Our sophomore team after winning the Ottawa Invitation in September, 1971. I led the team that day with a 4th place finish in 12:42 for two miles. And boy, I loved those black sweats. They fit well and were bad-ass looking in all circumstances. The guy named Merid Dates went on to become an All-American 1500 meter runner at Division III Principia College.
After the first few days of cross country practice as a freshman in high school, the team began to sort itself into shape. Every member of the Kaneland team had the goal of making the Top 7. After a week of practice, I realized that I would become part of that mix.
Runners are built of several different components. There is natural ability. That’s a key aspect of how well you’ll ultimately do. Then there’s the training, and the discipline that comes with it. Finally, there is competitive instinct. In other words: how bad do you want it?
That third quality was inherent in my nature. As the third of four athletic brothers, I also learned quite a bit about competition through sibling rivalry. But more than any of that, I was always a kid that could not stand losing.
That never meant that I would cheat to win. While my desire to come out on top was always front of mind, at the core of my soul was a deep sense of social justice. I loved to win, but also had a deep concern about equality that applied to every aspect of life. In fact, I got booted out of Cub Scouts because some kid cheated in kick ball and I called him out on it. The Den Leader blamed me for starting a fight, so I never went back.
I never felt guilty for winning in a fair contest. Frankly, I relished kicking ass in whatever sport we were playing. In baseball I was a pitcher, a position I loved for the constant stimulation of challenging batters at the plate and being in on every play. I was successful at that all the way through my junior year in high school when the choice finally had to be made between playing baseball in spring and running track.
So constant was the thrill of competition in my life that I could not be happy without it. I played basketball through my junior year as well, and was a three-sport athlete up until my senior year, when I competed in indoor track rather than basketball. Even in college, I organized a game between the official freshman team and a group of guys that I hand-picked to challenge them. We did well through the first half but the street ball we played wore out in the second half. Still, I scored 19 points and we made the point that some of us could probably make the real team.
I brought that competitive instinct to running, and the first moment that I recognized the combination of talent and competitive instinct was in seventh-grade gym class at Martin Meylin Junior High in Lampeter, Pennsylvania. Our teacher had us run a 12:00 time trial as part of the overall fitness testing program he’d contrived. The reward system was a set of satin stripes that were affixed to your gym shorts. A red stripe was the lowest. A white stripe was the middle. The blue stripe was the best. I wanted that blue stripe more than anything.
But I knew that I was weak in the pullup category so I had to make up for it with a great run in the time trial. We ran on the cinder track in regular old gym shoes, but I found a groove early and ran 8.25 laps, a bit better than 6:00 per mile.
In 8th grade at Kaneland Junior High, I ran the half mile as there were no mile races at the time. My time of 2:27 was respectable and won a few races. But I was no world-beater.
Thus I had something to prove going into freshman cross country. By the third week of practice I was positioned as the third guy on the Varsity squad. That was how I finished in the first race of the season. For the rest of the year, a pair of sophomores and I would move up and down from the Varsity to the Sophomore team depending on the meet and our potential to place at either level. We won the Ottawa Invite for the sophomore squad and the Little Seven Conference title at the sophomore level as well. The rest of the 16-17 meets we ran (it was a lot of competition) were Varsity events for me.
Early in the season, the coaches doled out running spikes to everyone on the team. I was quietly handed a set of Puma shoes. They were soft as silk, and made from kangaroo leather. I looked up at the coaches upon opening the box and realized the vote of confidence they were giving me. It also came with a bit of pressure, of course. But somehow they knew I could handle it. Still, I heard a few snarky comments from teammates about the fact that some “freshman” was given such a nice set of spikes. But damnit, I proved myself week in and week out.
Formative experiences in high school cross country. You go out and compete, do your best, and learn.
However, it was a pretty tough schedule (18 meets) for a first-year cross country runner. As competitive as I was, the training and racing did wear me down a couple times. While competing for the Varsity on a hilly course in Oregon, Illinois, I bonked out and had to stop. I recall Coach Larry Eddington finding me on the course. I was kneeling on the grass plain exhausted from all the running. As he approached, I worried that I was in trouble. Instead, he told me, “You’ve been doing a great job. Don’t worry about today. It’s only one race.”
That was a lesson well-learned about the nature of competition and our ability to sustain it. Even with all the training and discipline built up over a month-and-a-half of cross country, my fourteen-year-old body had hit a limit.
That’s a lesson every runner has to learn. Our competitive instincts are vital to success. But even those can’t carry us through every situation in running.
I walked back to the team bus with Coach Eddington. Coach Born walked over and gave me a hearty pat on the back and a knowing smile. It felt good to know that those men and my teammates understood that I while I was an ardent competitor, I wasn’t perfect, either. And that was okay.
The next race I bounced back and ran well. We all need to learn how to deal with failure or loss along the way. All feed into the realm of competitive instincts. Because while we excelled at our level, I also recognized how many runners were better than we were. In some respects, I feared those guys. Learning to manage those fears is a big part of becoming a better runner. We’ll take a look at those instincts in the next installment of 50 Years of Running.
This prairie hill may well be what Johnson’s Mound looked like before its current crown of trees grew tall.
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 name describes it well. From a distance, the hill isn’t much to look at. It is a lump in the landscape covered in tall trees that have grown up over the last century. Somewhere back in time it was likely covered in prairie grass, and before that, nothing but a pile of gravel left behind by glaciers 10,000 years ago.
At some point in its recent history, the property comprising the Johnson’s Mound forest preserve was a farm, probably with cattle on it. But the trees are too tall and the soil on top of the gravel likely too shallow to support crops like corn or beans. Besides, who wants to plow a hill with a 10% grade on it, and soil rife with stones and gravel?
The county installed thin asphalt road through the preserve that loops north from the parking lot, winds through the primeval-looking woods, then turns sharply uphill in a vicious little bend. From there, it is uphill for perhaps a quarter mile. Near the top, the grade jumps to 9%, a real soul-tester.
First hilltop encounters
That gray day in 1971, the school bus dropped us off at the forest preserve that day and sat idling in the parking lot as if to taunt us. We were there to run hills in preparation for the fall cross country season.
Surely the upperclassman had been there before. Or perhaps not. All I recall was a bit of shock when we ran that first loop around the road. My legs had never experienced anything quite like that first climb. Or the next. And the next. Those hilltop encounters were true character-builders.
That hill training was vital to our racing plans that fall. The Kaneland cross country course at Elburn Forest Preserve started with a quarter mile run on the flats leading to a long climb up another glacial hill. The grade changed from 3% to about 9% in the final 100 meters. Then the road dipped back down the north side of the preserve through deep woods. It was a rather epic experience racing on that course. The crunch of gravel under our long spikes accompanied by the crunch of autumn leaves as the seasons changed. But it was the hill that made that course so unique and tough.
So we ran a workout or two at Johnson’s Mound to prepare for the rigors ahead. I recall barely being able to look our coaches in the face after that hill workout. It hadn’t gone that great for me. Other guys on the team proved to be better climbers than I. That’s the thing about cross country running that you learn with time. It is important to learn your weaknesses and if possible, train to cover them up.
Dutchman’s breeches grow alonside the loop road in early spring.
Years after high school as a journeyman road racer, I returned to Johnson’s Mound to do hill workouts. By then I was a young man of 21-24 years old. I’d competed in college cross country and my times and fitness capabilities were much more mature. I’d start at the southeast opening of the woods and race along the black strip of asphalt leading to the bottom of the hill. Then I’d run up that hill as quick as I could. My repeat workouts often consisted of 6-8 loops at .85 miles per loop. The rest interval consisted of a jog down the front side of the hill toward the main road and back around again.
