I was slated to run the Boston Marathon this year after an extended and difficult layoff from injury, and I had been looking forward to redemption. I ended up on the witness stand that day, giving expert testimony in federal court, a fulfilling and rewarding experience in its own right.

I viewed this unexpected bump in my plan as a sign to try something completely different. I took on the Broken Arrow Skyrace in Tahoe last weekend. I had never run a trail race, or a trail ultra, or a skyrace... so doing all three at once was certainly a crash course, and I went from an expert on the road to a newbie on the trails, a beginner all over again.

I learned a lot! I’m certainly much faster on the road than I am on trails (both absolutely and relatively), but in challenging myself in a new way, I also learned something about myself: I had a lot more fun in the mountains. There’s more to life than just trying to go as fast as you can all the time and measuring yourself against well-known benchmarks. Sometimes the rewards come when you give yourself permission to slow down, and even be bad at something at first.

Getting out of the comfort zone, challenging yourself, connecting with others who are giving it their best, exploring possibilities, and having fun along the way... That’s what it’s all about. I look forward to learning more about this amazing sport.

Running is not a skill sport. Just put one foot in front of the other as fast as you can. It requires no particular skill.

In fact, what separates the truly great from the rest of us has very little to do with skill.

Sure, it’s good for cardiovascular fitness, but it doesn’t make you particularly healthy in the excesses that some of us tend to indulge in. It doesn’t promote core strength, balance, stability, mobility, or so many of the things we need to fully participate in life as we age.

And despite all of the hype about it being good for mental health, I think that’s also only true in moderation. I think the sport also feeds directly into compulsive, addictive personalities and behaviors and can be downright damaging for people who have that type of personality (yours truly included). Compulsion to run can be just as destructive to our jobs, families, friendships, and relationships as any other addiction. Sometimes we joke about it as though it’s virtuous, but anytime behavior can turn to compulsion, it’s not great, irrespective of what the behavior is. And I discovered there’s a really fine line between virtuous habit and compulsive addiction.

After excesses in the sport caused so much damage to my psyche and physical health, I really wasn’t sure what the point of it was anymore. I didn’t care about running fast.

All of my friends would talk about miles and times and races and I would just glaze over... at times I felt oddly out of body, like I didn’t even know who I was or whether all of these runners I knew were even my friends, if I no longer cared about racing.

But actually, I think the fact that the sport is not a particularly impressive feat is what makes it special.

The fact that it doesn’t require much skill to do means that a lot of people can do it. Statistically speaking, most of us are pretty average at it, meaning that we all share a lot in common, as amateurs of different stripes. The average-ness of running is part of what makes it special; it’s instant community.

When I think about why the sport is important to me, it’s not really about my times, or even some race I ran.

It’s about all of the people I’ve met along the way.

Honestly...my relationship with running over the past three years has been rocky. I PR’d at Chicago in 2022 on a day much like today. Shortly thereafter, my health completely fell apart.

At that point, I decided I needed to make big changes. Running needed to look different in my life. I would fit running into my life and not the other way around.

So much self-doubt crept in as I searched for answers. Why was I doing this sport? It hurt...for years. I felt like I had nothing to prove. I kept doing it to stay healthy, but I wasn’t having much fun with it. Racing seemed especially pointless.

Part of the issue is that I was in such poor health, even though I was “fit”. A bigger issue was that I had been using running to escape things I didn’t want to face in my own life. And probably even bigger than that is that I had lost track of why I liked running in the first place.

I had to remember why I love this sport, and honestly that took awhile. It was hard to remember why I supposedly liked this activity when my Achilles were on fire all the time. And I thought, what’s the point of being in pain?

Trying to run fast is fun, and being able to run faster than a lot of people is sort of cool, I guess. A small fraction of people actually care. Ultimately, I like the shared humanity. The friendships. Because it makes me feel like I’m connected to something bigger.

Pacing put some puzzle pieces back together for me...it affected me profoundly, in ways that racing never has. I found meaning. Made new friends. Got to help others achieve their dreams. Felt connected to something so much bigger than myself.

After the race, a man came up to me and said “Thank you for helping me. In that moment, you gave me a boost and everything felt effortless, like I was five years old again, when my dad got me into running.” Today would have been his dad’s birthday.

This is what it’s about.

Start early, run near water and shade, go with the flow — and stop if you must!

Continuing the series on running in hot weather, in this post all talk about how to plan your route so that running in hot weather is more manageable. Heat radiates from the sun, from the ground, and from buildings; conversely, trees provide shade, and bodies of water can help cool the air.

Knowing where the sun is in the sky during your run; knowing where to find wind, shade, and cool air; and planning your route accordingly, can help you have a pleasant run, even when the weather is hot. Below are some of the tips I’ve discovered over the years how to plan a route when running in hot weather. I set on my run this morning

Start early, before sunrise if possible

While not strictly a tip on the geography of your route, planning the time that you go running is particularly important.

Temperatures early in the morning are typically pleasant, even in the hot summer months (though in some places, early mornings can still be extremely humid). But, the cool temperatures don’t last; get out early!

Even just a few hours can make a significant difference in temperature. This morning, I set out on my run at about 5:30 a.m., when the temperature was 65 degrees Fahrenheit, with a cool 10 mph breeze; it was extremely pleasant.You can see from the daily trend, however, that temperatures tend to rise rapidly in the morning hours and peak in the mid-afternoon before starting to cool off in the early evening. Therefore, your best bet is to try to get out as early as possible. In summer, I tend to look at the sunrise times and try to get out as early as 30 or 40 minutes before sunrise. It starts to get light out around that time, and actually the most beautiful parts of sunrise are often about 10 or 20 minutes before the sun comes up in any case. In addition to being able to run in daylight without the sun bearing down on you directly, you can enjoy the benefits of a beautiful sunrise.

Often, the most beautiful colors of the sunrise occur 10–20 minutes before the sun actually comes above the horizon. Get out there and enjoy it; you can get a beautiful view while at the same time avoiding the sun’s direct hot rays!

Finish into the wind

Pretty much all conventional wisdom on running suggests that you plan your route to begin into the wind, and finish your route with a tailwind. This is generally the right advice: You can really work up a sweat with a tailwind, and running the last half of your route drenched, into a headwind, can be demoralizing, especially in the winter. In cooler temperatures, starting out into the wind is absolutely the right thing to do—you can get extremely cold running into a cold headwind if you are already wet from sweat, and you’re tired, so running into a headwind is doubly challenging.

On the other hand, when temperatures are high, I’ve generally found that if the wind is light (i.e., less than about 10–15 miles per hour), it can be extremely pleasant to finish my run into the wind. In hotter temperatures, your body temperature gradually rises over the course of the run, and I’ve found that in the latter half of the run is when I really need to find ways to lower my body temperature—sometimes quickly. There are a number of strategies for doing so (see my earlier post on attire, where I discuss the benefits of a wet cap, or ice under the cap), but I’ve found that a cool breeze can often work wonders, particularly if the breeze is also in the shade. Wind direction can change, and so it’s helpful to check out the forecast to see how wind speed and temperature is likely to evolve over the course of your run.

