Running in Illinois

I recently visited the house where I grew up. For now, my dad is still living there, so I was able to spend some time in the old neighborhood. Although there was a brief time in high school when I tried to run around this area, for the most part, I didn't run when I lived there. 

But on this visit, I wanted to get a run in. And the weather actually cooperated, giving me a warm, but not too warm, sunny day to run. I picked a route that would give me a bit more than 2 miles and headed out in the humid air. 

Similarly to where I live in Boise, there are sporadic sidewalks in Winfield. I started out running in the street, but after a my second turn I came up to a busy road that did have sidewalks. I only ran by a few people while on the sidewalk and we were easily able to avoid each other. Since I'm fully vaccinated, I didn't take a mask on this run, but I did move aside for others or thank others for moving aside for me. 

Initially, my plan was to continue on streets the whole time, but when I came close to my planned turn at Beecher, I came upon a park that I hadn't thought about in years. I cut through the park and took a picture of the gazebo. I remember there being a lot of excitement when that was built. 

Then I ran past the school where I attended kindergarten through 8th grade. All the old playground equipment had been replaced. Makes sense, I suppose, since even when I was going there, the wood pieces had a tendency to splinter, and the metal ones were uncoated, leading to intense heat in the sun. It would have been nice to conquer the old monkey bars, but they actually got rid of those while I was still at that school, cutting them down after some little kid fell and hit their head. 

There was more sidewalk than I was expecting in this area, covering the street between the school and the park on East Street. I saw a mom and her kids coming out of that park and I smiled at them as I lumbered past. 

I wasn't feeling the best on this run. I had not slept well the prior night, and I hadn't slept nearly enough. But the air was very moist, and that was a nice change of pace. I checked the mail on my way back. The mail boxes on that street are all on one side - the side opposite of my childhood home, so it made sense to me to pick it up since I was already on that side of the street for running. 

Overall, it was a pretty good run though. I got some miles in and wasn't going too slow. If I had stayed there another day, I would probably have run more while I was out there.