Running hills alone in a quiet preserve delivers a sense of intimacy. You join with the environment in ways that other training does not provide. I wore racing flats for those hill workouts, because I wanted to be as light and agile as possible. There was a 1:1 relationship between how fast I could run that loop from bottom to top and how ready I was to race on the roads. If I could complete the hilltop encounter in 3:00 or less, I knew that I was super fit and ready to go. Built up by that type of training, my times in the 10K dropped from 33:00 down to 32:00 and finally to 31:00 in three years. And, I was unafraid of any hill that I encountered. These days I also go cycling on that hill, and the tests are similar.
Robins and hermit thrush on the loop road in April after a spring snowstorm covered Johnson’s Mound.
Yet there are also times when I visit Johnson’s Mound for different reasons. It is a great place for encountering nature in all seasons. In winter, the road is closed but the birds don’t know that. I’ve also found robins and hermit thrush feeding on loose worms after an April snow. Come spring, the wildflowers are profuse: wild ginger, bloodroot, Dutchman’s breeches and trout lily. In summer the wood thrush and scarlet tanagers sing in the woods. One year, a pair of Swainson’s hawks nested over the road. They are a rare species in Illinois, with the only known breeding pairs east of the 100th Meridien annually nesting here in Kane County, typically up by Hampshire. I like to think they chose Johnson’s Mound out of some ancient instinct about the prairie back in the day. They are typically birds of the Great Plains, with long, thin wings and a dark russet chest. “Not from here,” you might say.
Yet there are days when I just park and walk around the loop, with nothing planned except to soak in some woodland air. Even on cold, windy days the woods offer shelter. It is funny how the hard places sometimes offer the greatest shelter.
Hilltop lessons learned
I haven’t run up that hill in a couple years. Perhaps it is time again. It is the most difficult and humbling experiences that teach us the most and motivate us. They help us overcome that feeling of “I can’t do it.” At least, that’s how it is the world of running. Perhaps that makes us runners all a bit weird. We are a widespread band of misfit boys and girls seeking pain and finding pleasure in it. Until you’ve gone that distance uphill when it feels like gravity hates your guts, it is hard to describe why it feels so good to jog down the other side and try it all over again. It makes me laugh to think that I’ve been returning to that sharp little hill all these fifty years. It means something to me.
Many great figures in history and religion found their gods on the mountaintops. Yet sometimes it only takes a lump in the landscape to peel back the layers of reality and find the soul within. Hilltop encounters are the best for that reason, and I thank those fifty years of running for giving me plenty of them.
My first organized sports experience was the Local 285 baseball team in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
As a kid I wasn’t happy about being told what to do. My father was a bit authoritarian in his approach, and something in me always fought back. Classic father-son stuff, really. Nothing that millions of kids in the 60s and 70s didn’t also deal with.
For all my resistance to fatherly guidance and the exasperation that often came with it, none of those instincts carried over to the world of sports. The baseball team for which I tried out as a ten-year-old kid had plenty of rules to follow. No playing softball at all. That harmed your hitting. No swimming on the day of baseball games. Too easy to get tired out. Don’t wear the uniform except on game days. That included the red hat with the oval Local 285 union emblem on the front. I was proud of that hat, because I’d earned it by making the team the second time around.
So I respected the rules, then learned the fundamentals of baseball through constant drills in practice. We were taught how to bunt properly, and how to slide into bases. I dreaded sliding practice those first few sessions because the side of my hip was got bruised and the skin was an abraded mess. Then one day, I ran toward the base and felt a sweet spot. From then on, sliding was not an act of fear, but a point of pride. I could slide into the base and pop back up on my feet in one smooth motion. That came in handy whenever the ball was overthrown. With a pop-up slide, you could run to the next base and into scoring position. Learning fundamentals was part of the discipline of playing baseball the right way.
I learned the 1:1 relationship between discipline and success with that baseball team. We won the prestigious Lancaster New Era baseball tournament, and I pitched the team to an 8-6 victory in the second game of the series. There wasn’t much to me in those days except a wiry frame and a strong arm, but that was enough to become a solid contributor.
Discipline afoot
I hit Play in another sport.
I brought that respect for discipline to the world of running as well. Our coach Rich Born gave us a handout with a list of guidelines on how to be a better runner. One of the “rules” was avoiding soft drinks such as Coke during the season. And from the first day of practice through the end of cross country season, I didn’t touch a Coca-Cola or any kind of soft drink. Other runners volunteered their experience and the value of that rule. “Coke gives you sideaches,” a teammate warned me.
I knew what sideaches felt like. I didn’t want them. Avoiding Coke was not a hard rule to follow. It didn’t require much discipline.
We were got some dietary advice as well, such as avoiding eggs for much the same reason as we didn’t drink Coke. It was thought that eggs could cause sideaches as well. So I didn’t eat them either. Later in life, we learned that the cholesterol in egg yolks isn’t that good for you. So who knows?
Despite all these sensible directions, some kids on the team neglected them on occasion. Minutes before an invitational on our home course at Elburn Forest Preserve, I watched one of our runners scarf down a greasy donut offered to him by one of the parents carrying a big box of pastries.
“What are you doing?” one of our guys asked.
“What?” the donut eater replied. “I’m hungry!”
“You’re going to barf that up,” someone said, and we all laughed. He didn’t exactly barf. But he did run horribly with that awful feeling of food nearly coming back up. I remember Coach Born shaking his head with a mix of disgust and amusement.
All about discipline
It’s not a stretch to say that everything about running is a discipline. Granted, that’s a word traditionally associated with a form of punishment. But there’s another meaning to the word as well. To excel at a discipline is to work at achieving a high level of proficiency. That’s the type of discipline we’re talking about here. From the get-go, that’s how I viewed running. Not as a punishment, but as an expression of will and control of mind and body. It was also a source of freedom in many respects.
That doesn’t mean I was never forced to run as a form of punishment. In eighth grade gym class, I refused to play badminton for some reason. The gym teacher Bob Welke turned to me and said, “Fine, you can run the whole hour then.”
Little did he know that I would relish that hour as an act of defiance and expression of personal discipline all at once. Perhaps my entire running career, even my entire life, has been a balance between acts of defiance and expression in different kinds of disciplines. That’s true in writing. In art. Even my trips afield to study or count birds have long been a counterculture discipline.
Occasionally I’ll drive or cycle past the Kaneland High School campus and recall the many laps we did around the grass. We wore a rut between the trees in the campus perimeter. That was evidence of our discipline, but also an act of defiance by a bunch of skinny young men who didn’t always fit the perception of what it meant to be cool or manly.
But we learned how to run, and faster. That was the appeal of discipline.
Finishing a race for Kaneland Cross Country with Kirk Kresse
The first few weeks of freshman cross country season in 1971 were rife with tests of many kinds. Building endurance takes time. Yet the days keep coming despite sore legs and a growing sense of overall fatigue. Our coaches Rich Born and Larry Eddington kept a close eye on the condition of everyone on the team. I’m sure there were some shin splints and other small injuries to address. All I remember is a hunger building in me. A hunger to beat other people in running as often as I could.