Check the wind speed and direction before heading out on your run. In hot weather, finishing into the wind can make all the difference!

Below is an image of the wind speed and direction forecast for Chicago for this coming week from Weather Underground. Generally, given most of my routes are north-south, it looks like I’ll be having cross-winds for much of the week—almost ideal, since a cross-wind gives you a cool breeze the entire way!

Run near bodies of water, trees, and natural surfaces

Concrete, asphalt, and buildings retain and radiate heat. It’s thus best to avoid these surfaces as much as possible, especially after the sun comes up. One of the hottest cities I’ve run in is Washington, D.C.—all of the buildings are white, and much of the ground surface is also white, resulting in reflection of heat from just about all directions. In Washington, I often ran very early in the morning or very late at night to avoid the sun altogether.

On a hot day, running near water is the place to be. I’ll sometimes even go into the water towards the end of my route on a hot day. Here I am in mid-July, 16 miles into a long run and just out of Lake Michigan, before wrapping up the last few miles of the run. Feeling fresh!

**Seek out bodies of water. **Conversely, it is much cooler near water; water has a high specific heat, and so even on a hot day, large bodies of water are typically cooler than the air temperature. While jumping into the water is one way to cool off (certainly one I highly recommend, if you can pull it off on your run!), simply running next to the water can also have a significant cooling effect. As wind comes over the water, the water can cool the air, and the resulting breeze can be significantly cooler than the ambient air temperature. In Chicago, we are lucky to live near Lake Michigan, and so access to water is easy. Whereas in the cooler months and winter, I’ll often venture all around the city on my routes, in the summer I rarely venture far from the lakefront; in my experience the air temperatures right on the lakefront can easily be ten degrees cooler than just a few miles off of the shore. Many other cities—Austin, Boston, Washington, D.C., New York—all have river fronts or lakefronts that are favorites for runners. The vistas are nice, of course, but in summer, the cooling effect of the water is the real draw.

**Seek out trees and shade. **If it’s inconvenient or otherwise difficult to find large bodies of water to run beside, then trees are the next best thing. In Washington, D.C., Rock Creek Park is a great place to run in the summer, for example. In Atlanta, running near bodies of water was not an option—no large body of water exists in the city proper—so trees and parks were the next best thing; in Atlanta, one of my favorite routes was a loop through Grant Park on the southeast side, coming back through Inman Park, a large shaded neighborhood with tons of trees and parks.

Below is a photo of the Midway Plaisance in Chicago. In Summer, the trees along the midway offer a fantastic canopy of shade. I took this photo mid-day on July 18 (actually on a bike ride on the way to the farmer’s market); you can see that although the sun is fairly high in the sky already—even though it’s only about 9:15 a.m. in this photo!—the trees offer plenty of shade. Thus, if you can’t make it out at sunrise, the next best thing is often to find a place to run with lots of trees. And, despite what I said earlier, in the mid-morning, streets with tall buildings can actually be a decent place to run, as the sun isn’t high enough in the sky yet, and the buildings themselves can offer plenty of shade.

Even when the sun is high in the sky, parks can offer tree canopies that offer shade during a run. When planning your route, know where you can find stretches of shade and work these into your route.

Plan extra time to slow the pace or rest

It can be tempting to want to keep the same pace on your runs, even when it’s hot—but often, it is just not possible. A general rule of thumb is that for every 5 degrees Fahrenheit over 60 degrees F, your pace may slow by as much as 20 or 30 seconds per mile. In hot weather, I find it’s best to just run by feel. Over the course of a long run, your heart rate can sometimes continue to steadily climb. On hot days, I try to be especially mindful of how I’m feeling—I particularly watch for signs of heat exhaustion, such as feeling out of breath or lightheaded. If I’m feeling sluggish because of the heat, I slow down.

If it is very hot, I keep a close eye on my vital signs and watch closely for any signs of heat exhaustion. If I’m feeling short of breath and my pace is just a normal running pace (i.e., not a workout), and I feel hot, I immediately stop and find shade. Most running watches these days come with a wrist-based heart rate monitor; while they are often not entirely accurate in the absolute sense, I’ve found that they provide a great relative heart rate. If I do get tired from the heat and need to stop, I monitor my heart rate while I’m resting (preferably in the shade), and try to get my heart rate down as much as possible before re-starting the run. My resting heart rate is in the high 40s, and when running an easy to moderate pace, my heart rate will be in the 140s; over a long run on a sustained effort, it might get into the 150s. If I’m feeling zapped from the heat and need to stop, I’ll wait for my heart rate to come down to below 100 at least before restarting. Then, I’ll watch my heart rate as I start again. If my heart rate immediately spikes, it means that I need to rest a bit longer.

Know when to slow down, or stop

Note that this situation where stopping is necessary shouldn’t happen that often. I can remember it happening to me perhaps five times over the last decade or so. It is infrequent enough that I remember the specific instances. Here is one such example, of a 15-mile run in Princeton, New Jersey on August 21, 2016; I had just returned from Cape Town, South Africa the previous day (where it was winter!), and so I was not acclimated to the heat and jet lagged on top of that.

The red line shows my heart rate, peaking at 165 beats per minute or so just six miles into a long run. Not good! Time to slow down, rest, and take it easy. This run started at 11 a.m., when it was 82 degrees and sunny—a recipe for disaster. The pink line shows that I stopped 7–9 times in the last nine miles. I made it safely by slowing down to stop whenever my heart rate started to creep up.

The blue line in the plot above shows my pace, the dark red line shows my heart rate, and the pink line shows my cadence—steady at about 180+ steps per minute, so you can see where I stopped because the cadence dips. You can see that over the first six miles of this run, my heart rate slowly crept up from 130 beats per minute to 165 beats per minute, and my pace was essentially just that of a normal run. This is not normal, and absolutely something to watch out for.

Looking back at historical temperatures on that fateful day, you can see that when I started my run at 11 a.m., it was already 82 degrees and sunny, and when I finished the temperature was closer to 87 degrees. Over the last nine miles of this run, you can see that I stopped somewhere between seven and nine times; you can also see that my stops (dips in the pink line) coincided with spikes in my heart rate (the red line). I was keeping a close watch on my vitals and how I felt and did not hesitate to pull the plug as soon as things started to go pear-shaped.

This, of course, was not an optimal workout, but being mindful of my vitals and not being afraid to slow down when I felt the effects of heat allowed me to finish the run safely—and even reasonably strongly. My last four miles averaged about 8:20/mile—slower than my overall 7:46/mile pace over the course of the whole run—but I was able to finish, safely. Knowing when to slow down and stop is very important.

This post is about route *planning; *I included this example in this post because being able to slow down and stop is part of planning your time, and your day, so that you can fit in your run. The run above was only two hours of total moving time, but the elapsed time of the run was 2:38:40—this means that for a two-hour, 15-mile run, I incorporated 40 minutes of stopping time.

Note, again, that this is an extreme example, but I’ve included it to underscore the point that when you’re planning running routes for a hot day, you cannot be in a hurry—you need to plan extra time to slow down, stop, rest, and even bail out completely if necessary.

Summary

When running on a hot day, planning your route is critical. Follow these tips, and you’ll likely have a much better experience:

• Run early, before the sun is high in the sky—before sunrise if possible.

