Zach Runs Chicago

A foggy morning for a swim/bike/run On Saturday morning at Montrose Beach I completed my second triathlon: the Chicago Triathlon SuperSprint. There were a few differences between this one and the North Shore Triathlon that I did last year . The first difference was that this was a SuperSprint rather than a Sprint distance (375m swim | 10K bike | 2.5K run vs 750m swim | 20K bike | 5K run) or about half the distance. The second was that I was a part of the inaugural Divvy Wave of the SuperSprint, meaning that rather than needing to bring my own bike (or in the case of last year, Fuzzy's bike), I just showed up at the race site in the morning, grabbed a Divvy and set up my tri station stuff around it. For your typical triathlete I would say that this is a less than ideal set-up. You're not going to have the bike you want and definitely not the speed you want and if you're going for time, you're going to be disappointed. However, for someone dabbling in the tria...

Every year Chicago adds a few more races to the running roster. In 2013 I ran 37 of them. And though I did repeat a few of the same races that I ran in 2012 I tried to find new ones as well, occasionally even making it outside of the city for those - I KNOW, what an explorer right? For 2012 I did a Top 7 Race Shirt post so I thought I'd do it again this year. It was actually harder this year to find seven shirts that I liked out of the 37. There were a lot more cotton shirts this year (both long and short sleeve), which could be because I ran eight less races than last year but could also just be a reflection of the races I chose to run (smaller, newer races). Probably it's a combination of the two. Either way, the trend towards athletic shirts that I noticed last year still seems to be holding true, but there is a bigger-than-you'd-expect contingent that is still holding out with the cotton (including one sweatshirt from the Muddy Monk Frozen Five). To me the key to ...

The bike transition for the North Shore Triathlon So, as I said in my Newcity review of the North Shore Triathlon , the triathlon is its own special animal - one part swimming, one part biking and one part running. And being good at any of those does not mean you'll even be competent at the triathlon as a whole. I definitely found that out yesterday morning when I competed in my first triathlon. Well, maybe "competed" is a strong word. Let's just say I participated in it. Obviously, being so involved in the running world I have heard a good deal about triathlons. A number of my friends do them and tell me how fun they are. But there's just never been a pull in that direction for me. I like to run and I don't really want to have to swim and bike before I can do it. Still, the triathlon concept is something that has been on the periphery for a while now and when a friend suggested I sign up a few weeks ago, I figured "Why not?" It's a fir...

After over two months of physical therapy (with the very friendly members of NovaCare !) I was finally cleared to run last week by my physical therapist. Not that I wasn't running leading up to that (as my race reviews will attest) but the therapist was only begrudgingly giving me clearance to run (mainly because they knew I would probably do it anyway) whereas now I've been given the all clear. Am I an ideal patient? No. But did I follow all of my prescribed exercises and whatnot? Yes. This morning I ran a solid three miles without any pain which was really exciting, though I have now been incorporating about ten minutes of pre-run warm-ups and fifteen minutes of post-run stretches to every run. It adds a lot more time to my running (oh, for the days when I could just go out and foolishly run with no pre- or post-race stretching) but it's worth it to prevent more IT band issues. So, to celebrate my newly cleared status (and to make up for the past month when I haven...