That’s the strange thing about cross country. The people around you are all teammates, yet it is your job to run faster than them every day. At the same time, it’s your job to push those ahead of you to become better. That sort of competition brings a certain amount of respect. But I’ll admit to a sense of superiority building within me as our team sorted itself out.
In cross country, there are “types” of runners just as there are “Houses” in the Harry Potter world of Hogwarts. The Sorting Cap of distance running groups runners into four basic types as well.
There are Endurance runners. They may not be that fast but you can never lose them. They keep plugging from start to finish.
There are Haymakers. They run “hot and cold” on given days. You never know if they’re going to beat you, but often show up at key times.
There are Journeymen. These are the guys and gals who come to the sport of cross country from other running and sport disciplines. Back in the day they included sprinters in track and even basketball players running to get in shape for their sport. The sport welcomed and absorbed them all.
Then there are the Pure Runners. These are the core distance competitors who likely also run the longer events in track and field.
Our team at Kaneland had all these types of runners on it. One of the guys I most admired was a senior named Jeff Johnson. In track he was a fast sprinter, pole vaulter, and long jumper of top calibre. Yet here he was out running cross country with his lean frame, perfect “apple” calves and tall socks pulled up to his knees.
The teammate that mentored me some was a tall Adonis named Kirk Kresse. His Greek heritage showed in his olive skin. He was a finely built guy with muscular arms and legs. He’d become an All-State half-miler while at Kaneland, yet in cross country he spread that speed out over three miles.
I liked him because he also had a smooth, almost soothing voice. We sat together on the bus to some meets and I recall him relating that his eyes were getting worse for distance sight, so he’d pulled his eyelids taught and that seemed to help him see better. He made me laugh more often than not, and had the genuous nature of a guy that did not care if I was a year younger than him. In those days, that class judgment was common and sometimes brutal. I appreciated Kirk for his open-mindedness. It also proved the other value of cross country and running as a sport. You’re most respected for what you do than any other value.
Leadership
Kirk was my main competitor for second spot on the team. The top runner was a pure distance runner named Bill Creamean. He was a soft-spoken young man of fair complexion and a low-slung stride that caused him back problems during his senior year in high school. He put in tons of summer training miles and showed up for cross country in fine shape. He was the prime example running dedication and focus, a fine role model that I never quite emulated in approach.
I showed up that freshman year with zero training miles in my legs. What I did bring to the sport was a summer rife with games of basketball, baseball and riding a Huffy 3-speed all over the town of Elburn morning, noon and night. In some respects, that mix might have been the right diet of activity for me.
In any case, I learned how to apply myself in running on a daily basis. There’s a fine art to being tested and standing up to the micro-pressures of distance running. The split-second decisions of whether to fight off a competitor or let them go and catch them later. The will to push the last bits of intervals and stay with the bunch. The determination to stand at the line every day and say to yourself, “I can do this.” And then go do it.
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 our house in Elburn, Illinois to the Kaneland High School campus in the middle of still-green cornfields three miles away. The drive might have been a bit quiet that day. I had expressed interest in going out for high school football late that summer. My father was adamantly against any of his boys playing that sport, or wrestling. He considered football unnecessarily dangerous to the joints and wrestling, simply inelegant.
Chris Cudworth and Greg Cudworth with trophies from the Elburn Punt, Pass and Kick competition.
That meant I didn’t really have a choice about whether to go out for football or not. Not happening. Yet something in my teenage brain, hormones and a desire to impress girls, most likely, convinced me there was still a chance. I’d won the local Punt, Pass, and Kick competition in Elburn and competed at the District level, where I did pretty well. That gave me the idea that I could be a quarterback or some other glory position. I was fast afoot, agile and quick, and reasoned that football was mostly about passing, running and making diving catches. That’s what I’d done all the time while playing with friends.
My father knew the game of football was about something completely different. He’d seen friends of his with torn-up knees and lifelong injuries. That was not a fate he wanted for any of us.
My father Stewart Cudworth in 1971. He was 45 years old at the time with four boys.
For these reasons, my next eldest brother had run cross country the previous fall as well. In an ugly twist of life’s fate, our family moved from Pennsylvania to Illinois the summer before his senior year. Back east in Lancaster, he’d been a steady goalie in soccer, played basketball in winter and was a pitcher in baseball. The Kaneland sports program offered neither soccer in the fall or baseball in the spring. Accustomed to a three-sport regimen due to family tradition, my brother ran cross country in the fall and track in the spring.
I was so preoccupied that year dealing with 8th-grade social and sports activities that I never attended one of my brother’s meets. He related to me recently that he struggled at first getting used to distance running. By season’s end he was reaching the coveted Top 7, even earning a few points toward his Varsity letter.
None of this occurred to me as my father drove our 1965 Buick Wildcat out Keslinger Road to Kaneland. I was still torn about the whole football thing. We arrived at the school and he walked to the locker room with me. Then placing a firm hand on my neck, he said, “You’re going out for cross country, and if you come back out of that locker room, I’ll break your neck.”
Christopher Cudworth doing his best 8th Grade Philosophical look.
That may seem like an inauspicious way to begin a running career, but it’s the truth. The previous year in 8th grade I’d been one of the top 800-meter runners, running 2:28 with basically no training. So I knew that I could run pretty well. Back in Pennsylvania, I’d run 8.25 laps in a 12:00 gym class time trial, the best in the school. Even before that, the coaches on my baseball team made me do extra pushups to keep me from lapping the rest of the team during the end-of-practice running drill out to the center field light pole and back.
Entering freshmen year at Kaneland, I was a skinny kid of about 125 lbs. at nearly six feet tall. The team issued a set of black and white running flats with gum rubber soles. The coaches gave us a few encouraging remarks and we set off running together in a pack to warm up. After that, the pace picked up, and we all got our first season’s introduction to pain. I loved it.
Up until cross country my freshman year, baseball was the main sports occupation in life.
We covered perhaps six miles that first cross country practice in mid-August, 1971. My lungs hurt a bit and my legs too, but I was never bored. That was the key thing to me. I liked the feeling whenever there was something going on “in the moment” and competition to be had. The side benefit is that any anxieties I felt that day or beyond seemed to vanish in the wind. I was tired when finished, but relaxed in a way that made all of life seem to make sense. Of course, sensations like that only last so long…
When practice ended my legs throbbed in happy exhaustion. I dared to take a sip of the warm, iron-infested water that flowed from the Kaneland faucets. It had a strong sulphur taste and I nearly gagged. After we showered and changed, the line of cars showed up to take everyone home.
Except me. I walked out on the parking lot and remembered then…what my mother had told me as my father and I left the house that morning. “You’ll have to walk home today, Chrissy. Your father will be at work and it’s my first day of teaching in St. Charles.”
I stood there in the mid-morning heat wondering what to do next. The rest of the team had slipped into cars and rode away like spirits into the cornfield void. There was no one even left to ask for a ride home. So I walked slowly out to Keslinger Road as the sun beat down on my head and started walking home. My legs were aching and I felt a mad thirst coming on. The road edge was slanted gravel that made walking on it difficult. That meant I had to walk inside the white line on the road and step off when a car or truck came rushing by. I squinted in the sun and kept trudging on in my worn out Converse basketball shoes.
Chris Cudworth with Kaneland coach Richard Born and top runner Bill Creamean in fall of 1972.
I don’t recall if we had an afternoon practice that day. Yet by week’s end we were running double workouts. There was a ton to learn about the more intense schedule of high school athletics. Like how to suffer and come back for more.
