Category Archives: aging

50 Years of Running: Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Posted on December 15, 2021 by Christopher Cudworth

With nearly two months to spend before starting the Luther admissions job, I hung out at home musing about the future and doing a bit of maintenance running. By early July, I was restless and jumped into a 15K stretching … Continue reading →

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50 Years of Running: Graduation Blues

Posted on December 13, 2021 by Christopher Cudworth

With nothing left but nationals in the 1979 track season, I walked across the stage to pick up my degree with my parents present during graduation. I’d earned a precious “D” in that horrifically dry and accounting-based marketing class that … Continue reading →

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50 Years of Running: Sophomoric self-perception

Posted on November 17, 2021 by Christopher Cudworth

One of the most challenging aspects of being a runner is building a self-perception conducive to improvement. For starters, you must believe that it is possible to improve. Secondly, you must do the work necessary to improve. And finally, you … Continue reading →

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50 Years of Running: The Sectional Wall

Posted on October 7, 2021 by Christopher Cudworth

As the cross country season rolled to a close in November1973, our squad ran in a tough sectional in the Chicago suburbs and didn’t advance downstate. That would have been a stretch for a program that was just beginning to … Continue reading →

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50 Years of Running: Forgettable and Unforgettable

Posted on October 5, 2021 by Christopher Cudworth

Looking back at a running career is a bit kaleidoscopic. Memories sometimes mix and turn circles in the mind. Others bubble up unintentionally, driven by autumn light or the smell of the air on an October day. While many of … Continue reading →

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50 Years of Running: A Force of Nature

Posted on September 23, 2021 by Christopher Cudworth

Few activities put you more in touch with nature than distance running. That’s especially true in cross country, where the training often takes you into the woods and fields where it’s you, the air you breath and the ground you … Continue reading →

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50 Years of Running: Summer running, or not

Posted on September 3, 2021 by Christopher Cudworth

Coming out of spring track into the summer of 1972, I was excited to get back to playing baseball. The Elburn Babe Ruth team had a fantastically fun team the year before. We traveled to small towns like Hampshire, Huntley … Continue reading →

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50 Years of Running: Hilltop Encounters

Posted on August 26, 2021 by Christopher Cudworth

Perhaps a couple weeks into that first cross country season in 1971 at Kaneland High School, our team piled into a yellow school bus and traveled east for ten miles to a park known as Johnson’s Mound Forest Preserve. That … Continue reading →

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50 years of running: An introduction to pain

Posted on August 23, 2021 by Christopher Cudworth

This is the first in a series of articles chronicling fifty years of running since I went out for cross country as a freshman in high school. Some point in the middle of August 1971, my father drove me from … Continue reading →

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