Category Archives: cross country

From allegiance to rivalry

Posted on December 18, 2019 by

In early 1973, right in the middle of my sophomore year in high school, our family moved 10 miles east from Elburn, Illinois to St. Charles. The rest of that school year I made a daily commute to finish the … Continue reading →

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A walk through the old running grounds

Posted on November 19, 2019 by

Yesterday was a wonderfully dank November day here in Illinois. I needed to pick up a prescription at the Meijer store in Geneva and drove up to the corner of Route 38 and Randall Road. Our dog Lucy came along … Continue reading →

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Self portrait of a determined young man

Posted on November 15, 2019 by

In November 1978 I was a senior at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. Our team had just placed second in the NCAA National Cross Country Championships in Rock Island, Illinois. I was fifth man for the team that day after … Continue reading →

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History in the making

Posted on November 10, 2019 by

The day after the 2019 Illinois state cross country championship, I turned to the website of my former employer, the Daily Herald, to find a story by Michael Eaken of the record-setting run by a Hersey high school senior Josh … Continue reading →

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Reeling in the years

Posted on October 7, 2019 by

“You been tellin’ me you’re a geniusSince you were seventeenIn all the time I’ve known youI still don’t know what you meanThe weekend at the collegeDidn’t turn out like you plannedThe things that pass for knowledgeI can’t understand…” Steely Dan–Reeling … Continue reading →

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The thighs don’t have it easy these days

Posted on September 6, 2019 by

Walking through our local Dick’s Sporting Goods store, I noticed a display for running gear featuring shorts with three different inseam lengths: 5″, 7″ and 9″. That might not mean much to most runners. But having emerged from the era … Continue reading →

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The high value of red meat and bones

Posted on August 27, 2019 by

We adopted a dog from Safe Haven, the rescue group that brings abandoned pups from Tennessee and Kentucky up to Illinois to find homes for them. We named her Lucy, in part after triathlete Lucy Charles-Barclay, a person we both … Continue reading →

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There has to be a cure for the current state of things

Posted on August 12, 2019 by

Coming off a week of taking powerful antibiotics to combat sub-lingual infection from a compromised tooth, I knew there was a risk that the balance of my good gut bacteria might be equally compromised. And sure enough, about six days … Continue reading →

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Not every race is a blessing, but every race holds a lesson

Posted on August 9, 2019 by

The photo above is as old as it looks. It is a snapshot taken by my father with one of his jury-rigged cameras in the late 1970s. My folks had come up to Kenosha, Wisconsin from our home back in … Continue reading →

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Learning to live with pain

Posted on July 31, 2019 by

Outside of the gates the trucks were unloadin’The weather was hot, a-nearly ninety degreesThe man standin’ next to me, his head was explodingWell, I was prayin’ the pieces wouldn’t fall on me ––Bob Dylan, Day of the Locusts The after … Continue reading →

Posted in Christopher Cudworth, competition, cross country, cycling, PEAK EXPERIENCES, running, swimming | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment