Making movie magic at the Chicago Marathon

CHICAGO — Twenty years ago filmmaker Jon Dunham set out to capture the spirit of the race when he filmed a documentary at the Chicago Marathon.

The film featured Jerry Meyers and Deena Kastor.

“I wanted to capture this in the film, a spectrum of different stories of the humanity that takes part in the marathon,” Dunham said. “Everything from the first-time marathoner to the professional athlete. That was the goal.”

The film tracked six stories as the runners trained for, and then competed in the 2005 Chicago Marathon.

“There was really no other film like it,” Dunham said.

Carey Pinkowski, the Chicago Marathon’s race director for more than three decades, says the film gave him a new perspective on his own event.

 “He just captured the whole essence of what this celebration of humanity that we call the marathon in a grand way,” he said. “He had some very creative ideas about it which really showed Chicago and the Marathon in a whole different light.”

 “Runners around the world watch ‘Spirit of the Marathon’ before every single race they run,” Kastor said. “They probably know the words by heart. The scenes by heart. I still get tense thinking about the finishing minutes of that race because of the pain cave that I was in.”

Her race was an epic battle with eventual Olympic Gold Medalist Constantina Diță of Romania.

 “It was back-and-forth, and both women ran really, really hard. It was great theatre,” Pinkowski said.

Kastor finished a few steps ahead of Diță and gave Dunham’s film its dramatic climax.

 “I was elated when she won the race,” he said. “I knew right then and there that she had made the film in a certain sense.”

She remains the last American woman to win the Chicago Marathon.

But the film is as much about the elite competitors as it is about the amateur participants.  

Meyer at the time was a spry 70-years-old.

 “Perhaps one of the very few sports where you say that you can run in the footprints of world class athletes,” her said.

He just barely broke the 6-hour barrier.

 “My finish time was like 21 seconds under 6 hours, and it was the first time I finished under 6 hours,” he said. “A great race is if you would finish under three hours. Those people were already home, they had showered, they were taking a nap, and I was still out on the course.”

His story – and the others – show that we can all set goals and attain them, with the right amount of termination.