Often enough, the shorts and jock I’d worn that morning would still be wet from the first workout of the day. A few guys came down with jock itch for that reason. We’d climb in and out of our running shirts and shorts as time demanded, day after day, as fitness improved.
We ran the campus perimeter again and again, or ran on the track and did intervals on cinders marked by ghostly white lines from the track season before. The weather reeled back and forth between late summer heat and the first hints of fall. We ran through dew so thick out gum rubber soles slipped and slid. Yet we kept on. Stride after stride.
Then I came home one day and told my father. “I like cross country. I think I can do pretty well.”
This time of year is one of the best for cycling with golden flowers and blue skies abounding.
Last weekend was a great chance to indulge in serious mileage on the bike. While I’m not a mega-mileage kind of guy these days, I still relish the chance to get out there and see the wheels spin beneath the bike.
The first ride was a mutual training gig with my wife Sue and a host of triathletes from Madison Multisport coached by either Steve Brandes or Cyndi Bannink. We enjoyed a great introductory dinner at their home on Friday evening and rose super-early to get in a swim in downtown Madison.
Rising at 4:00 a.m. isn’t anything new to me these days. That’s when our cat Bennie likes to be fed, so I pop up, pop open a can of cat food for his breakfast, and pile back into bed.
On Saturday morning we woke at 4:00 a.m. as triathletes are also wont to do in preparation for a race or early morning practice, but it felt a bit tougher as the day before I’d also gotten up at 3:00 to drive a relative to the hospital in Chicago for a procedure. I was back home by six a.m. on Friday, but it’s always tough to get back to sleep after staying awake to drive 80+ miles.
The water felt cool but not cold as we slipped in following a pre-swim talk about the 500-meter course with its buoys and floatie cones. Sue is a much faster swimmer, so I waited a bit to wade up to my shoulders and start freestyling into the sunrise.
It’s been a while since I wore a full wetsuit and the sensation surprised me. Pleased me, actually. The swim was smooth and relaxing if a bit slow. But I swam straight as can be for most of the course, then climbed out and got stuff ready for the ride to come. We’d heaped our gear in the car haphazardly due to the early rise and sleeping in a bit by accident. I sorted through all the crap to assemble myself as a cyclist with 70-80 miles to ride.
Once we got on our bikes, the morning air was cool and pleasant just like the lake water. The sun was up and Sue’s Zoot suit shone like a blue-green gem as she pedaled ahead of me. She bought me a complementary kit and added this gem of kit for herself for our riding.
We know the Madison Ironman course nearly by heart from “stick” all the way around the 40-mile loop from Verona to Mt. Horeb to Cross Plaines and back. While the scenery is familiar, the enjoyment is balanced by the challenging terrain. My tri-bike does not have a climbing gear on the cassette like my Specialized Venge, and I plan to remedy that soon. So i focused on full pedal strokes as we climbed and pinched my knees on the top bar as we descended. It’s been almost ten years since my bike wobble accident in Spring Green, Wisconsin, but I never want to repeat that adventure.
Sue wasn’t crushing the pace due to the fact that she was planning a two-loop day totaling nearly 100 miles, so we cruised along together and conquered the “three bitches” late in the Ironman Loop and arrived back in Verona with energy to spare. We refueled, traded hugs and a kiss and parted ways as I was riding back into town on the Stick.
As I rode back into town, I gave thought to the fact that Ironman Wisconsin may move from the fall to the spring. Apparently, the Ironman organization engaged the city of Des Moines, Iowa and Madison, Wisconsin in a bidding war to see who would gain the coveted September race slot. Des Moines outbid Madison, and that city will likely host a great race, as we learned from the Half Ironman they put on this summer. But the loss of a September slot for Madison is sad. There is a great tradition up there with thousands of triathletes visiting the city from April through fall to ride the course, stay in the hotels, spend money on meals and support the bike shops tied to the September event. It seems like the City of Madison didn’t take everything into account or else succumbed to the raw value of money over the more intelligent choice to invest in the future and consider opportunities for even greater growth. If the conservatives nipping at the State of Wisconsin all the time overruled the liberal instincts that made Madison such a great place all these years, shame on them. The tradition and epic nature of that fall race was not something to dump for a few mere dollars. Perhaps there is something that can still be done. But I also think there’s room for both races in September. Some people would choose an easier Des Moines course over the tougher Madison race. I think they should both go off in September.
The real deal
On the way back into town last Saturday, I got buzzed by some jerk in a tiny white sedan who also roared close to a row of cyclists ahead of me on the road. So perhaps the ugly conservatism of backroads politics is affecting the Madison decision as well. We’ve been harassed in the past by trucks and people filming cyclists far out in the country where it’s easy to pass unless a stubborn strain of selfish jerkism appeals to the driver and passengers. That brand of narcissism is rife in this country right now. Choosing to feel inconvenienced when there’s plenty of room for accommodation through the simplest actions is what half of American seems to thrive on. Hence the pandemic of the unvaccinated and the reality of insurrection.
Wrapping it up
My plan was to finish up 80 miles with a loop around the lake, but the roads on the way back to Madison are so wretched and bumpy that my shoulders were a knotted mess by the time I arrived at the lake parking lot. I switched into running clothes and was about to go out for a run when a couple that I’d seen during the late stages of the ride revealed that they’d lost their car keys somewhere out the road.
We discussed what they planned to do and I offered to drive them anywhere they wanted to go. The two truck arrived and the stuck Subaru they own was dragged onto the flatbed truck and they decided to go with their Crosstrek to the dealership and get things resolved.
Once the vehicle was safely loaded and I knew they had a plan, I drove out to meet Sue at Verona. She was experiencing some new bike seat issues at nearly a hundred miles and was ready to call it a day.
Despite such challenges, riding in Madison is always a treat. Sometimes it comes with a menu of problems ranging from flats on railroad track to dead Di2 batteries, but we always have fun in the end.
Everybody Rides
Come Sunday morning, I was back on the bike with friends to pedal the Everybody Rides fund raiser loop from St. Charles out into corn country and back. My buddies advertised it as an “easy” 62-mile ride, but I knew better than to expect a slow pace. The group we joined dialed it up to an average near 20 mph and kept it there for mile after mile. My body actually felt great and my legs on the flats were efficient and strong.
When it came to the two big climbs nearing the finish however, the muscle fibers deep in my thighs showed fatigue from the day before. The rest of the riders took off in a “horse smells the barn” finish with five miles to go, but I was content to spin up the hills and tear down the backside in a tuck position to close the distance again.
Back at the park, we chowed on burgers and pasta, salad and sweet corn… washed down with a beer and a hard seltzer or two. The morning was cool and the mid-day temps turned warm and gracious as a summer day can be. After driving a friend home with his bike, I tooled back to our place and showered. Then I crawled on the bed next to my wife who was drained from the day before and enjoyed a nap with the kitty at our feet and the dog basking downstairs in the afternoon sun.
I’d ridden 130 miles in two days and had a good nap to show for it. What better weekend could there be?
A drawing and message by my daughter Emily from elementary school. Looks like she won!
As a young father in my late 20s and early 30s, I made the decision to back off heavy training to concentrate more on making a living and being a good father. That doesn’t mean I quit running altogether. It just meant giving up the 80-mile training weeks because that amount of running would not have been fair to my wife in terms of taking care of our children.
She knew that running was good for me overall. Having met in our early 20s, she saw many of my best days and some of the worst when it came to racing on the roads. From 1981 through 1985, I raced between 10-25 times each year, with a peak competitive schedule of 25 races in 1984. We were married in 1985.
