Running Around Illinois: Morton Arboretum

October 1, 2022

Fall Color 5K

Lisle (DuPage County)

Chip Time: 26:43

My favorite race came through. 26:43 is my best 5K time since I ran 26:28 in the same race, exactly five years ago to the day.

The morning was cool but not cold, sunny but mostly shaded, and actually started off foggy. If you look closely, you can see some mist hovering over Meadow Lake at about 7:20am:

The Fall Color 5K is one of Morton Arboretum’s signature events. Morton Arboretum is - yes - an arboretum, some 1,700 acres of woodland in DuPage County. It’s celebrating its centennial, having been founded 100 years ago by Joy Morton, who made his salt in fortune. I mean, made his fortune in salt.

Please forgive my salty joke.

I first set foot at the Morton Arboretum some eight years ago when the company I then worked for won the contract for handling point of sale and related functions. By that time I’d been to a lot of attractions - zoos and museums mostly. Morton Arboretum was different. Not that other places didn’t strive for excellence… but Morton Arboretum has an attitude that everything, absolutely everything, is going to be very nice. The administration building is very nice, the visitors center is very nice, even the food is very nice. But it’s not a nice that feels forced or ostentatious. I’d describe the mentality like this: they take great care of things because they think you’re supposed to take great care of things. Full stop.

Illinois isn’t usually the first state to come to mind when people think of majestic vistas. This is understandable: Illinois is the second-flattest state (behind only Florida), the “hilly” region of the state is in the extreme northwest, there are no national parks, and you have to get almost to the bottom of the state to get to Shawnee National Forest.

Illinois used to be vast forest, though. Early feminist and transcendalist Margaret Fuller wrote a short travel memoir Summer of the Lakes, in 1843, chronicling a trip around the Great Lakes region, notably including a loop that began in Geneva, Illinois and which took her to the Rock River. She declared the Rock River Valley around Oregon - think of where today Lorado Taft’s Eternal Indian looks out over the river - to be among the most beautiful parts of the country. (Margaret Fuller is a fascinating figure, if you’re not familiar, you should read up a bit on her.)

This, I think, is the tradition that Morton Arboretum upholds. They’re not alone, of course. Even though it often seems that forest land can be taken for granted, there are keepers, and they notably include the counties themselves. At Morton, though - which admittedly includes a collection of world arbors, not just those native to the region - the notion of the preserve is further elevated. Nothing is taken for granted. And it very much is majestic.

I’ve run the 5K six times now, and I’ve even run the spring 10K twice. The race path is on a paved road through the arboretum. A lot of the running is on loping curves, and - especially by Illinois standards - there’s some surprising elevation changes. I’ve run it often enough now to be used to two things: a crunch of people at the beginning, and the first mile being the most uphill portion. (Three years ago, there were a lot more runners… clearly the pandemic has caused the number to go down, but is it because some people are running virtually? Or ran a little later in the day after the shotgun start? I’m not sure.)

With benefit of pace setters and advance knowledge, I knew how to avoid wiping myself out at the beginning. To my surprise, when it was all done, my app claims these for my split times:

1st mile: 8:50

2nd mile: 8:45

3rd mile: 8:39

This is a little off, because I started the app about 20 seconds before start time, but to maintain that consistent a pace throughout the race… I never do that. If I had run my first mile here as hard as I had a week ago, I wouldn’t have broken 27:00.

I started off making a point of not overdoing it on the inclines, and biding my time for the eventual declines. I managed to keep stride until the first water station, about 2K in, and then almost kept stride from there until the second water station, about 3.5K in. I also started focused rhythmic breathing a little earlier than normal. (I admit I have not found this as easy this year as I have in the past. I used to do three short breaths in through the nose, three short breaths out through the mouth, and could use them to maintain a solid running rhythm. I find today I can only really maintain two in and two out, and while it keeps the breathing on track, I don’t feel like I’m quite as in rhythm with the rest of my body. But still working on it.)

The downslopes are like little treats, like the desserts to the other courses. I got through the lima beans, can I please have a cookie now? The way they’re aligned at the Arboretum runs is helpful, because while on the one hand you’re thinking Where is that mile marker? on the other hand you get to a nice little decline and feel like Oh wow, I’m actually moving now! And while the up and down does make for a more challenging race, it also makes for a much less monotonous race, one where maybe it’s a little easier to keep concentration on what the body is doing.

I was very near the finish, probably past the three mile marker, when I was just completely out of breath. Looking back at my splits, I’m pretty sure that I pushed it a little too hard at the end of the third mile, to the point where I had a hard time getting across the finish line without walking. Otherwise though I felt like the totality of the race had gone remarkably well.

Usually I like to stick around after the race, mingle, maybe even eat at the cafe there. This time though I had to get out of there pretty quickly. The race started at 8:00, I had a soccer game to coach at 9:30, and the locations were about 25 minutes apart. It was a long morning!

On the way out I took another picture of Meadow Lake with the fog lifted:

And then I found that there had been a race spectator with a prime - and unique - vantage point:

Hopefully we can make it back for the rest of fall color season. And hopefully the next race out I can further improve upon my time. 25:00 is looking a little unlikely this year, but 26:00 might yet be a possibility.