I was sitting at the anchor desk Sunday morning enjoying the last half hour of the morning show. Suddenly there pops up on the screen the starting line of a 5k that was about to begin in Lincoln Park. We had a camera there to shoot back pictures live on this beautiful morning. The producer told us about this at the last minute.
That's probably a good thing. It was one of those moments when you realize you'd rather be somewhere else! The weather was just about perfect for a run that morning. And, had I not been asked to fill in for the regular Sunday Morning anchor, I would have been enjoying that weather at the March Madness half marathon in Cary. I even managed to register for the race back on January first, before they closed registration the next day.
As I've written before, however, sometimes life gets in the way of your running plans. So I trudged through a long run on Saturday and got up in the middle of the night Sunday to work. Nevertheless, I'm very excited about the success some of my friends had at the Cary race. Sunday marked the return to the roads for one of my long-time running partners, Tom. He tore his achilles tendon a little less than a year ago, and started running again about the end of December. As you can see from the picture, he is all the way back! Tom ran a few minutes faster than his modest goal time. Next up for him is the Soldier Field 10 mile race on Memorial Day weekend.
Another friend I've written about ran an incredible time in Cary as well. Kurt Fiene, who is 
legally blind, ran what I believe is an American record for a half marathon for a sight impaired runner. At 47 years old, his time of 1:15 took 5th place overall in a pretty competitive field. He is training with a group from Elmhurst right now for The Boston marathon in April. I have not been able to join them for a training run in the last couple months, and now I know that if I did make it, I would be watching them disappear into the distance! Congratulations to everyone who ran Sunday!
By the way, I wrote about Kurt a couple months ago. You can find that entry here: http://runningnewsguy.abc7chicago.com/2008/12/the-blind-shall.html
Also, he has a fundraising team for Boston if you are interested:
As for that Boston training, the great weather should help us out. It's much nicer to run in shorts and a T-shirt, than bundled up in layers to fight the cold. The footing is much better as well without all the ice and snow. I'm planning a 20 miler this weekend to make up for the race I missed out on Sunday. For about 35,000 of you, the Shamrock Shuffle is looming in a couple weeks. So get out and enjoy the weather this week. It's a great time of the year to run! See you on the roads....
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