• Finish into the wind, so you can finish with a cool breeze to control overheating.

• Avoid concrete, asphalt and buildings; seek water, trees, and shade.

• Plan extra time to slow down, rest, stop, and even bail out.

By Nick Feamster on August 16, 2020.

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Exported from Medium on October 28, 2025.

There is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate gear.

In my last post on running in hot weather, I offered some pointers on knowing how to read the weather to help plan your run.

Use the Right Gear

In this post, I’ll talk about another important aspect of running in hot weather: wearing the right clothes. Ranulph Fiennes, a British adventurer, once said that “There is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing.” This aphorism is generally used to refer to winter, but it applies equally to summer weather as well. Below are a few tips I’ve discovered over the years about appropriate clothing for summer weather.

Wear a hat and sunglasses to protect you from the sun.

Summer days are long, and so even if you manage to wake early to beat the time of day when the sun is highest in the sky, chances are that you’ll be running underneath the sun for some portion of your run.

Even when the sun is low in the sky, it can still radiate a lot of heat!

The two most important articles of clothing I rely on when it is hot and sunny are a hat and sunglasses. Frankly, it’s tempting to want to ditch the hat in hot weather—heat escapes most easily from your head, and so in some sense wearing a hat traps heat. But a good hat can actually reflect some of that heat that is radiating from the sun, too.

**Choosing and wearing a hat. **Here are a few tips when choosing or wearing a hat (or head covering):

• Wear a hat that is white and breathable. My favorite hat in the summer is the Headsweats Performance Race Sports Hat. It is extremely lightweight; the material for the hat itself is like a very thin cloth; the bill is a bit more firm, and great for keeping the sun off of your face.

• *When passing through shade, briefly remove your hat. *Even a white, lightweight hat can still trap heat and make you feel hot. I’ve found that even removing my hat for a very short while when running through the shade can make a difference. Sometimes when I hit a shady stretch of the route, I’ll pull off the hat and hold it in my hand until I get back into the sun. This allows some of the heat to escape from my head, and since I’m in the shade I can do without the sun protection.

• Wet the cap, or (even better) use it to hold a bag of ice on your head. On a hot day, if I stop at a water fountain, I’ll often completely soak my cap as well. Even better are places that offer ice cold water stops (in Chicago, in the summer along the Lakefront Trail, the Chicago Area Runners Association is nice enough to set up stops with ice cold water; on some days, I probably put more water on my hat than I drink!). Wetting the cap with cold water has several effects. First, it immediately cools off your head (even better than removing the cap in the shade!). Second, the hat will remain wet for awhile as you continue running, and the evaporation will continue to cool you. On super hot days—or when racing on a hot day, such as the 2012 Boston Marathon—I’ve even taken a bag of ice and thrown it under my hat—a tip that Danny Dreyer gave me at the racing expo (he has a great book, Chi Running, that offers many useful tips, although I don’t think the ice-under-hat trick he gave me is in this book).

• *Alternatively, wear a cooling towel on your head. *At one point, I was a huge fan of cooling towels. I received one as a gift at one point and so gave it a try. I found it has some tradeoffs with the hat—on the one hand these cooling towels are designed to retain moisture a bit better than a hat, and they really do keep your head cool. You can also take it off of your head and drape it over your neck, which is quite effective, as well. Yet, they have one significant drawback: There is no bill to shade your face from the sun. Your mileage may vary; on a hot, humid day where you’re not running in direct sunlight (e.g., overcast skies, through trees), the cooling towel is probably the better option. If the sun is bearing down, I almost always prefer a hat.

Running in 80F at 5 a.m. last weekend. A white reflective hat, sunglasses, and lightweight wicking shirt are indispensable on hot days like this one!

**Sunglasses. **I’ve also found sunglasses indispensable when running in the heat and sunshine. While it’s possible to spend a lot of money on sunglasses, I’ve found that any pair of sunglasses whose lenses filter ultraviolet light work just fine. Oddly, the distinguishing features for me are (1) being lightweight; (2) being snug enough that I can take them off and have them securely rest on top of my hat’s bill when I’m running—there come times, such as rain, tunnels, etc. where you need to take the sunglasses off, even on a sunny day. I also prefer inexpensive sunglasses; that way if they scratch, break, fall of my hat, or what not, it’s not a big deal. The cheapies filter ultraviolet light just as well. I’ve been running with a pair of Duco polarized sunglasses that has lasted about a year; before that, I had a couple of pairs of PS2 shades that were fairly durable although those seem to be out of production now.

Sometimes, you’ll want to remove your sunglasses during a run. One feature of sunglasses that I like is the ability to rest them on my cap snugly, so that they don’t bounce around while I’m running.

Wear light-colored, breathable clothing.

This tip goes hand in hand with the previous one, where I discussed the benefits of a light-colored hat. Your running shirt should also have the same characteristic—light (preferably white or some other light color) and breathable. I’ve found that I don’t have much preference for how tight the shirt fits, and on super humid days, I actually prefer a shirt that fits a little bit tighter (see the section below on chafing). More importantly is that it is light colored and wicks moisture away.

I don’t have specific recommendations for shirts that I rely on, since 90% of my shirts are ones I’ve acquired from running races, but I seem to own a lot of Nike Dri Fit running shirts like this one that I’m pretty happy with.

It can be easy to overlook the importance of following this clothing strategy for shorts and socks, but having socks that wick moisture away are equally important. On humid days in New Jersey and Washington, I’d find that my feet would sweat profusely, and before long my shoes might even start sloshing as if it had rained! For this reason, it is important not to overlook the importance of shorts and socks.

My favorite summer (and spring and fall!) socks hands down are the Balega Antimicrobial Compression Fit Socks. I cannot overstate how comfortable these socks are; they make you feel like you’re running on a cloud! More importantly, though, for summer, is that they are incredibly effective at wicking away moisture. I’ve stepped in puddles with these socks on a run; 10–15 minutes later, my feet will be completely dry.

In terms of shorts, I generally tend to pick whichever pair of shorts is at the top of the drawer, but some shorts I own are lighter (and more resistant to chafing) than others. I tend to go with medium length shorts—enough to give a little sun protection, but not so long as to get in your way and rub against your legs. Too much fabric can definitely be a bad thing. I have a pair of Nike Dri Fit running shorts that I really love; they are lightweight and have a liner that keeps obstructions out of the way, as well. They also have a nice zip pocket in the back for a key and even room for a running gel or two (the pocket is too small for a phone).

Prepare for, and prevent against chafing.

Chafing will put a damper on your run, fast. Chafing occurs when something—usually an article of clothing—gets wet and continually rubs against you as you’re running. Everyone’s body is shaped differently and so it is hard to know exactly where you will chafe until it happens. But, you will know where you chafe—and you’re in for an especially rude experience if you happen to hop in the shower before you’ve noticed it has occurred!

Because chafing coincides with moisture, it can happen year-round. I’ve had it occur after a run in the rain (summer, winter, etc.), as well as on humid days. (It’s not necessarily absolute with temperature, either—summer is a popular time for chafing, but another time I’ve discovered can be bad is when seasons transition, and you’re wearing tights but sweating a lot.)

