By Jen DeSalvo, WLS-AM
Through long, brutal Chicago winters, local runners anticipate the day representative of the launch of the racing season; the Bank of America Shamrock Shuffle.
The 4.97-mile/eight-kilometer event celebrated its 38th annual running of the Shamrock Shuffle in Grant Park, Chicago. With over 22,000 participants, the event attracts everybody from the dedicated marathoner to non-runners who just want to get outside and soak in the newly dawned spring season.
“I think I started in the early 90’s,” race director Carey Pinkowski says of his tenure leading the event. In all of that time, the biggest change that he has seen is the addition of women in the race.
“Twenty to 25 years [this was] primarily a men’s event, and now there are more women running today than men. There’s about 60-percent of our participants are women,” Pinkowski said.
The entrant pool is made up mostly of Chicago residents, however corporate teams, charity teams, and individuals come from all over the country and planet.
One of this year’s charity fundraising teams was Imerman Angel’s, a Chicago-born organization connecting cancer survivors with newly diagnosed patients. CEO Ben Bornstein was participating in the Shamrock Shuffle for his first running event ever.
“We have a lot of endurance events,” Bornstein said. This year the organization, after six years of having an endurance training program, has attracted 230 members already who have pledged to raise $1,500 while training and then running the Chicago Marathon in October. That is over $300,000 that we will raise toward the mission, Bornstein says.
