Kane County

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. So, this week-end I took care of that and ran in the 25th Annual Coon Creek Classic 10K in Hampshire, in northwest Kane County.

It was an o.k. race, with a couple of gradual hills late. I like that it went down the main drag of Hampshire (State Street) both near the start and the finish. It was a nice little two-block or so downtown. Most of the race, however, was in farm country, although from the number of subdivisions that are being built, it is obvious that suburban sprawl is starting to hit this community, despite its distance from Chicago. Not a lot of shade on a sunny day, but a couple of people had sprinklers along the route for runners to go through, which was very nice, and there were four water stops.

There were about 150 runners in the 10K and another 250 or so running a 2K. The shirts have a drawing of a raccoon's face on the front, kind of blended in with the year 2008 (the "00" are the eyes). Nice shirt, althoguh I am not sure about the tail they printed on the lower back. Their timing system gave immediate results, with time, pace and ranking by age, gender and overall. That was cool to get that immediately.

I ran in 54:59.01, which is a good time for me. I probably could have done better but last night was cool with low humidity, so I ran 6.5 miles at dusk, only to have to do this race 11 hours later. I felt it a little.

This was my ninth county this year and my 20th overall. I don't expect to do another race until Labor Day week-end at the earliest and maybe even later in September.