Chafing can sometimes be so bad that it can affect you during the run itself; this is bad news: not only is it inherently painful, but it continues to be painful on pretty much every step, because whatever is rubbing to cause the chafing in the first place is likely to continue to rub as you run. Aside from being absolutely no fun at all, chafing might have prolonged effects, including more serious injury, if it causes you to alter your gait while running as you attempt to avoid the pain.

I’ve found that the best plan for chafing in the summer is to assume it will occur on any given day and liberally lubricate the areas that are prone to chafing. For me (and likely for many others), the areas most prone to chafing are the inner thighs and the nipples. Body Glide works pretty well and is fast and easy to apply. If I’m in a rush, I’ll typically just take a stick of Body Glide and make a few quick swipes on the legs and nipples. But actually I’ve found that nothing really beats simple petroleum jelly. I even keep a small travel-size container of this stuff in my travel kit now.

By Nick Feamster on August 1, 2020.

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Exported from Medium on October 28, 2025.

With summer now in full swing, it’s important to be prepared to run in the heat. An important aspect of preparation is knowing how to read the weather like a runner.

While there is much to love about the summer—sun, warm weather, and time outside—summer weather also brings high temperatures and (in many cases) humidity. But, even on the hottest days, the heat shouldn’t have to put a damper on your running plans. I’ve been running in hot weather for nearly 20 years now in a variety of cities across the East Coast of the United States where the summer temperatures and conditions can get pretty brutal: I’ve run through summers in Atlanta, Washington, D.C., New York, and Boston. Now I live in Chicago, where the temperatures and humidity can get just as high, although Lake Michigan and the lake breeze definitely moderate the weather.

Over the years, I’ve discovered a collection of tricks for running in hot weather—some I’ve learned from reading other books and articles, some from talking with other runners, and some by trial-and-error. There are a bunch of tactics I’ve learned—as it turns out, far too many to include in a single article.

So, I’m breaking hot weather tips into a series of four articles:

1. Knowing the weather. Reading the weather sounds straightforward, but there are some simple tricks in looking at the data that can make a big difference.

2. **Planning your route. **When it is hot, your choice of where to run can significantly affect how uncomfortable your run will be.

3. **Managing hydration, body temperature, and recovery. **Staying hydrated (but not over-hydrated!) is important to make sure you’ve got enough gas in the tank to complete your run.

4. **Using the right gear. **Simple and counterintuitive tweaks to your attire can also make your run in the heat significantly more pleasant.

I hope this series of articles will be useful to you as you take on the summer sun! This article will cover the first topic. The others will follow shortly over the course of the summer (in time for you to take advantage of them!).

How to Read the Weather

Before heading out on your run, it’s vital to check the weather, but reading the weather is more than simply checking the current temperature. It’s important to understand the many facets of the weather. I look a four more subtle aspects of the weather to understand how the run is likely to feel: (1) dew point, cloud cover, and wind direction; (2) how the temperature will trend over the course of the day (and run); and (3) where the sun will be.

Reading Current Conditions: Check the dew point.

I’ve been running seriously since the mid-2000s, and so I’m somewhat amazed to say that I did not discover the importance of dew point until 2015 (!). Frankly, I think it was the move to Washington, D.C. that did it—Atlanta has a reputation for heat, but I’ve never experienced anything quite as soupy for running as a D.C. summer. With the birth of our first child, I was doing a lot of runs pretty late at night, and one evening I went out in about 72-degree weather.

Within a couple of miles I felt totally tapped out, and I was completely soaked; 12 miles into a long run, my heart rate was continually spiking, and the pace felt hard. I asked a friend who often gives me running tips: “Am I out of shape?” His answer:

“Lots of things have to work harder when it’s hot and humid. When you were running last night, the dew point was around 70 degrees, which is really high, and for me is a very good predictor of an unpleasant run. Your sweat doesn’t evaporate well, so you keep getting hotter, and your heart is also busy pumping blood to the skin in a futile effort to cool you off. So you are both overheated and working harder just to move blood around to something other than your running muscles. It was a good idea to run in the dark, but it’s not sufficient when the humidity is so high. All in all, I would not even bother to try to run more than 90 minutes when the weather is like that.”

Ever since then, I’ve paid extremely close attention to the dew point. Runner’s World has a very helpful reference on dew point, which I’ve pasted (and linked) below. In addition to the absolute dew point, the difference between the temperature and the dew point also will give you some indication of how unpleasant the run will be. For example, 70 degrees may sound cool, but if the dew point is 69, that means that the air is just above the temperature at which air becomes water—in other words, extremely humid—at which point all of the conditions above that prevent sweat from evaporating and lead to overheating apply. For some reason, when I lived in Princeton, New Jersey, such a one-degree differential was extremely common first thing in the morning—it was essentially possible to know the dew point simply by checking the low temperature for the day. If nightly lows are an approximation for the morning dew point, you are in for tough times.

It was humid this morning: 78F, with a dew point of 74F. One effect of high dew points is that sweat does not evaporate easily, as you can see by all of the beads of sweat on my face. In Washington, DC summers, I’d sometimes come indoors from a run and someone would say, “I didn’t know it was raining!”… It wasn’t raining.

Since moving to Chicago, I’ve found that wind and large bodies of water can be significant mitigating factors for high dew point. This morning, when I went for a run, it was 78F at 5 a.m, with a dew point of 74F. Based on the Runner’s World chart and everything I’ve said above, you’d expect to be wringing out your shirt every 10 minutes, but the lake breeze does work wonders. In another post in this series, I will talk about route planning—but the short story is that when the dew point is high, **where you choose to run makes a big difference. **During Chicago summers, I’ve tended to keep my routes as close to Lake Michigan as possible. When I lived in DC, I kept my runs near the Potomac whenever possible; in New Jersey, I often drove to the shore when the weather was hot and humid. (In Atlanta, you’re out of luck!)

Most weather applications will show you dew point, either on the default screen or somewhere near the temperature readout—find out where to read it, or find an app or website that makes it easy to check the dew point.

Runner’s World has a great article on training in the heat, which includes this chart on dew point.

Reading the Forecast: Look at hourly trends.

While the weather forecast is often reported for the entire day (or, perhaps for morning, afternoon, and evening), it’s also important to remember that weather can change pretty dramatically over the course of the day: sometimes a storm rolls in and will cool temperatures very quickly; on other days, a cool morning can rapidly become hot, and so the difference between running at 5 a.m. and 6 a.m. can be significant. It is thus important to check the trends carefully. I tend to look at head multiple days: Doing so helps me plan my running attire a day or two in advance (stay tuned for an entire post on what to wear!), as well as know whether I’m going to want to get up particularly early on a given day to avoid the heat.

Weather Underground is my favorite site for checking the trends in weather metrics over a ten-day period. You can even hover the mouse over a particular hour to get specific details, as I’ve done here for 5 a.m. on July 18.

