Zach Runs Chicago

Remember when race shirts were pretty much guaranteed to be over-sized white cotton, seemingly designed so that you could wear them once (if you really wanted to show that you ran the race) and then probably never again? One side had the race logo and the other had about 20 sponsors. And the long-sleeve ones had little cuffs at the wrists to make sure you got that nice puffed sleeve look that no one has ever asked for. These days it seems like almost every race is giving out running shirts rather than old-school cotton, and mostly I'm thankful for this change because it seems like they spend more time picking an appropriate color and working on a legitimate design rather than just slapping their logo onto some cotton for you (although I did get a few race shirts this year that went with that style... surprisingly enough, those shirts aren't in my closet anymore). Anyway, pretty much every race includes a shirt. Some are awesome, some are terrible and some are just... shirt...

Even though I'm a Longhorn and not really a sports fan (college or otherwise) I was pretty excited about the BTN Big 10K . Since I'm running the Miles for Melanoma 5K tomorrow, I was planning to take it a little easy on this one. But once the race started, with all the energy that comes with any race, I was running a little faster than I planned to. I was planning for 8 minute miles, but I felt good after the first mile so I figured I might as well just keep going. I did steadily lose speed at each mile throughout the race and definitely wish I would have eaten something for breakfast to at least give me a little bit of energy to burn so I could pick up the pace, but it was still a good race. Here's a sweet high-tech html table breakdown of my splits: Mile Time 1 7:01 2 7:22 3 7:25 4 7:27 5 7:42 6 7:30 Total 45:59 Clearly I started out a lot faster than I should have and could not maintain that pace at all, but the good news is that I've gotten a lot f...

I haven't gone running since the Fast Ca t on Saturday, which is making me a little anxious to get back out on the trail (or at least on the treadmill). But outside of me-being-lazy news, today I got the notification email from this weekend's Bunny Rock 5K regarding the packet pick-up and all that good stuff. Looks like it's going to be a pretty fun race (even if I don't have any kids to take on the egg hunt... though at my age I'm sure I could OWN on that egg hunt against these little kids). Anyway, planning to pick my packet up on Thursday. Also started really looking into these Chicago City Running Tours . I've read about them for a while and been interested in checking them out, but just hadn't gotten around to it. With my office being closed for Good Friday it seemed like the perfect opportunity to see what they were all about, so now I'm set up to run both the Chicago River/Navy Pier 5K Run and the Grant Park 5K Run on Friday morning. Not sure wh...

So with a few hitches in our travel plans (attempting a pick up at the corner of Chicago and Michigan at 6:45 in the morning was a little more difficult than I anticipated) my professional running team (I don't use the term loosely at all ) hit the road to Plainfield for the inaugural Fast Cat . And we managed to expertly miss the Plainfield exit the first time around, make a few turnarounds (again, we're professionals), and get to the Plainfield North High School race grounds with about half an hour to spare for the 8:30 starting time. Parking was no problem (as Chicagoans that's an important thing to note) and picking up our packets was also easy (luckily). The starting line was a spray-painted mark in the school parking lot that we stumbled upon by accident when we noticed a lot of people were congregating around a certain area. Logan and I got into the starting pack while Bill waited on the sideline (he ran the 2nd leg of the 10K relay). ...And they totally ended up des...

Several weeks ago I got signed up for the Fast Cat 10K in Plainfield this weekend. And since then I've been hounding two friends of mine to register as well (partly because it's sporting a super-cool race name, partly because of the promise of a nice, flat course in the suburbs... but mainly because I don't have a car and need a ride there on race day). Anyway, they agreed to do the 10K as a 2X5K relay (which is a great race option that I can't remember seeing in any other races - good call Fast Cat organizers!). It seems to me that not being runners, these guys earned themselves some promotion by signing up for this... they deserve all the cheers and encouragement they can get! And to help make that possible, I wanted to make sure people will be able to recognize them when they're running. So, here's the fearless relay team: And yes, Logan always runs without a shirt on and Bill always wears a stupid glasses/mustache mask So as part of the registration the...