The 2024 Chicago Marathon will take place on Sunday, with more than 50,000 participants from across the globe set to pound 26.2 miles of pavement through the heart of the Windy City.
While Chicago doesn’t typically attract the celebrity star-power that the New York City Marathon often does, you might recognize a few names on the startlist.
At this point, Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes are marathon stalwarts. Robach has run the NYC Marathon three times now, and Holmes has run the race with her the past two years. The two, who are a couple, co-host a podcast, and they’ll be doing a live recording at the Chicago expo at 4 p.m. CT on Friday before racing on Sunday.
Tony- and Grammy-award-winning singer Patina Miller is another familiar face on the circuit who will line up this weekend. She’s a two-time finisher at NYC, running 4:00:36 last year after singing the national anthem at the start. You may recognize her as Commander Paylor from the Hunger Games series.
Actor/influencer Claire Holt, who has been in the supernatural shows The Vampire Diaries and The Originals, is running to raise money for Boston Children’s Hospital. She ran 4:03:17 at NYC in 2022. And newly-crowned Miss USA, Alma Cooper, is fundraising for Apna Ghar—a nonprofit that works to prevent gender violence.
In addition to the celebs, there are dozens of runners with heartfelt and inspiring stories of their own.
César Torruella, a native of Puerto Rico who lives in Chicago, began running in 2021 amid the pandemic when he weighed nearly 500 pounds. After losing 300 pounds, he joined a run club. Now, Torruella, who heads the arts and education department for the Chicago Public Schools system, is running his first marathon and is hoping to raise awareness for art education during his race.
When she was 19 years old, Summer Willis of Lexington, Virginia, was sexually assaulted at a college party. A decade removed, Willis has set a goal of running 29 marathons in her 29th year to connect with other survivors of sexual assault and to raise funds for her foundation, Strength Through Strides. Chicago will be her 29th race.
Truth Bachman of Brooklyn, New York, is running the marathon to earn their fourth World Marathon Majors star and become one of the first nonbinary individuals to receive a Six Star medal. With only Tokyo and London remaining, Bachman says that a marathon, much like the process of transitioning, is a physical act of transformation, an idea that helps propel them across the finish line.
Lauren Pendergrass of Dixon, Illinois, will run her first Chicago Marathon to honor her late brother, Grant, who passed away in 2021 due to a drug overdose. She is running for Erika’s Lighthouse, a nonprofit organization that helps teens struggling with anxiety and depression.
Thomas Eller of Germany is the world’s first Deaf-born World Marathon Majors Six-Star Finisher. As a marathon runner, he has worked to amplify the voices of the Deaf community while promoting inclusivity and demonstrating that extraordinary abilities exist within everyone.
Phil Sussman, a resident of Madeira Beach, Florida, is an Army Special Operations veteran and was a runner as a teenager, but his injuries sustained while serving—including a broken back in 2015—made him think he would never run again. But Sussman slowly built his mileage back up, culminating with a half marathon on Memorial Day of 2023 in honor of friends he has served with. He will run Chicago as part of the Semper Fi Fund charity team.
In addition to these stories, alumni runners Randy Burt, Henry Kozlowski, and George Mueller will run on Sunday. The three have been running the marathon each year since the first race on September 25, 1977.
Laura Ratliff is a New York City-based writer, editor, and runner. Laura's writing expertise spans numerous topics, ranging from travel and food and drink to reported pieces covering political and human rights issues. She has previously worked at Architectural Digest, Bloomberg News, and Condé Nast Traveler and was most recently the senior editorial director at TripSavvy. Like many of us, Laura was bitten by the running bug later in life, after years of claiming to "hate running." Her favorite marathon is Big Sur.