Many sites will of course give you an hourly or ten-day forecast. Some are better than others. My personal preference is Weather Underground’s ten-day forecast, which provides the graphic above. At a glance, it is possible to see all of the relevant metrics—and, importantly, how they will change over the course of a day. You can see, for example, that this morning (July 18), it got pretty hot pretty quickly, from the sharp vertical red line. I pay close attention to the green line (dew point), and tend to hover my mouse over the 5 a.m. part of the day to see what dew point will be on any particular morning. As we can see, it’s going to be pretty soupy again tomorrow, but after that the few point drops to more tolerable levels.

The other things I look closely at in this chart are wind direction, cloud cover, and precipitation. As you can see, the “daily summary” of weather will sometimes suggest that it will be rainy or stormy, but a closer look at any given hour of the day shows that there are certain times of day that are better than others, as far as staying dry. As for me, I tend to consistently run first thing in the morning, and so this mainly serves to mentally prepare me—I can know the night before whether I’m going to be waking up in a rainstorm, so I can have the jacket ready, and more importantly, so that when I hear the rain in the morning I already knew it was coming and so I’m less tempted to call off my run on account of weather. (This “mental preparation” of looking ahead at the forecast also holds for cold weather running. More on that in the winter!)

I’ve only recently started paying more attention to wind direction for summer running. In other places I’ve lived, especially on the East Coast, it has mattered less, because the wind has been less pronounced. In Chicago, there can be a significant lake breeze, and so I find that it can be quite nice to plan my route so that my run ends into the wind—the exact opposite of what you want to do in winter, by the way!

**Double-checking the conditions. **In addition to watching the hourly trends, I also double-check the conditions right as I am getting out of bed. I use a projection alarm clock that projects the outdoor temperature on the ceiling so that I can know right as I am waking up what I will be stepping into once I head out the door.

Reading Astronomy: Know where the sun will be.

The location of the sun relative to you and your route is absolutely critical. Sun has a cumulative heating effect: as it beats down on you, it causes your body and skin temperature to slowly rise. At first, it can feel fine, but before you know it, you’re overheated, which can be not only uncomfortable, but also extremely dangerous.

Of course, it’s possible to wear sunscreen to protect against the damage caused by the sun’s ultraviolet rays, but sunscreen is imperfect, and more importantly it does nothing to keep you cool. In a future post, I’ll recommend some items of clothing I sometimes rely on to keep the sun’s rays at bay. For now, let’s talk about how to plan for sun.

When it is going to be hot or humid, I always like to know (1) when sunrise will occur; (2) the sun’s path through the sky; (3) whether there will be any cloud cover. The Weather Underground ten-day forecast, as I discuss above, is my go-to source for determining whether my run is likely to have any cloud cover.

Failing cloud cover, your next best bet is shade. In Atlanta, I was running more often in the middle of the day and in late afternoon, so I came to be extremely knowledgeable about which routes and streets in the city offered the best shade, and which parts of the run were likely to be more exposed to the sun. I planned water and breaks on route segments that I knew were going to be more exposed, but in general I just tried to design routes that stayed in the shade. Although Atlanta doesn’t have the moderating effects that a large body of water offers, it does have a disproportionate amount of greenery and trees for a city of its size, and so seeking out shade became my main strategy.

Yet, trees only provide shade if they come between you and the sun! Therefore, it’s often not quite enough to know where the trees are but also where they will be casting shadows at different times of day. Of course, you can start to pick this up by experience if you run the same routes in your neighborhood at different times of day—keeping in mind that the angle of the sun changes throughout the year, and the best time to gather data is in the summer itself! In addition to experience being the best teacher, though, there are also some useful websites and mobile applications that can help you determine the path of the sun through the sky—and from there you can figure out where shadows are likely to be. The angle of the sun (and its height in the sky) can help you figure out which side of the street will be shady, whether there will be shade at all, etc.

**Sunrise—and dawn (civil twilight). **The best angle of the sun for hot weather is when the sun is below the horizon. So, the first thing to do is get in the habit of tracking sunrise and sunset times, and to know that the sun tracks a much longer path through the sky in the summer. For example, in the summer in Chicago, sunrise comes early—anywhere from about 5:15 a.m. to 5:45 a.m., from June through August.

Sundroid tracks sunrise, sunset, and—importantly—civil twilight.

But, importantly, civil twilight (“dawn”) typically starts about 30 minutes before sunrise. Civil twilight is technically the part of the day when everything is “bright as day” (i.e., not night), but the sun is not yet above the horizon. In the summer, it is a particularly nice time to run—you can take advantage of the extra long summer day and get out on an early run, it’s light out, and the sun isn’t up yet so you’re not getting cooked.

I use the “Sundroid” Android application to track both sunrise and dawn, but just about any astronomy (or weather) application will give you these basic statistics. Sundroid is a great application for tracking sunrise, sunset, and — importantly — civil twilight, which tells you not only when the sun is coming up but also when it is actually going to be light out. On a day like today, getting 30 minutes of running in before the sun actually comes over the horizon can make a huge difference. I also make heavy use of the date bar at the bottom, which allows you to quickly reference these statistics for any date. (Many applications offer these features, but I find the user interface for Sundroid the most intuitive and easiest to read.)

**The sun’s trajectory. **Paying attention to — or at least being aware of — the sun’s trajectory is also useful. If you’re going to bank on trees for shade on a morning run, those trees better be to the east or north of you relative to the sun, or they won’t do much good. Therefore, it helps to know where the sun is going to be when you run your route. In Chicago along Lake Michigan, this is pretty simple: if the sun is above the horizon, it will be beating down on you. But I tend to make more use of this in other cities. For example, in Cape Town, there’s a giant mountain called Table Mountain that bisects the city. By running on different sides of the mountain throughout your route, you can actually keep completely in the shade on a morning run, even on sunny days.

Devil’s Peak and the Cape Town City Bowl shortly before sunrise on June 24, 2019 (technically, this photo is taken in winter, since Cape Town is in the Southern Hemisphere)!. By knowing where and when the sun will rise and how it will go through the sky, you can use mountains as sun shields.

It can be extremely helpful to know the sun’s trajectory if you’re running in a place with mountains — which can either provide significant shade or serve as a huge sun reflector. When running in Cape Town, Table Mountain can serve as a nice source of shade if you plan your route correctly.

In general, if you want to get very precise, Android has a cool application called Sun Surveyor, but I just use a few general rules: Like everywhere else in the Northern Hemisphere, in the summer the sun rises in the northeast (not east!) part of the sky and starts tracking up and to the south, gradually tracing both south and west. Th Sundroid application above allows you to get a little more precise—for example, it shows today’s sunrise was at 69.1 degrees (closer to east than north, but still distinctly northeast).

Summary

For many people, reading the weather is as simple as checking the temperature. For runners, in particular, checking the weather in a bit more detail—reading the dew point, cloud cover, and wind direction; checking forecast trends for these metrics; and knowing where the sun will be in the sky and when it will be there—are all important aspects of reading the weather to prepare for a hot run.

By Nick Feamster on July 18, 2020.

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Exported from Medium on October 28, 2025.

Another gorgeous Summer sunrise on Lake Michigan. Sunrises like this make it easy to get out of bed in the morning!