Our first child was born in October of 1986. Fatherhood arrived with more daily activities than I’d previously experienced. Between feeding my son and changing diapers, driving him to daycare when she went back to work and picking him up at the end of the day, life was suddenly a string of commitments.
I still kept running. Sometimes it was early in the morning. Other times right after work while the kids were playing and I had 45 minutes to an hour to train.
When my daughter was born three years later the commitments didn’t exactly double, but by then I had developed a far mellower outlook toward running in general. Racing was reduced to 2-3 times a year. Running was 4-5 times a week. Finding time for workouts was challenging, but it worked out.
I never liked racing when I was half in shape. That’s what people in our running group used to asked me on weekly Saturday morning group runs. “Are you still just fit enough to get fit?” a former competitor once scolded me.
“Yep,” I’d say.
A lean and mean young dad on the road.
It wasn’t that we were running slowly. Some of those Saturday runs dialed up to six-minute-per-mile pace. That’s quick, but anyone that has raced at 5:00 pace per mile can tell you there’s a major difference when running sixty seconds faster per mile. I knew that my intensely competitive days were through.
The other hard part about finding time for workouts in those era was balancing work and fitness. Occasionally I’d sneak in a workout during the lunch hour, but the idea that daytime workouts contributed to productivity was not yet accepted in the work world. As an employee in sales and then marketing, there were quotas to fill and anxieties to manage. Running with a guilty conscience never felt good to me.
I was already an anxious person by nature. Ironically, to my nature, running actually helped manage those ruminative thoughts. Despite my conflicted conscience, finding time to work out during the day actually made me a better employee in many ways. Often while running I’d come up with a solution to some marketing challenge. It also helped my self-esteem to wind up some daytime endorphins. I’d be much more relaxed in presentations and sales calls.
As my children grew up, they noticed my love for running of course. Fitting it into the schedule came with a different type of guilt as I tried to balance parenting choices with how long I got out to run. That meant I frequently kept a strict schedule, telling my closest training partner and friends, “I can run from 6-6:45, but I have to be home by then.”
One friend gave me grief about that quite often. Sometimes he wouldn’t be ready when I arrived, or not even changed into running clothes. Then I had to wait. On more than one occasion I took off without him.
Ten years later, when he was raising kids of his own, he called one day and said, “Hey, I owe you an apology. I used to give you shit about going out running. My son is here literally clinging to my ankle telling me not to go. I’m sorry.”
In the summer of 1986, about to become a father for the first time.
These days all our kids are grown up, but sometimes there is still a tug and pull between us over what time to work out, and where. At this stage of life, we’re far more blunt about needs and time commitments. With age comes honesty.
Way back when I was training hard there was a phrase from the book Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving that used to cycle through my head. One of the main characters in the book was a wrestler urged by his coach, “You’ve got to get obsessed and stay obsessed,” he’d tell him. That was the key to success in his mind. For many things in life, that is true.
When it comes to finding time for workouts, here’s a bit of sage advice. There’s more than one kind of success in this world. Sometimes we gain more by giving up our most selfish concerns. I think that’s what these many years of training have taught me.
These days, I enjoy being a training companion for my wife. I admire her regimen and discipline. She never had the chance in life before to test her athletic abilities. Now she’s doing well. In a couple weeks, we’re traveling to Ironman 70.3 Worlds in St. George, Utah. She qualified this summer and has earned the chance to compete there.
I’ve been happy to be her support crew at races this year. My own racing schedule might come down to a late-September Olympic triathlon, and I’m happy with that. I find time for my workouts between other things in our schedule. I’m actually becoming a better husband this way, taking care of daily chores including feeding and walking the dog, emptying and filling the dishwasher, getting the pup to Doggy Daycare or the Bark Park, and making meals so that she can fit in the workouts she needs to succeed. I’ve been known to cry happy tears when she races well and is satisfied with her effort.
We stopped during a ten-mile to take our picture with the bulldog I painted in the City of Batavia.
I do several workouts with her every week, usually a long ride on Saturday and a long ride on Sunday. During the week I fit workouts in where time permits. I do have flexibility in my schedule and find the time as it fits my writing and work obligations. This morning I ran five miles starting with a 2.5 mile warmup at 9:30 pace followed by a quicker 2.5 miles back at 8:23 pace. It was humid as hell and tough to run, but I congratulated myself on making a good decision to keep it simple and not turn it into a humidity sufferfest.
I laugh because during my warmup miles, a guy about my age rolled past doing probably 9:00 pace. I know because I tracked him a few hundred meters before the 2.5 mile mark. Part of me was tempted to follow him out the next half mile and scorch him on the way back. Instead I turned around at the planned 2.5 miles and left him in peace.
The same thing happens often in cycling. I love a good 25-30 mile ride or two during the week, and sometimes I get passed by a young buck or some determined type. If they say hello, I never mind. If they roll past like they’re all superior, my instincts are to run or ride them down. I’m still wired to a competitive scale, but also have a governor on those urges.
Last Saturday we covered 50 miles at 18.6 mph. We rode with friends and took turns leading. We were all different athletes with different aims, but the ride went run. Finding time for workouts is often a matter of making workouts a good time. For fitness. For thinking. For life.
I got out the Shop-Vac to clean up the stick shavings our dog left on the living room carpet last night. Somehow she snuck a ten-inch stick into the house without our noticing it, and chewed a big section off the end.
It didn’t take long to vacuum up the remnants. But when I picked up the Shop-Vac to take it back to the garage, I lifted it the wrong way and tweaked the fascia in my lower back where the muscles connect with the sacrum.
I’ve waited a bit to see if they’d loosen up or tighten too much to run. Eventually I went out the door to run and got my answer. Too tight. A risk of actual injury.
So here I sit, All Dressed Up and staying home for the moment. Better to be prudent and recover a bit than to go out and force a run when those connective tissues are in a state of mild tension and spasm.
The hawk talisman around my neck provided inspiration at a critical time in life.
Heading into my senior year at Luther College, my fitness was good and I’d used the summer to clean up my act. I cut off the long, thick hair that shrouded my face. Dumped the thick glasses and got a set of contact lenses. Shaved the scraggly Lasse Viren beard and ran some smart mileage heading into the season.
The final touch was creating a talisman of sorts to inspire my efforts in cross country that fall. I was out running one afternoon and found an adult red-tailed hawk that had been struck and killed by a car. As a field biology student and a wildlife painter, I’d done taxidermy on a few raptors and decided to bring the hawk home to save its parts for future painting reference. I know. That’s illegal.
Chris Cudworth photo of a red-tailed hawk at a roadside memorial marker.
I’ll admit to breaking conservation laws. No one without a permit is allowed to collect or keep feathers or body parts of any raptor species. But I’d already collected a great horned owl and done some great paintings using its feathers for reference. I also kept dead songbirds in our freezer at home to thaw them out and do paintings. In my younger mind, these efforts were justified. I was celebrating the creatures I’d found. While human society often lays waste to wild things, the artist in me sought to bring them back to life.
Studying the red-tailed hawk I’d found made me appreciate its evolutionary history even more. The thick, gnarly feet were equipped with knobby scales to grab prey and hold it. And those talons. Lord, those talons.
As I completed my drawings, the bird began to get a bit ripe. I carved up the hawk into wings and feet and disposed of the decomposing body out in a field. Then I got an inspiration. Wouldn’t one of those talons look great on a silver chain?
