I prefer pain?

The Chicago Marathon is massive. Forty thousand runners. The biggest race I've done is the 8,000 Sporting Life 10k. Chicago is way bigger. Anyways, as you can imagine, it has to somehow get 40,000 people to the starting line.

So they have a four-tier system: a competitive start for 1,500 people who expect to do a sub 3:10 marathon (which would qualify a guy my age for Boston, that holy grail; a perferred start (i) for 3,200 for those who expect to run a sub-3:35:59 marathon; a perferred start (ii) for 4,700 who can do a sub-3:55:59 race and the rest of the racers (30,000) are in the open category.

Probably not the wisest for my first marathon, but my PB half time of 1:34 and change qualifies me for the perferred start (i). I faxed my race certificate after signing up and this afternoon, get the confirmation that I am running in the second group. Oh boy...