I’m Running the 2023 Chicago Marathon!

This week was a very exciting week because the lottery results for the Chicago Marathon were released!

Back in November, the lottery for the Chicago Marathon opened for 2-3 weeks. You could sign up and then in December you get notified if your application was approved.

The nice thing is that you’re not charged until your application is accepted, so if you don’t get into the lottery you don’t lose any money.

Chicago Lottery Day

On Thursday, December 7 the lottery results finally came out! There’s no set time on when the results will be released, so I was pretty much stalking Reddit all morning.

The first acceptance e-mails starting coming through around 7am CST.

From previous lottery races, it seem that Chicago will send out acceptances first and then once all those get sent out they send out a notification if your application isn’t selected.

By 7:30 CST, Reddit was really picking up with the acceptances. I kept refreshing my e-mail and credit card, but nothing was coming through!

By 8:30 CST I decided to take a break and go to the gym to get my mind off of things. I was beginning to come to terms that 2023 just wasn’t going to be my year as the acceptances on Reddit were decreasing.

For the 2022 race, rejection e-mails started going out around 9am CST so I was prepared for the worst.

Getting the E-Mail

I went to my gym class and right before the class began, I checked my e-mail one last time and there it was.

I GOT IN!

My e-mail arrived at 8:57 am CST and appears to have been in the last batch of acceptance letters.

As soon as I got my e-mail I noticed that my credit card was charged (I had been hoping to get a little head’s up I would be accepted by having an early credit card charge, but this wasn’t the case).

This was my first time entering the lottery and I am so excited to have the opportunity to run Chicago! This will be my first World Major’s Marathon too so I’m really excited to experience it!

My Training Plan

Now that I’ve been accepted I’m going to begin training again!

The race is in October, so my game plan is to schedule a few shorter distance races throughout the year to help prep for the big day.

I’m going to continue to work with Run4PRs Coaching (the same coach I used to train for Twin Cities Marathon) to prepare. I had an amazing experience with them training for TC so I’m excited to continue on and improve my time this year!

So far I don’t have any time goals or anything yet, but I’m sure that’ll change as the race gets closer!

Training Updates

Similar to when I ran TC Marathon, I’ll continue to update the blog with my training progress and goals for the race!

I’m so excited to share this journey!

Are you also running Chicago next year? Let me know in the comments below!