I took the talon to a jeweler that obviously knew or cared nothing about game laws. They mounted the talon in a silver semi-cube and slipped it onto a flat silver chain. I loved it.
I’ve written about how that talon and chain provided inspiration going into my senior year cross country season. It symbolized the fact that while I knew that running would take most of my time that fall, I’d someday get back to painting the birds I loved.
The season went great that year. I soared like never before. We placed second in the nation in cross country that fall.
That talisman was a link between my love of nature and the freedom that running afforded me. In many respects, running was the activity that cleared my head of anxiety and depression. It was also the yin and yang of my existence. While the act of running brought freedom, the commitments of competition required year-round dedication. Such is the conflicted nature of life. We are all wild things at heart yearning to break free yet bound to our commitments in order to survive.
My photo of a red-tailed hawk after snatching a vole from a roadside grassland.
The life of a red-tailed hawk is quite similar. While their high, soaring flight is an inspiring thing, it also has a highly-evolved purpose. Hawks excel at flying because they are predators. If they don’t catch something to eat each day, they may die. Young birds struggle at first to be good hunters. The mortality rate of young hawks is thus high.
This past weekend I watched a trio of red-tailed hawks, two adults and one young bird, soaring above the wetland behind our house. They were vocalizing as they tipped and turned in the wind. I brought my camera out and took photos of the young bird. It is already equipped to be a grand predator, yet still obviously being weened off the food supplied by the parents.
There is no way to count the number of red-tailed hawks I’ve seen over the years. They are one of our most common buteo species, found from coast-to-coast and from lowlands up into the mountains. Many’s the time that I’ve been running or riding on a country road when a red-tail launches from a telephone pole and flies ahead of me. Yet I have also seen them flying through and over the skyscrapers in Chicago, lifted on thermals on bright fall days and sitting sullenly on snow-covered branches on cold winter days. They are my longtime friend, these red-tailed hawks. We have seen many of the same places together.
The juvenile red-tailed hawk soaring over our home last weekend.
The day that my wife and I first visited the house where we now live, I walked out back to see what the yard was like. At that moment, a large red-tailed hawk swooped into the yellowed cottonwoods at the edge of the wetland. It perched there and called. Quite likely it is one of the same birds seen soaring over our place this weekend. My wife walked out to find me staring at the hawk up in the tree. When I turned around, there were tears in my eyes. “Oh, so you like this one?” she inquired.
Like all half-assed journalists, I didn’t really confirm the facts about whether cross country meets will still be hosted at Kane County Forest Preserves.
After receiving a nicely worded email from Alan Edgecombe correcting me about the status of cross country meets at forest preserves, I emailed Monica Meyers, Executive Director of the Kane County Forest Preserve District, and she wrote me back, in simple and complete language.
“The District has not changed anything. Cross country scheduling is in full swing within our preserves throughout the county.”
That means regularly scheduled meets at most locations will likely go on as planned. In the case of the Leavey Invitational, it is moving to the new Settler’s Hill site.
About those facts, sorry folks, I was wrong!
Changing management plans
The part about which I was correct on cross country meets being held at area forest preserves is that some are being managed with an emphasis on restoring natural areas rather than mowing everything in sight. Even old golf courses are being repurposed, as indicated by this excerpt from the KCFPD Minutes:
The board conducted a tour of several district properties, concluding with a visit to the former Deer Valley Golf Course. “The fifth and final site was the Deer Valley Golf Course. This site was recently closed, and is currently being transferred, back to a natural state. This site consists of the clubhouse, machine shed, and a small out-building. The Sub-Committee has determined that the club house may be of some value and would like to have this structure advertised to be sold and moved by the purchaser. The Sub-Committee has determined that the remaining out-buildings do not serve as viable assets to the District, and recommends the structures be removed.”
The lesson here is that “change happens.” The other lesson is that partial sentimentalists like me should not be so fast to jump on a rumor rather than checking our facts first.
New facilities
As for the course at Settler’s Hill, Al Edgecombe provided some nice information about the value of that new facility:
“We do believe that for many schools, the Northwestern Medicine Course will be a very good and cost-effective option. Also, regarding the amount of money spent on the Course, let me point out that no tax dollars were spent on the Course. The Settlers Hill landfill closed in 2006, and dumping fees that had been collected for 30 years had accumulated in a fund that could only be used for restoration of the site to a recreational use. In 2011, Kane County put out a call for proposals on how to use the site. My organization, the Chicago Area Track & Field Organizing Committee (CATFOC), was one of about a half dozen organizations that came forward with ideas. Over the next several years, all of the other ideas were deemed infeasible, and CATFOC moved forward with the county to build a championship-caliber cross country course for the local middle schools, high schools, and colleges. The Course will be open to the general public when meets are not being held. The Course includes options for 2 km, 3 km, 4 km, 3 miles, 5 km, 6 km, 8 km, and 10 km. The Course has been built to the specifications required for NCAA and USATF championship events, and will serve very nicely for large high school invitationals like the ones held at Detweiler Park in Peoria every Fall.”
Christopher Cudworth Photo
I’m still a fan of cross country and look forward to attending meets at Settler’s Hill. There are few more inspiring sights than a pack of runners launching from the starting line, or seeing dozens of kids finishing their race no matter what place they achieved.
Proposed: Rejected
I’ll close with a sort of backwards commentary on the proposal I submitted to the Kane County Forest Preserve District at the behest of a former administrator. It was reviewed and deemed unfeasible in the face of resistance to cyclists using the Settler’s Hill property due to perceived disturbances by mountain bikers making trails in the far-eastern section of Fabyan Forest Preserve. That plot of woods backs up to homes built on the former site of an institutional home facing Route 25 in Geneva. The mountain bikers built jumps and trails in the preserve perhaps without permission, and their presence also angered residents who might have felt their privacy was being invaded.
At any rate, without that knowledge, I’d proposed a cycling facility to be sited at Settler’s Hill. I still think it’s a good idea. But it’s one that will never likely take place.
Midwest Cycling and Recreation Center
Settler’s Hill, Kane County Illinois
Christopher Cudworth photo
PROPOSAL
Establish a recreational and competitive cycling facility utilizing the unique topography of the landfill property at Settler’s Hill in Geneva, Illinois. The purpose is to provide a magnet facility for cyclists in the Greater Chicago region and Midwest.
Site Benefits:
Settler’s Hill is a valuable and somewhat commodity for Midwest Cyclists with its potential for elevation-oriented roads and the climbing pattern possible. Plus, the opportunity to provide isolated, traffic free training and racing over the large potential acreage on the property is unique in the region. It is also accessible by bike from the Metra Train Station in Geneva, enabling Chicago and suburban cyclists to reach the site with ease through public transportation.
Benefits of a Cycling Focus:
In terms of recreational and competitive facilities in the Chicago market, there are only two principle cycling-dedicated locations. The Village of Northbrook has the track known as the Velodrome while the region around Palos Hills hosts mountain biking single tracks. Neither of these serve a very large and active market of road cyclists seeking challenging yet safe competitive opportunities. There is no single self-contained cycling center in Northeastern Illinois.
The Cycling Market
Cycling in the Chicago region is an immensely popular activity, reflected in the commercial market for bikes in this region. According to the website ChicagoBikeShops.com, there are more than 200 bicycle shops in the Chicago market. In fact, the far western suburbs within 25 miles of Geneva, Illinois hosts more than 50 bike shops. In the Tri-Cities market alone there are 15 bike shops. These commercial businesses serve a diverse cycling community of recreational, serious, competitive and professional bike riders. The global bike company SRAM also has its headquarters in the Chicago market.