**Lakefront to the Loop. **This morning, in keeping with the pattern of summer sunrise runs on the lake, I took the Lakefront Trail to the Loop. The trail is about six miles from Promontory Point to the turn at Shedd Aquarium, making it an even seven miles from home. The route via the Point adds about a mile to the route. In the winter, one of my favorite medium long runs is thus a loop involving the Lakefront Trail in one direction and the streets mentioned above in the other direction (the direction I run that loop depends on the wind direction; more on wind direction in a subsequent post, but in winter I always try to start out running into the wind).

I’ve written about the sites along the Lakefront Trail between the Point and the Loop before, so I won’t repeat those highlights here. The truth of the matter, though is that (1) the lake short itself is the biggest highlight; (2) it is always different, every single day. Before moving to Chicago, I wondered if I’d ever get tired of running the Lakefront Trail. Short answer: No. Running the Lakefront Trail never gets old.

I enjoy watching the sunrise reflect off of different buildings in the skyline at different times of the year.

Every day, things look different: the clouds are different shapes and sizes (or, it’s overcast; or, there are no clouds). Sometimes the water on the lake is as smooth as glass; on other days, it crashes like the ocean. The water itself changes color, from dark blue to turquoise. Even the sunlight’s reflection off of the buildings changes every day, as the sun moves through the sky with the seasons. This month, the sunrises have been reflecting off of a number of different buildings, including the large glass facade at McCormick Place and some of the newer skyscrapers on the New Eastside and the South Loop. In the other three seasons of the year, the sunrise come more from the south, and the skyline is front-lit more than in this photo.

**The turn at Shedd Aquarium. **Around the east side of the Shedd Aquarium, the pathway narrows, and runners and cyclists must mingle—around a blind corner. I’ve never had any collisions here, but it can get pretty crowded and so it’s a good idea to stay alert and look ahead. Rounding the bend at the Shedd Aquarium brings one of the more dramatic views of the skyline: Because the aquarium building blocks the view as you’re heading north on the trail, the view seemingly comes out of nowhere. During the summer, it’s a great place to see the early morning sun; during the winter, it’s equally beautiful. The skyline is often lit up in many festive colors, and the Blue Cross building (on the far right of this photo often is lit up to spell out certain messages), and on winter early morning runs, runners can be treated to those messages. The two photos below show how much this view changes throughout the course of the year. They were taken at roughly the same time of morning, just after 6:20 a.m.

The views on the Lakefront Trail in summer from just north of Shedd Aquarium are bright and beautiful. (Photo taken July, 11, 2020). This photo was taken at 6:25 a.m. A shot of the skyline on New Year’s Morning (January 1, 2020) from the same spot, with a “Happy New Year” message to greet early morning runners. This photo was taken at 6:21 a.m.—about the same time of dayas the photo above. What a difference six months makes!

**Grant Park. **After rounding the bend at Shedd, it is possible to continue north along the Lakefront Trail. One of my common runs is to simply continue running to “0N” (the division between the north and the south side according to the street grid—in a slight to the south side, it’s not called “0S”!)and turn around. But another fun route—and the one I did this morning—is to cut straight to the east, along the south side of Grant Park. Crossing under the first overpass takes you under Lake Shore Drive; you can turn left and head up to Columbus Drive (near the Chicago Marathon finish line), or take the path around further to the right, which brings you under Columbus Drive. Keep bearing right, which leads over the 11th Street/Museum Campus Metra stop; the bridge has some nice views of the skyline in three directions. There’s of course the popular views to the west and north, and now there’s also a view of the South Loop to the south, which has sprouted some fairly new skyscrapers, shown here.

The southern boundary of Grant Park in the South Loop has some impressive high-rise apartments and condos. The one on the far right, NEMA, was completed in Summer 2019, right around the time I moved to Chicago. It is 76 stories and 896 feet tall—the tallest all-rental residential building in Chicago.

The southern part of Grant Park also has some interesting landmarks and place markers, including this one shown below, marking the “Blues Trail”

The southwest corner of Grant Park is the corner of Roosevelt and Michigan. From here, I will commonly run straight south on Michigan Avenue all the way to Hyde Park; it’s about a five-mile straight shot from Grant Park to Garfield Boulevard (55th Street) and Michigan Avenue, and so it’s fairly easy to settle into a rhythm and just click off street numbers heading home. It’s a fairly busy street, but it is also fairly wide (about four lanes, plus parking on either side), so early in the morning on the weekends (i.e., before 7 or 8 a.m.) it is easy to just run in one of the lanes for cars (look out for buses, of course!). This stretch of Michigan Avenue also marks the last part of the Chicago Marathon (running in the other direction, towards downtown), and it has some other interesting landmarks, which I’ll cover in another post.

Ping Tom Memorial Park**. **This morning, instead of heading straight home, I took a detour further to the west: heading west on Roosevelt, you can pick up State Street and continue heading south, before turning right (west) again on 18th Street (another way to run this route is to run south on Michigan and turn right on 18th). Continue west to Wentworth, and then turn left (south) one block to 19th, and then take a right. Continuing west eventually takes you to the entrance of Ping Tom Memorial Park—easily one of the hardest parks to find if you don’t know what you’re looking for. In my first attempt to find this park several months ago, I ran over it.

The entrance to Ping Tom Memorial Park is easily missed. Head west from 19th and Wentworth and you’ll eventually come to this understated entrance. Keep going: You’ll be treated to some of the finest views of downtown.

I’ve run to the west and south of it as well and had trouble finding the entrance. Even this morning, I ran one block to the east of it and hand to check the map. Here’s the key: the closest major intersection to the entrance of Ping Tom Park is 19th and Wentworth. This is extremely easy to find from Chinatown: simply head north on Wentworth and look for the huge red marker for Ping Tom at 19th. Coming from the Loop, it’s more easily missed. Once you find that intersection, just head west. You’ll continue through what looks like a closed-off residential community, and then eventually a rail crossing—which actually marks the entrance to the park! Here is a photo of the entrance: Just beyond the rail crossing you can see the actual park entrance and a shelter with Chinese architecture.

Inside the park itself, there is a nice loop that is just under a mile total. The north side of the loop offers fantastic views of the skyline from the southwest. Right in the middle of the park is a boathouse where it is possible to rent canoes and kayaks to take out on the Chicago River (I haven’t yet done this, but it sure looks fun! I’m looking forward to going back with the family at some point.). The part is divided by the 18th Street overpass above (which I once mistakenly ran on when trying to find this park!); the underpass structure itself has several interesting murals as part of the park itself.

The north end of Ping Tom Memorial Park offers a large grassy area, some elevation, and great views of the Chicago River and downtown.

The south end of the park is more serene, including some paths along the Chicago River and a quiet sheltering spot, shown below. This photo shows a close-up of the structure that is visible from the park entrance.

The pavilion structure in Ping Tom Memorial Park.

Completing the loop, you can exit the park where you entered—there is only one way in and out! And so, the best thing to do once you leave the park is to find your way back to Wentworth and continue from there. Heading south on Wentworth takes you through the heart of Chicago’s Chinatown.

**Chinatown. **On this morning’s run, I headed south on Wentworth through Chinatown, which has a bunch of interesting architecture, including the main gate, shown here.

The entrance to Chinatown at the corner of Cermak (22nd) and Wentworth.

