Zach Runs Chicago

Last month Fuzzy and I drove out to the Hickory Knolls Discovery Center in St. Charles for the first leg of a three-part race series . This first leg - inauspiciously named "Trail Race #1" - was a winter race that I've run twice in the past (though at the time it was named the " Hickory Knolls 5K Trail Adventure "). But last month it wasn't just a standalone race - it was part of a series of increasingly long (and difficult) winter runs. This race series is called the Fox Valley Winter Challenge Trail Series and this morning we headed to the Oakhurst Forest Preserve in Aurora for the second race in the series (yes, Trail Race #2). Unlike Trail Race #1, this race's basecamp didn't have a nice heated indoor space to hang out in beforehand - instead there was a little picnic shelter with a fireplace (going full-blast) where runners gathered before the race started:

This cougar was eying me... innuendo joke fail? The several inches of snow that we got Thursday night (or early Friday morning, I guess) provided a perfect set-up for a trail race through the woods yesterday. You can read more about the Fox Valley Winter Challenge Trail Series Trail Race #2 (I swear that's what it's called) in my Newcity review . Last year, I ran the inaugural version of this race (I say "version" only because it was a 5K last year and this year not only is it an 8K but the name is different and it's part of a three-race series ) and had a surprisingly good time, given that I had no idea what to expect from a snowy trail race and that I still wasn't that familiar with outdoor running in the cold. Up until this point I had spent most of my winters in Chicago either running on a treadmill or just giving up running completely and waiting for spring to come around. This 5K was also one of the first races that I reviewed for Newcity ( last y...

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...