Community involvement
In the Tri-Cities market, bike racing has also hosted events of considerable scale, bringing thousands of participants and fans to communities such as Geneva, Batavia and St. Charles. Bicycle Heaven in Geneva and Mill Race Cycle in Geneva has both hosted national scale bike races attracting international fields. Sammy’s Bike Shop in St. Charles has also hosted large-scale multi-category bike racing for women and men. Athletes By Design in Wheaton and Batavia hosts multiple cycling criteriums, road races and time trials in events held in Batavia, Winfield, Itasca and rural areas where true road races can be staged. All these these events enjoy popularity but do require substantial logistical support including street closures, police support and other community resources.
The Pelladrome
However, within two miles of the existing Settler’s Hill landfill facility, there is a site where bike racing is conducted weekly from April through September. The course is set up on the roads of an underdeveloped industrial center behind the Pella Windows manufacturing facility on Fabyan Parkway one mile east of Kirk Road. This three-quarter mile loop of underutilized industrial streets is where Prairie Path Cycles (Batavia/Wheaton stores) and Athletes By Design cycling team host weekly criterium bike racing. These events are conducted under the legal management of American Bike Racing and attract more than 200 athletes (male and female) in racing Categories from novice (CAT 5) to Category 1 and 2 cyclists training for national competitions.
The “Pelladrome” as it has been named has been in operation for more than seven years and attracts cyclists from throughout the Chicago region. Thus there is an established tradition and market for cyclists to visit the western suburbs for bike racing.
Settler’s Hill Location
The existing market for bike racing and training is further supported by Kane County’s unique location at the western edge of the Chicago. Hundreds of recreational and serious cyclists use the existing Fox River Trail system for training and fitness riding. This trail is already connected to the Settler’s Hill site by a full bike lane along Fabyan Parkway.
Kane County’s existing current land us offers a developed eastern corridor and open territory (agriculture and low density housing) west of Randall Road. This plan allows for the country plan for access to suburban populations yet provide access to desirable bike trails and country roads where cyclists prefer to train.
Settler’s Hill site
The site itself at Settler’s Hill with its prominent rise in topography and planned running trails is ideal for a collaborative use for cycling and running. Hill training and racing opportunities are rare in the Chicago area. This makes Settler’s Hill an exceptional attraction for cyclists and fitness enthusiasts of many types.
The Settler’s Hill site offers the unique opportunity to install both perimeter and “peak” trails. Asphalt trails would provide road cyclists a “safe haven” for training and criterium work. The opportunity to install a profit center facility to serve food and drinks, sell cycling supplies and provide a mechanical support service could be established as part of a cycling consortium with area bike shops.
Recreation Categories
In addition to cycling, the Settler’s Hill site could provide designated hours for recreational walkers and runners to use the cycling roads. In winter these same paths could be groomed for cross country skiing without adverse impact on the installed roads or facilities. Forest preserves such as Herrick Lake in DuPage County and Arrowhead Golf Course already offer cross country skiing. But none have the challenging topography of the potential Settler’s Hill property.
ECONOMIC BENEFITS
OF THE SETTLER’S HILL CYCLING OPERATION
Midwest Cycling and Recreation Center (Proposed title)
Creates a “destination” site for recreational activities
Serves as a direct revenue source through fees and membership
Generate revenue through on-site retail and rental
Invite sponsorship revenue from area businesses
Drive event and ticket sale revenue from March-November
Taxpayer Offsets
Property becomes self-sustaining profit center
Reduced usage fees for Kane Country residents/registrants
Funding can be pursued from bike advocacy groups
Corporate naming rights
Summary
The purpose of the Midwest Cycling and Recreation Center would be to provide an exceptional recreational facility that serves as a return on investment to Kane County Residents. It’s goal is to create opportunities for safe and unique cycling experiences for racers and recreational riders throughout the Midwest.
Midwest Cycling and Recreation Center
Settler’s Hill, Kane County Illinois
PROPOSAL
Establish a recreational and competitive cycling facility utilizing the unique topography of the landfill property at Settler’s Hill in Geneva, Illinois. The purpose is to provide a magnet facility for cyclists in the Greater Chicago region and Midwest.
Site Benefits:
Settler’s Hill is a valuable and somewhat commodity for Midwest Cyclists with its potential for elevation-oriented roads and the climbing pattern possible. Plus, the opportunity to provide isolated, traffic free training and racing over the large potential acreage on the property is unique in the region. It is also accessible by bike from the Metra Train Station in Geneva, enabling Chicago and suburban cyclists to reach the site with ease through public transportation.
Benefits of a Cycling Focus:
In terms of recreational and competitive facilities in the Chicago market, there are only two principle cycling-dedicated locations. The Village of Northbrook has the track known as the Velodrome while the region around Palos Hills hosts mountain biking single tracks. Neither of these serve a very large and active market of road cyclists seeking challenging yet safe competitive opportunities. There is no single self-contained cycling center in Northeastern Illinois.
The Cycling Market
Cycling in the Chicago region is an immensely popular activity, reflected in the commercial market for bikes in this region. According to the website ChicagoBikeShops.com, there are more than 200 bicycle shops in the Chicago market. In fact, the far western suburbs within 25 miles of Geneva, Illinois hosts more than 50 bike shops. In the Tri-Cities market alone there are 15 bike shops. These commercial businesses serve a diverse cycling community of recreational, serious, competitive and professional bike riders. The global bike company SRAM also has its headquarters in the Chicago market.
Community involvement
In the Tri-Cities market, bike racing has also hosted events of considerable scale, bringing thousands of participants and fans to communities such as Geneva, Batavia and St. Charles. Bicycle Heaven in Geneva and Mill Race Cycle in Geneva has both hosted national scale bike races attracting international fields. Sammy’s Bike Shop in St. Charles has also hosted large-scale multi-category bike racing for women and men. Athletes By Design in Wheaton and Batavia hosts multiple cycling criteriums, road races and time trials in events held in Batavia, Winfield, Itasca and rural areas where true road races can be staged. All these these events enjoy popularity but do require substantial logistical support including street closures, police support and other community resources.
The Pelladrome
However, within two miles of the existing Settler’s Hill landfill facility, there is a site where bike racing is conducted weekly from April through September. The course is set up on the roads of an underdeveloped industrial center behind the Pella Windows manufacturing facility on Fabyan Parkway one mile east of Kirk Road. This three-quarter mile loop of underutilized industrial streets is where Prairie Path Cycles (Batavia/Wheaton stores) and Athletes By Design cycling team host weekly criterium bike racing. These events are conducted under the legal management of American Bike Racing and attract more than 200 athletes (male and female) in racing Categories from novice (CAT 5) to Category 1 and 2 cyclists training for national competitions.
The “Pelladrome” as it has been named has been in operation for more than seven years and attracts cyclists from throughout the Chicago region. Thus there is an established tradition and market for cyclists to visit the western suburbs for bike racing.
Settler’s Hill Location
The existing market for bike racing and training is further supported by Kane County’s unique location at the western edge of the Chicago. Hundreds of recreational and serious cyclists use the existing Fox River Trail system for training and fitness riding. This trail is already connected to the Settler’s Hill site by a full bike lane along Fabyan Parkway.