This route is interesting as you continue south of Cermak (22nd), where there is a large entrance gate to Chinatown. There are also lots of interesting sights and smells. The stretch of Wentworth from 26nd to 33rd is actually on the Chicago Marathon route. It’s certainly not the most attractive running Chicago has to offer, although it’s always fun to work some of the Chicago Marathon course into the route. The marathon course itself heads south to 33rd before crossing back to the east and south on State Street. This morning, I crossed over at 31st and then turned south on Federal before cutting over to a pedestrian road that runs through the center of the Illinois Tech campus.

**Illinois Tech. **Between Federal and State Streets is a footpath that runs from 31st to 35th Street through the Illinois Tech campus. This cut-through provides a nice architectural tour—there are a significant number of buildings on the Illinois Tech campus designed by Mies van der Rohe,

The Galvin Library at Illinois Tech is one of many buildings on the campus designed by Mies van der Rohe. It’s as close to a fishbowl as any building I’ve ever seen.

including S.R. Crown Hall, the architecture building. During the Chicago Architecture Center tours in the Fall, Crown Hall is open to the public and it is worth a visit. Many of the buildings on campus are worth admiring, however, including the Galvin Library, pictured here. The building has kind of a fishbowl effect—you can see right through it, due to the floor to ceiling glass—and this morning I particularly liked the effect of the sun reflecting off of the front of the building. The path through campus also takes you past some more modern buildings, including the recently completed Kaplan Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, which has much more of a space-age design.

Wabash Avenue YMCA**. **Heading out of the campus at 35th street, turn left (south) on 35th, and then make your way over to Wabash, one block east of State. Probably the easiest and best way to do this is to run south on State to 38th and then turn left (east) on 38th.

The South Wabash YMCA, at the corner of 38th and Wabash, was an important spot during the Great Migration in the early 20th century, as well as the birthplace of the Harlem Globetrotters.

The corner of 38th and Wabash has another interesting building—the Wabash Avenue YMCA, a building that dates to 1911. I found this building after reading about it in Lee Bey’s Southern Exposure*, *a great book about architecture on the south side. The building also has a historical marker indicating that during the Great Migration in the early 20th century, the building housed many African Americans who came north during the Great Migration. It also happens that it was and the original home of the Harlem Globetrotters. I was interested to learn that the Globetrotters did not originate in Harlem, but in fact got their start on the south side of Chicago. It is interesting to see these old architectural gems around Chicago, and how they have been preserved through various repurposing.

Overton Elementary School**, Bryant Memorial Mural, Kenwood Pavement Mural. **From 38th and Wabash, one can head south on any number of streets. Another one of my favorite streets to run in this part of town is Prairie, about three blocks east of Wabash; you can find Prairie by heading south on Wabash and east on Pershing (39th). Prairie is another fun road to run—like Michigan Avenue (and indeed many roads in Chicago!), it is flat and straight, but it has much less traffic. Essentially the only traffic on this street is residential, and so it is generally possible to run right down the middle of the street, especially in the morning. Around 41st Street, you’ll pass under the Green Line “L”, and through some lovely brownstones in the Bronzeville neighborhood. Between 49th and 50th, on the west side of the street, you will see Overton Elementary School, a former public school that was a casualty of the Chicago Public School closings in 2013.

The Overton Elementary School Building (main part not pictured here) is architecturally interesting. This colorful mural on part of the building is vibrant, and the painted map on the pavement with placemarkers for points of interest is also worth a visit.

The building is another architectural gem and is now listed on the national register of historic places. I probably ran by this corner many times before noticing the building, however, until this past Spring someone painted a very colorful mural memorializing Kobe Bryant. The pavement itself also has some very interesting art—a painted, to scale, street map of the Kenwood and Bronzeville neighborhoods. Usually, the map has markers on them for places of interest in the neighborhood, but the map is currently being repainted; you can see the place markers moved to one side, in front of the Bryant mural, in this photo from this morning.

This morning’s route went north along the lake and cut back via Ping Tom (the wiggles in the upper left) before turning south through Chinatown and Bronzeville and returning via Washington Park. The loop itself is close to about 16.5 miles (this one was 18 because I ran to the lake afterwards), but cutting straight down King and Lake Park makes the full loop closer to 13 miles if you’re looking for something shorter.

**Summary. **There’s a lot to see south of Roosevelt and west of King Drive in the Chinatown and Bronzeville neighborhoods. This post covers a few of the highlights, but there are many more, including some I’ve covered in previous posts. The neighborhood is definitely experiencing rebirth and investment from the community. It’s a fun neighborhood to run through, especially if you’re looking to run a loop on the South Side, as opposed to a more standard out-and-back on the lake front.

This post, including the photos, is largely based on a run I took this morning, which you can see on Strava. That particular route is 18 miles, but that’s because I took a dip in the lake after my run, which extended the route a bit. A more standard loop that includes the Lakefront Trail that hits the south side of Grant Park and returns via Bronzeville runs more like 15 miles, although you can make the loop to the Loop and back in 13 miles if you cut through Bronzeville on King/Lake Park.

By Nick Feamster on July 12, 2020.

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Exported from Medium on October 28, 2025.

Northerly Island is a hidden gem of nature just steps from the bustle of the Loop.

During the past few months of spring, I managed to find plenty of neighborhoods off the lakeshore, and I’ll continue to write up those routes, although I may not be revisiting some of those routes until the weather cools again.

With July now upon us, we’ve now legitimately entered “lakefront season” in Chicago—temperatures on the lake front can easily be ten degrees cooler than inland, and with the water temperature still in the 60s, a cool breeze off of the lake provides welcome natural air conditioning for long runs. As such, I’ve found myself running variations on essentially the same routes up and down the lakefront these days. The lakefront trail is well-traveled, of course, but some of the offshoots from the main trail.

One of the routes that I tend to cover less often myself is Northerly Island, but I revisited it yesterday for the first time in awhile, and this morning I found myself heading in that direction again. This post covers some highlights near and on Northerly Island that you can work into various running routes. (Mine are linked from the bottom of the post.) The island offers some great trails, elevation, views of the Chicago skyline, and even some aviation history!

I’ll cover a few other landmarks heading north along the Lakefront Trail from Hyde Park, as well.

July 4 started off with some great fireworks over Promontory Point.

Memorial to the 1919 Riots

At the end of July 1919, Chicago experienced a violent race riot that lasted about a week. Before moving to Chicago, I was unaware of this history. We moved to Chicago at the beginning of August 2019—essentially 100 years to the day of the riots, and right around that time was the first time I encountered the plaque below, which can be found just north of the 31st Street Beach along the trail, just to the east of the trail itself.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.” –Martin Luther King, Jr.

(The plaque is fairly easy to spot if you know it’s there, as there are paths leading to it from the lake, as well as from the trail.) This is a good stopping point for reflection; I particularly like the poetic nature of the quote, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that,” particularly because I’m often running by this spot around sunrise. The plaque also tells an interesting story about a violent altercation that ensued because a group of black kids just happened to be swimming on the wrong side of an “invisible racial barrier”. I like to stop here and think a bit about the kinds of invisible barriers that still exist in today’s society, and what I can do, personally, to help break them down. This spot is just about four miles from Promontory Point, and so it also makes for a good landmark for turnaround. (It’s almost exactly five miles from my front door, and so I sometimes use it as a turnaround spot myself.)

