daj's blog

I grew up in DuPage County and started my running there before moving to central Illinois 19 years ago. For the life of me, though, I can't remember if I ever did a race in Kane County or not.

Well, this is what running in all 102 counties is supposed to be about: learning a little bit about new areas of the state and visiting places I haven't been before.

In February, I started my goal of running a race all 102 counties in Illinois. To date, I have run in 17 counties, with a goal of hitting all of them over the next 15 years.

As early as last year, I had targetted June 14 to run the Steamboat Classic 15K in Peoria County.

I ran the Highland, Illinois Lions Club five-miler today for my 16th Illinois county and my fifth new county this year. It is actually a biathalon too, but I chose not to do the bike part.

I ran the Nashville TN Country Music Half Marathon last Saturday. I only mention it because I broke 2 hours, coming in at 1:59.38. I had committed to the race a long while ago and am glad I did it.

It was only a two-miler and it was held at 4 p.m. on a Friday night, but there aren't a lot of races in Logan County, so I chose to do this one.

The first mile of the Quincy "Bridge the Gap to Health" half marathon was the toughest mile I've ever run. The second mile was tough but it was dwarfed by how hard the first mile was.

Haven't posted in a while since I haven't run any races in new Illinois counties. Family obligations kept me from the Delavan Half Marathon in March but hopefully next year.

Knocked out McLean County today at the Miller Park Zoo 5K. It was a nice little race and a beautifully cool day for running. The park is in an older part of town and the Civil War memorial at the park was worth the trip. The shirts were nice and they had about a billion volunteers.

I think the Lake Bloom 12K is the "signature" race for McLean County and I try to do either signature races or longer races in a county. However, in this case, I just didn't want to wait to add another county and there aren't a lot of races this early, so I settled on the Miller Park Race.