Kane County’s existing current land us offers a developed eastern corridor and open territory (agriculture and low density housing) west of Randall Road. This plan allows for the country plan for access to suburban populations yet provide access to desirable bike trails and country roads where cyclists prefer to train.
Settler’s Hill site
The site itself at Settler’s Hill with its prominent rise in topography and planned running trails is ideal for a collaborative use for cycling and running. Hill training and racing opportunities are rare in the Chicago area. This makes Settler’s Hill an exceptional attraction for cyclists and fitness enthusiasts of many types.
The Settler’s Hill site offers the unique opportunity to install both perimeter and “peak” trails. Asphalt trails would provide road cyclists a “safe haven” for training and criterium work. The opportunity to install a profit center facility to serve food and drinks, sell cycling supplies and provide a mechanical support service could be established as part of a cycling consortium with area bike shops.
Recreation Categories
In addition to cycling, the Settler’s Hill site could provide designated hours for recreational walkers and runners to use the cycling roads. In winter these same paths could be groomed for cross country skiing without adverse impact on the installed roads or facilities. Forest preserves such as Herrick Lake in DuPage County and Arrowhead Golf Course already offer cross country skiing. But none have the challenging topography of the potential Settler’s Hill property.
ECONOMIC BENEFITS
OF THE SETTLER’S HILL CYCLING OPERATION
Midwest Cycling and Recreation Center (Proposed title)
Creates a “destination” site for recreational activities
Serves as a direct revenue source through fees and membership
Generate revenue through on-site retail and rental
Invite sponsorship revenue from area businesses
Drive event and ticket sale revenue from March-November
Taxpayer Offsets
Property becomes self-sustaining profit center
Reduced usage fees for Kane Country residents/registrants
Funding can be pursued from bike advocacy groups
Corporate naming rights
Summary
The purpose of the Midwest Cycling and Recreation Center would be to provide an exceptional recreational facility that serves as a return on investment to Kane County Residents. It’s goal is to create opportunities for safe and unique cycling experiences for racers and recreational riders throughout the Midwest.
Midwest Cycling and Recreation Center
Settler’s Hill, Kane County Illinois
PROPOSAL
Establish a recreational and competitive cycling facility utilizing the unique topography of the landfill property at Settler’s Hill in Geneva, Illinois. The purpose is to provide a magnet facility for cyclists in the Greater Chicago region and Midwest.
Site Benefits:
Settler’s Hill is a valuable and somewhat commodity for Midwest Cyclists with its potential for elevation-oriented roads and the climbing pattern possible. Plus, the opportunity to provide isolated, traffic free training and racing over the large potential acreage on the property is unique in the region. It is also accessible by bike from the Metra Train Station in Geneva, enabling Chicago and suburban cyclists to reach the site with ease through public transportation.
Benefits of a Cycling Focus:
In terms of recreational and competitive facilities in the Chicago market, there are only two principle cycling-dedicated locations. The Village of Northbrook has the track known as the Velodrome while the region around Palos Hills hosts mountain biking single tracks. Neither of these serve a very large and active market of road cyclists seeking challenging yet safe competitive opportunities. There is no single self-contained cycling center in Northeastern Illinois.
The Cycling Market
Cycling in the Chicago region is an immensely popular activity, reflected in the commercial market for bikes in this region. According to the website ChicagoBikeShops.com, there are more than 200 bicycle shops in the Chicago market. In fact, the far western suburbs within 25 miles of Geneva, Illinois hosts more than 50 bike shops. In the Tri-Cities market alone there are 15 bike shops. These commercial businesses serve a diverse cycling community of recreational, serious, competitive and professional bike riders. The global bike company SRAM also has its headquarters in the Chicago market.
Community involvement
In the Tri-Cities market, bike racing has also hosted events of considerable scale, bringing thousands of participants and fans to communities such as Geneva, Batavia and St. Charles. Bicycle Heaven in Geneva and Mill Race Cycle in Geneva has both hosted national scale bike races attracting international fields. Sammy’s Bike Shop in St. Charles has also hosted large-scale multi-category bike racing for women and men. Athletes By Design in Wheaton and Batavia hosts multiple cycling criteriums, road races and time trials in events held in Batavia, Winfield, Itasca and rural areas where true road races can be staged. All these these events enjoy popularity but do require substantial logistical support including street closures, police support and other community resources.
The Pelladrome
However, within two miles of the existing Settler’s Hill landfill facility, there is a site where bike racing is conducted weekly from April through September. The course is set up on the roads of an underdeveloped industrial center behind the Pella Windows manufacturing facility on Fabyan Parkway one mile east of Kirk Road. This three-quarter mile loop of underutilized industrial streets is where Prairie Path Cycles (Batavia/Wheaton stores) and Athletes By Design cycling team host weekly criterium bike racing. These events are conducted under the legal management of American Bike Racing and attract more than 200 athletes (male and female) in racing Categories from novice (CAT 5) to Category 1 and 2 cyclists training for national competitions.
The “Pelladrome” as it has been named has been in operation for more than seven years and attracts cyclists from throughout the Chicago region. Thus there is an established tradition and market for cyclists to visit the western suburbs for bike racing.
Settler’s Hill Location
The existing market for bike racing and training is further supported by Kane County’s unique location at the western edge of the Chicago. Hundreds of recreational and serious cyclists use the existing Fox River Trail system for training and fitness riding. This trail is already connected to the Settler’s Hill site by a full bike lane along Fabyan Parkway.
Kane County’s existing current land us offers a developed eastern corridor and open territory (agriculture and low density housing) west of Randall Road. This plan allows for the country plan for access to suburban populations yet provide access to desirable bike trails and country roads where cyclists prefer to train.
Settler’s Hill site
The site itself at Settler’s Hill with its prominent rise in topography and planned running trails is ideal for a collaborative use for cycling and running. Hill training and racing opportunities are rare in the Chicago area. This makes Settler’s Hill an exceptional attraction for cyclists and fitness enthusiasts of many types.
The Settler’s Hill site offers the unique opportunity to install both perimeter and “peak” trails. Asphalt trails would provide road cyclists a “safe haven” for training and criterium work. The opportunity to install a profit center facility to serve food and drinks, sell cycling supplies and provide a mechanical support service could be established as part of a cycling consortium with area bike shops.
Recreation Categories
In addition to cycling, the Settler’s Hill site could provide designated hours for recreational walkers and runners to use the cycling roads. In winter these same paths could be groomed for cross country skiing without adverse impact on the installed roads or facilities. Forest preserves such as Herrick Lake in DuPage County and Arrowhead Golf Course already offer cross country skiing. But none have the challenging topography of the potential Settler’s Hill property.
ECONOMIC BENEFITS
OF THE SETTLER’S HILL CYCLING OPERATION
Midwest Cycling and Recreation Center (Proposed title)
Creates a “destination” site for recreational activities
Serves as a direct revenue source through fees and membership
Generate revenue through on-site retail and rental
Invite sponsorship revenue from area businesses
Drive event and ticket sale revenue from March-November
Taxpayer Offsets
Property becomes self-sustaining profit center
Reduced usage fees for Kane Country residents/registrants
Funding can be pursued from bike advocacy groups
Corporate naming rights
Summary
The purpose of the Midwest Cycling and Recreation Center would be to provide an exceptional recreational facility that serves as a return on investment to Kane County Residents. It’s goal is to create opportunities for safe and unique cycling experiences for racers and recreational riders throughout the Midwest.
