Zach Runs Chicago

We met the guy the race is named for.  I'd never even heard of Burbank, Illinois until I found out about the Burbank Park District 's Frosty 5K run earlier this week. Luckily, my friend Antonio was down (on short notice) to head out to the suburbs for this one. And luckily again, Burbank is only about 20 miles outside Chicago (or at least 20 miles from downtown Chicago) and the race didn't start til 9am, so it wasn't like we had to crawl out of bed super early. Overall the race was pretty straightforward: easy to find, flat course, nice people, good prizes at the post-race party, a not-too-chilly day and a dancing Frosty the Snowman - I think I covered most of that stuff in my review for Treadmill .

Is this shirt sweet or what? A+ for shirt design This morning I woke up at 5:40, put on several layers of running clothes (tights, shorts, shirt, jacket, socks, waterproof socks, shoes, hat, gloves) and headed out to catch a ride with my friend Matthew to Crystal Lake, Illinois (a city about 75 minutes northwest of Chicago that I had never even heard of until a few weeks ago). We were heading to Veteran Acres Park, a wooded area in Crystal Lake where the McHenry County Ultrarunning Dudes and Dudettes (who call themselves M.U.D.D. for short) were hosting the first annual Frozen Gnome 50K and 10K . Since we're only somewhat crazy runners, we were only tackling the 10K this morning and not going for the entire 30+ miles of trail running. The course promised to be challenging and it was about 25 degrees with a light snow falling, so the closer it got to race time the happier I was to only be running 6.2 miles through the snowy woods, but as we stood around in the heated pavili...

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...

So, as you may remember, in November Newcity released its Best of Chicago 20th anniversary edition and I had a number of running-themed items in there. Last month (last year at this point), Newcity released its 2012 Top 5 of Everything issue . To view Newcity's entire Top 5 list for 2012 (there's some good stuff over there), follow the link above, but below are the two running-themed lists that I submitted. While I didn't run every race in Chicago last year, I ended up finishing out the year with a total of 45 races under my belt (only the Athens Classic Marathon was outside Chicagoland) and I feel pretty good about these choices. Top 5 Chicago 5K Races of 2012 Ravenswood Run (April 29) Chinatown 5K (July 14) Terrapin 5K (August 2) Burgers & Beer 5K (August 20) Carrera de los Muertos (November 3) Top 5 Chicago Races Longer Than a 5K of 2012 Bank of America Shamrock Shuffle 8K (March 25) Cinco de Miler (May 6) Soldier Field 10 Mile (May 26) P...

Since I had been keeping a close eye on the weather reports over the last few days I was a little disappointed this morning at how accurate they all turned out to be: 45 degrees and raining. I was talking to another runner on the way to the starting line and remarked that the only change in the prediction for this morning was from a 70% chance of rain at 9am to an 80% chance of rain at 9am. She looked at me for a second and then said, "Well it's 100% raining right now so I don't think it matters anymore." Touché.

Santa is known for a lot of things, but as far as I know hustling isn't one of them. But this morning at the Santa Hustle 5K , around 8000 Santas hustled for at least a little bit. I've been to a few themed races but I think this one is my new favorite. Seeing (almost) all the racers wearing the Santa hat and beard that came in the goodie bag (along with the red Santa race shirt) was a pretty sweet sight. As I heard one woman remark to her friend before the race, "It's like Where the Fuck is Waldo." While I wasn't aware of that edition of the Waldo books (and I thought I had a pretty good collection of them as a kid), I think she did a pretty good job of summing up what the sea of red and white looked like.

On November 11th, Brynn and I ran the 30th Anniversary Athens Classic Marathon , starting in Marathon and following the official marathon course (marked with official historical signs) back to downtown Athens and the incredible Panathinaiko . My Newcity review covers the race itself, but I wanted to talk more about getting to the race and around Athens for anyone who may want to take on this race in the future.