Running Around Illinois: Oswego

October 27, 2024

Fraidy Cat 5K

Oswego (Kendall County)

Chip Time: 26:57

If you’re new to META-SPIEL and this is your entry point, here’s the Running Around Illinois gimmick in a nutshell: I run several races (almost all 5Ks) each year and have established an absurd goal of running a race in each of the 102 counties of Illinois, and in turn I write about the races - both the running itself and the places I go to run. In pure running terms, my highly elusive goal is to once again run a 25 minute 5K, which I last did over 8 years ago.

If you’ve been around META-SPIEL a while, you probably know all that, but you’re still surprised to see this post, because it’s been almost 6 months since the last installment of Running Around Illinois. I’ll catch people up briefly on the last few months, but I want to get into my trip to Oswego, a place I had never been before.

There are four prior races I haven’t published about:

• Run for 102 5K (La Grange) 5/11/24 23:32

• Darien Dash 5K (Darien) 5/19/24 26:15

• La Grange Rocks 5K (La Grange) 6/8/24 26:19

• Brookfield Zoo Zoo Run 5K (Brookfield) 9/8/24 26:22.1

That great-looking time at the top of the list is a tease. Run for 102 is our school district’s annual 5K and every two years it switches to a different school in the district. Well, this year, they measured the course very badly, so the course was only about 2.7 miles. Not the first time I’ve encountered this!

I’d run at Darien once before, way back in 2016, when I ran the 10K in 50:36. Yeah, doesn’t sound right does it? But I actually came that close to maintaining an 8 minute mile over a 10K. I had intended to write about the Darien Dash, but I disliked what I wrote so much, I never finished it!

These times are pretty good overall though - consistently in the range between 26:00 and 26:30 - and I thought I’d be able to continue that and improve in the fall much like I did last year. Of course there’s also the oddity there that I did manage to go 3 months without running a race. And then things got a little weird…

After the Zoo Run, I thought, maybe it’s time I got new shoes. They still felt good, but they were clearly worn on the bottom, as were my everyday shoes.

My everyday shoes were Hoka Bondis, podiatrist recommended, and I’d gotten them at the local running store in La Grange. So I went there, and got new Hokas, and also got Saucony Rides to replace my Saucony Triumphs. I’d had numerous pairs of Rides before - I think I went through three pairs of them as everyday shoes - and I was told the Rides were now more like the Triumphs, so, okay, sure.

I ran in the Rides a couple of times, and wow, my hips hurt. Started looking into things, pinpointed the pain to the iliac crest - the very top of the pelvis bone - on each side. I was not used to this. I tried reworking my exercise regimen thinking I was having IT band flareups, tried running again, and my left hip in particular hurt with every strike.

Nothing much should have changed. I wasn’t running as much as I had earlier in the year but I’d never outright stopped. I’ve gotten a little heavier but not to a point where it should have made such an impact.

I decided I needed to get something else. Maybe this, after 9+ years of running, is what finally makes me a real runner - deciding to replace my new shoes with different new shoes. I went to Dick Pond Athletics in Lisle, where I’ve most frequently gotten running shoes (including the Triumphs), and to my surprise I wound up leaving with a pair of New Balance 1080s. Once upon a time, I wore New Balances seemingly every day for a decade, before I found the Rides so comfortable.

At the time of writing now, I’ve run in the 1080s a few times, including two races (that means another post is coming up soon!) and they’re much better than the Rides. I’m still having some hip discomfort, but not like I was, and it’s shifted a little, and I’ve got a developing plan to get that under control. I’ll save that for the next post though.

I go into all of the shoe stuff because I have found that getting information about shoes from someone who isn’t trying to sell them to you is extremely difficult. And I also think that shoes are a great example of something which can turn into excuses. “I can’t do X because my {shoes} don’t feel good” etc. Life is finite and it can be tough to get past thinking like that, but we need to!

Time to finally write about Oswego!

One challenge this fall has been that my boy’s soccer matches have tended to conflict with races I’ve intended to run. I missed the Morton Arboretum Fall Color 5K this year for the first time since I started running it in 2016. I had a wide open Sunday though and was itching to get out to somewhere new. Oswego seemed a perfect choice - about a 45 minute drive, and even a new county for me!

The recommended route took me across Illinois 126 through Plainfield, into the wide open country of Kendall County, then up a couple county roads. I was barely out of the corn when I found the site - a large park complex adjoining a very new elementary school. I drove past some new development, but not much. You wouldn’t have known you were in a city of 35,000 people.

