2013 Four Seasons Parkway Run & Walk for CHOP

My company is one of the major sponsors of this race. The race is to benefit the cancer center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. They do some pretty amazing work, so my wife and decided to run in the race. On a side note, my team at my company raised over $3k for CHOP. I was extremely excited about this; we rocked.

Anyway, my wife and I signed up for the 5k run. They also had a 2k fun walk as well. The weather was perfect; mid-50's pre-race and in the upper 50's at race start. However, I was dumb and was wearing a long sleeve tech shirt and was sweating horribly during the run, even though it was only 5k. The event allowed people to sign up on race day, which is always good for big charity races...the more the merrier. The goal was to have 10,000 participants, and they got 9262. It seemed like twice that number there because of how many spectators showed up as well. They raised $976,786.01 at the race, but the final amount raised of $1,031,951.01 beat their goal!

I have to say that the Four Seasons Hotel was awesome for foregoing the port-a-potties and letting everyone use the hotel facilities...which were extremely nice. There was free coffee and water for everyone pre-race. In addition, if your team or company had a tent, they all had Dunkin Donuts. My only complaint for the race was that it started almost 15 minutes late and there was no National Anthem. I would have expected such an overall well organized to event to have started on time; but who cares, it was a for a great cause and it was fun time. The lack of National Anthem was sad...even all of the small local races I do have that...it always gets me amped up for the run.

The run itself was great. You start at Logan Circle by the Four Seasons Hotel, and proceed towards the Museum of Art and onto West River Drive. You turn around a little ways into West River and head back to where you started. Aside from West River Drive, there was a ton of spectators everywhere cheering everyone on.

At the finish, all participants received a free breakfast; which basically was a combination of continental and hot breakfast! Definitely the first time I got eggs, tots and sausage for free after a race!

There supposedly was an APP for your phone to get race results, but I couldn't find it anywhere in the iTunes store; maybe it was Android only? The results are posted now on the website. You can sign up next year if you are in the area; it's September 28, 2014.