As a marathon runner, I know how much crowd support can carry you through 26.2 miles. I tape my name to my shirt before races because sometimes one stranger screaming it at exactly the right moment is enough to keep your legs moving. But I’ve run New York twice, with friends and family scattered around the course, and even then, I’ve never had anything close to what Englishman Ethan Woodhead experienced in Chicago.
Ethan traveled from Guernsey to Chicago alone for Sunday’s marathon, which apparently didn’t sit quite right with his uncle, Phil Woodhead. Two days before the race, Phil dropped a request into a Chicago Marathon Facebook group to see whether the city might help make the course feel a little less lonely. He travelled solo and has no support in Chicago,” he wrote.
That “occasional cheer” request reached considerably more than a few spectators. The post pulled in more than 6,600 likes, 582 comments, and 181 shares, with strangers staking out spots along the course to catch the U.K. runner. Another promised to track him and look out for him around miles 12 to 14.
Ethan, meanwhile, was unaware his uncle was trying to crowdsource a cheering section for him. On Instagram after the race, he said the first hints started arriving about 10 hours after Phil’s post went up, when random messages landed in his DMs from people saying they were tracking him, making signs, and planning to cheer. The messages weren’t just talk, either.
"I had so much support on the course," Ethan told NBC Chicago. "I can’t even put it into words. It pulled me along the whole way.” He joked on Instagram that fellow runners may have assumed he was some big-shot influencer, but his own description—“just a lad from Guernsey” who makes “stupid videos”—was a little less glamorous and a lot closer to reality.
Ethan came extremely close to the goal his uncle had broadcast to thousands of strangers, finishing in 2:31:31. He placed 245th overall, 228th among men, and 96th in the 25–29 division. Phil didn’t need to be in Chicago to find out whether his idea worked, and he seemed almost as surprised by what his post set in motion as his nephew was by the people who showed up for him.
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