That’s right: Oswego is almost ten times larger today than it was just 30 years ago. Its 1990 population was just 3,876. It is a small river town which has ballooned, and which theoretically has tremendous additional room to grow in multiple directions.

There were three races held this day: the Meow Mile, the Fraidycat 5K, and the Ghost Run 8K. I guess I was supposed to get a participation medal?? And I guess the proceeds go to funding scholarships?? These details were a little opaque on race day, but that’s okay, I was an interloper. I’m often an interloper. It’s fun to be an interloper sometimes!

The 5K path started alongside Prairie Point Elementary School, went through Prairie Point Community Park, went south along a path between a couple of subdivisions, briefly went on the streets of one of the subdivisions, and then back up through the park. It was very flat, and at race time it was sunny and in the high 40s, which was pretty good. The race shirt was a long-sleeved technical shirt and I rolled with that and the shorts I had on. I think long sleeves and shorts together constitute a major fashion faux pas, but runners are allowed to get away with that. (God help us all if I’m allowed to be the fahsion police.)

This was my first race in the 1080s, and I felt pretty good. It started fast, and I found myself running a little ahead of the pace I’d expected. The app said I was at 4:10 after ½ mile and at 8:10 after 1 mile. I actually managed to keep stride up to the 1 ½ mile point, but it got rockier from there. Even on a cool day, the sun will get to me, and I also got the damn side splits again. But I caught a pace setter at the 2 ½ mile mark, and managed to keep stride until the end. I’d estimate my mile splits at roughly 8:05, 8:50, 8:55. The app recorded a total distance of 3.09 miles, so a fairly true course.

I was wiped at the end. It took a couple minutes to pull it together. I was happy to find an Athletico tent where they helped with post-race stretching, intrigued to find a radio station tent for something called 95.9 The River with an alleged format of “classic alternative”, and delighted to find a coffee shop offering a blend called Southern Pecan and cups with stickers claiming to offer something “Better, Not Bitter!”

I read the “Better, Not Bitter!” tagline out loud, scrunched my nose just so, turned to the woman behind the decanter, and said, “But what if I want better and bitter?”

And she laughed! And it was not an uncomfortable polite laugh at the crazy man, it was a sincere laugh because after 627 years of marriage I have learned to deliver my lines well.

I was so pleased with the whole experience, and so desirous for a more proper cup of coffee, that I decided to track down the coffee shop.

I found The Village Grind in downtown Oswego, the part of the town which was there 30 years ago when it was truly a village. I got the darkest roast they had (better and bitter, natch) and the carrot cake, which I highly recommend. Seriously, if you’re thinking, why would you ever go to Oswego, this place is the answer to that question.

I found the downtown to be fascinating, this tucked in historic district with some sort of wacky transit-oriented development by the train stop, and a beautiful park nestled along the Fox River. The park gave way to a second park called Veterans Serenity Park, a very interesting installation that you franky don’t see in a lot of places - small, tidy, thoughtful, elaborate, serene, patriotic. Not far away is a different patriotic walk also spotlighting the various armed services. The sincere impression I got from all this was that here was a place which had grown so much so fast that they really didn’t know what they were anymore, and these updated versions of classic patriotic displays were what they came up with as a unifying theme.

Oswego is theoretically at the far edge of Chicago sprawl. Kendall County isn’t considered a collar county, and that far out, you’re an exurb, not a suburb. But of what? Aurora is over 170,000 people and Naperville is over 150,000, and if you approach from a different direction, Oswego is now just part of a long chain of sprawl along U.S. 34 (Ogden Avenue) that takes you right into the heart of Naperville. There’s a brief concurrence of U.S. 30 and U.S. 34 at the extreme northeast border of Oswego, and I remember driving that at a time when it was pure farmland. Think of it this way: there are well over 1,000,000 who live closer to Aurora than to Chicago. Oswego might be an exurb to Chicago, but in effect, it’s more so a suburb to Aurora - Naperville.

And yet it’s also still a small town along the river, in a traditionally ultra-Republican part of the state, with a historic downtown and, in a couple of directions, a whole lot of corn and soybeans surrounding it. All of these new parks and schools cost money, which tells you that the tax rate is high, and the people flooding in want other kinds of amenities as well. How does supposed traditional conservatism maintain in an environment where there’s such a growing demand for expensive new government services? (And is it possible that Democratic politics today focus too much on places like this?)

Yeah, you didn’t think I’d manage to write about shoes, a highway concurrence, and the limitations of Democratic politics, all in summarizing a race, did you?