. These days it seems like almost every race is giving out running shirts rather than old-school cotton, and mostly I'm thankful for this change because it seems like they spend more time picking an appropriate color and working on a legitimate design rather than just slapping their logo onto some cotton for you (although I did get a few race shirts this year that went with that style... surprisingly enough, those shirts aren't in my closet anymore). Anyway, pretty much every race includes a shirt. Some are awesome, some are terrible and some are just... shirt
12 comments
Read more