Athletes race for cause, not glory
It wasn't her first-place finish that got Lauren Jensen misty-eyed after Naperville's U.S. Women's Triathlon Sunday.
It was the cause.
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"I wasn't here to win," the Glen Ellyn athlete said after posting a time of a little more than an hour. "The money raised goes to ovarian cancer research and one of my good friends, who's in the group behind me, Chris Gladish, she's a survivor. She's why I'm here."
Roughly 2,500 women signed up for the event, organizers said. They were dispatched in waves every four minutes.
Right behind the two dozen elite athletes who started the race was a group of cancer survivors who also swam the half-mile course, then biked 14 miles and ran the final 3.1-mile leg of the event.
The goal for most competitors was simply to finish.
"This is my first one and I'm in a late wave, so I'm debating whether I should go wait in my car," said Chicago resident Jillian Stein. "My boyfriend's still at the hotel, probably sleeping. I told him I'd call him when I got a little closer to getting into it."
Stein's boyfriend got an extra hour of sleep as the race started an hour late because of lightning. Five seconds before the race was set to begin a thunderclap halted the event. Organizers wait 30 minutes every time lightning or thunder occurs. Lightning popped twice more between 7 a.m. and 7:30 a.m., but by 8 a.m. the sun was back out and drying up the asphalt that had dampened by a brief shower.
"By the time I got out there the road was pretty dry," said Naperville 16-year-old Mckinzie Schulz, who finished in the top 20. "And it doesn't look like it's going to rain again, which is nice because I have to ride my bike home."
While Schulz said her parents had already left to run some other errands, hundreds of supporters lined the route and crowded into Centennial Beach to cheer on the athletes.
Margaret Skubis' family members brought a bouquet of roses to greet the 77-year-old great-grandmother from Lisle at the finish line.
When asked if they thought she'd be happy with the present, her granddaughter said Skubis would be grateful, but likely looking for something more nutritional.
"She usually goes right for the bananas," said Jessica Kazda of Aurora. "But she can get those for free here."