Overview The Christie Clinic Illinois Race Weekend is three days of road racing through Champaign, Urbana and Savoy that finishes on the 50-yard line of Zuppke Field inside the University of Illinois' Memorial Stadium. The weekend runs a marathon, a half marathon with a wheelchair division, a 10K, a 5K, a mile and a youth run, plus combined I-Challenges. The courses are flat, with about 85 feet of elevation change, start near the State Farm Center and cover much of the campus, and the marathon is a Boston qualifier. Jan Seeley is race director, and the race counts itself among the 100 largest race weekends in the country. On site Before the races, the Health and Fitness Expo fills with national and local vendors. On race morning musicians, cheerleaders, a bagpiper and an Elvis work the course, pace teams run set finishing times, and elite athletes get their own hospitality room. The finish is a photo finish on the stadium field, and runners move from there to the 27th-Mile Celebrate Victory Bash. The youth run goes off on Saturday afternoon. Audience In 2025 the weekend drew about 11,000 runners and 1,800 volunteers. They came from 14 countries, 46 states and Washington, D.C., and 955 cities, 535 of them in Illinois. Track record The first race, on April 11, 2009, had more than 8,000 finishers, and 2010 drew about 14,000. The 2020 race was canceled for COVID-19, and the full marathon dropped off the weekend from 2021 to 2023 because there were not enough public safety staff to cover it; it came back in 2024. By 2025 the race had given $1.958 million to local charities, and it put its economic impact at $4 million a year. Michael Hogue of RE/MAX Realty Associates, whose team named the Mile in 2025: "We can't wait to sponsor the Mile again in 2026!" Brand presence Christie Clinic holds the title of the whole weekend, and individual races and features take their own names: the Michael Hogue Team Mile, the Meijer-sponsored 27th-Mile Bash, the race app from Spiros Law. A race's title partner puts its name on that race's shirts and finisher medals and speaks at its start line. Across the levels, partners get expo booths, signage at the expo and the finish line, logos on the Memorial Stadium ribbon boards during race weekend and on thank-you billboards that run for a week after the race, and inserts in the digital goody bag. Local businesses also staff the course; Jimmy John's put a team on Mile 24 to cheer the marathoners.