Friends celebrate 35 years of running with one last Chicago marathon

CHICAGO (WGN) – For 35 years, five Chicago friends have spent their Sunday mornings running.

There’s five of them: Rick, Mark, George, Tom and Jim “Skinny” Sheahan.

There are rules, such as no headphones, but between them are nearly 100 marathons.

Also between them are bad knees, a heart ablation, skin cancer and a missing disc.

They have spent thousands of miles talking, arguing, lying about their pace and listening to Skinny tell stories that have no natural ending.

Over 35 years, jobs changed, kids grew up and bodies wore down. Their marriages, remarkably, did not.

Sunday mornings became their reset button, but somewhere along all those miles, they figured out something worth carrying past the finish line.

For more than 20 years, that has meant supporting “Opportunity Knocks” and “Special Children Charities.”

So for their final Chicago Marathon together, the wise crackers have a strategy.

If their knees, backs and questionable judgement can inspire a little sympathy, they’ll gladly take it in donations to their beloved charities.

Thirty-five years after their first Sunday run, there isn’t much left to prove, except maybe that they can finish this thing and finish it the way they started, laughing and doling and plenty of grief.

WGN-TV’s Erin McElroy has the full story in the video player above.

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