A death during & a birth after Chicago Marathon

William Caviness, a 35-year-old firefighter from North Carolina, collapsed and died near the finish line of the Bank of America Chicago Marathon on October 9. An autopsy conducted the next day was inconclusive.

An avid runner, Caviness would sometimes run the 18 or so miles between his house and the fire station where he worked before an overnight shift, his father-in-law Bill Britt told The Associated Press, and then he'd run the same distance home the next day. Britt said Caviness was hoping to qualify to run the Boston Marathon.

Caviness' run in Chicago also was intended to raise money for the International Association of Fire Fighters Burn Foundation, a charity that helps burn victims, according to his local union.

Also making headlines was 27-year-old Amber Miller who, just hours after completing the Chicago Marathon, delivered a baby girl at an area hospital.

Miller had her doctor's OK to walk/run the marathon, despite the advanced stage of her second pregnancy. She took the start line just short of 39 weeks. By running the first half of the 26.2-mile race and walking the second half, Miller finished in 6 hours, 25 minutes and 50 seconds.

"A few minutes after I finished, I started feeling the contractions and they were coming every five minutes. So I think we waited an hour or so just to kind of make sure it was real labor. They were pretty consistent at that point," she told the Chicago Tribune.

The AP reported that Miller, a veteran of eight marathons, was 17 weeks pregnant last May when she ran the Wisconsin Marathon in Kenosha in 4:23:07, and was 18 weeks pregnant when she ran the 2009 Indianapolis Marathon in 4:30:27.