Last Sunday, October 9, just past 7:30 am, when the Chicago Marathon began at Monroe Street and Columbus Drive in the Loop, junior Abhi Goyal was among more than forty thousand other runners starting their 26.2 mile course through twenty-nine of the city’s neighborhoods. Families, friends, and city residents looked on as the thick stream of runners thinned into packs based on speed.

Goyal and his mom had trained for the marathon together since the early summer. “I trained with CES, which is Chicago Endurance Sports, and started in July or June,” Goyal said. “What we did was every Sunday we would go and run. The first time it would be four miles, and then we would increase over time, and so the final one would be twenty miles, and then we would rest for three weeks, until the day of the marathon.”

Even with such rigorous and intense training, Goyal was still surprised by some aspects of the marathon. “I didn’t know that there would be so many people there and how it would look like, so that was new to me,” Goyal said. “There were over forty thousand runners, so sometimes you would have to squeeze through people that were slower than you. Also, running through places in Chicago that I don’t normally go to was a little new to me. I got cramps at mile eighteen, which slowed me down significantly. Definitely something I didn’t expect to happen.”

Despite the unforeseen pain during the course, Goyal pushed through and crossed the finish line at just over 5 hours 30 minutes. “I guess I felt pretty good when I crossed the finish line,” he said, “because it was over.”