Zach Runs Chicago

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 ...

Saturday morning in sleepy suburban Burbank, me and those two awesome runners in the picture over there --> ( Erica and Fuzzy ) were trying to think of good adjectives for just how sunny it was: rather plentifully impressively emphatically Luckily, the race we were registered for had already taken care of this issue for us in the title. Whoever named the first annual Super Sunny 5K, coordinated by Garden Center Services  and brought to my attention by fellow runner and Garden Center Services employee Annabelle  is either extremely lucky or has amazing weather prediction skills, because the race name fit the morning perfectly.  Burbank is about a 40 minute drive from Chicago and the only other time I've been here was for the similarly weather-themed  Frosty 5K back in January. And, as it turns out, this race follows the same course, starting and finishing in the parking lot of the ever-popular Henry Lang Recreation Center. Surprising to almost no o...