Caracol and Butterfly Sanctuary

From the 1919 memorial, it’s possible to continue along the paved trail, but in between the trail and the embankment there are some great woodchip trails that wind through the prairie. I ran these regularly last August and early Autumn; they are less passable in the winter due to snow and ice, and also a bit less interesting, since you’re essentially running through a large patch of dead grass. In the summer, though, the spot is absolutely beautiful, with colorful flowers, birds, and butterflies flying all around you as you run through. It’s really fun to run through this part of the trail in summer. As I’ve discovered recently, July can be an interesting time to run through this area, as many birds are also nesting; I’ve discovered that the red-winged blackbird is beautiful and easily spotted, but it’s quite protective of its nesting young. If you’re running through these areas in July, be alert! In my experience, the birds haven’t harmed me (unlike one time when I was actually attacked by a Canada goose on a run), but it can be a little terrifying to have a bird tracking you and crowing wildly just six inches above your head as you run down the path.

As you continue down the prairie path, you’ll reach the Caracol, which means “snail shell” in Spanish. The sign explains that snails play a critical role in the food chain, breaking down nutrients in the soil, and likens the contributions of the snail to the economic and cultural contributions of immigrants. The Caracol forms a table with seating around it; although I’ve never stopped here for long, it looks like a fantastic place for a picnic on a moderate day (there’s no shade, so it’s not a great place to rest on a hot day). Recently, I’ve been stopping briefly here and expressing gratitude to the many contributions of our country’s immigrants, from graduate students to service workers to my wife.

The Caracol, or “snail shell”, which is an allegory for the cultural and economic contributions of immigrants in the United States.

The woodchip path continues north of the Caracol and eventually drops you back out onto the paved lakefront trail. If you didn’t look closely, you might think that’s the end of the woodchip trail, but it’s actually possible to cross the trail to the west and continue into a butterfly sanctuary. Navigation in here is mostly straightforward—just follow the trail—but there is one trick: the trail winds around a bit and eventually starts paralleling a fence. Look for the gate in the fence; if you enter the part of the sanctuary that is enclosed by the gate, you’ll find the butterfly sanctuary itself.

The bird and butterfly sanctuary just south of McCormick Place along the lakefront trail has runnable trails and a plethora of gorgeous flora.

Here’s a photo of the sanctuary from yesterday—there were not many butterflies to be seen yesterday (I think those come later in the summer), but the flowers are radiant and colorful. These trails are all very runnable. You can follow a trail that runs east-west all the way west to a little brick building and then turn north to continue along the trail. Eventually, the trail drops you out in the McCormick Place parking lot, at which point you can turn back to the east and get back onto the trail, right at the firefighter’s memorial.

Soldier Field and Gold Star Memorial

Continuing north along the trail, you’ll pass McCormick Place itself—really the only part of the lakefront trail that is cut off from the city, and as you round the bend, you’ll see Soldier Field, a large stadium that is the home of the Chicago Bears (and now also the Chicago Fire), named in 1925 as a memorial to U.S, soldiers who died in combat. The F3 Half Marathon in the winter also starts and finishes at Soldier Field. It’s possible to simply stay on the trail here, but another variant which I discovered just this morning (after a year of running past it in both directions!) is to cut just west of the trail as you cross Waldron Drive (this cross street is easy to find, as it’s the major street entrance to Burnham Harbor, just south of the stadium itself), which takes you into a small memorial park for Chicago’s “Gold Star Families” (families of police officers who were killed in the line of duty.

Soldier Field, an interesting mix of old and new.

Soldier Field itself has some really interesting architecture. The original edifice from the 1920s still stands; inside the original old structure is a new stadium, largely made of steel and glass, that was built in the early 2000s. Apparently this renovation was somewhat controversial and resulted in Soldier Field being de-listed as a national historic landmark. There are some interesting photos online that show how the stadium once looked as compared to now. It’s interesting to see how the structure evolved, and how the original structure was preserved and adapted for modern use.

Just south of Soldier Field is also a large sledding hill, which is one of the best places in Chicago to do some hill repeats; it’s about 100–150 feet of elevation gain over about 0.1 mile. It’s short but steep, and it’s a soft surface so the climb is challenging enough, particularly if you do it a few times.

Adler Planetarium and Nature’s Courtyard

Continuing north along the trail, you will eventually encounter the northern end of the harbor (which is just south of Shedd Aquarium). The trail has an underpass at this point, but if you turn right (east) before the underpass and continue along the northern edge of the harbor, you’ll find your way onto Northerly Island.

Nature’s Courtyard, just south of Adler Planetarium along the lake front, is Chicago’s answer to Stonehenge.

The easiest way to navigate this part of the route is simply to hug the perimeter of the harbor until you’re on the east side of it and then head up to the road. Adler Planetarium is visible once you come up to the road. If you head towards the planetarium, as I did this morning, you will encounter an interesting sculpture called “Nature’s Courtyard”, which is a sculpture with some cool astronomical properties—on the equinox, the sunrise and sunset aligns with a cut in the middle stones of the sculpture; on the solstices, the sunrise and sunset aligns with the pathways in the spiral.

Continue around the bend to the north and east of Adler Planetarium and you will be treated to some postcard views of the Chicago skyline.

The path around the perimeter of Adler Planetarium has a postcard view of Chicago’s skyline.

Meigs Field

I ran the perimeter around Adler this morning, which is on the north part of Northerly Island. Yesterday, I opted for the southern circuit, which is a hidden gem of nature right in the heart of Chicago. To find the southern part of the island, simply turn right (south) as you come up to the main road from the harbor, turn right. You’ll run through down a fairly nondescript road before coming to what looks like a small airport—indeed, this spot has the terminal and control tower from the old Meigs Field, a single-runway civilian airport that was in operation from right after World War II until 2003, when the mayor destroyed the runways with bulldozers overnight, following through on long-term plans to turn the airport into a park.

Run to catch your flight at Meigs Field, which still bears the hallmarks of an airport. Thankfully, today, the only things flying through here are bikes and runners.

According to some, “The signature act of Richard Daley’s 22 years in office was the midnight bulldozing of Meigs Field.” I wasn’t living here at the time, but I can say that the park that I’m super glad that this is today a beautiful park instead of an airport. Running through here is kind of fun; it’s often fun to run through or around airports: I have a favorite run that I do as a layover at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam; another awesome run is Tempelhof Airport in Berlin, which is now closed and so you can just run straight down the airstrips!). This one is modest in comparison to Schiphol or Tempelhof, but interesting nonetheless. I like looking at the structure and imagining people pulling up to this old terminal back in the days when air travel was glamorous; the architecture has a bit of a futuristic look (or what people in the 1940s thought the future would look like, I imagine). The building also has some interesting artwork at the entrance—two large globes, one colorful, and the other one rusted and in chains (the colorful one is clearly visible in the photo above).

Northerly Island Prairie

Hug the northern side of the Meigs terminal, head east, and then turn south (right) when you come to a concrete walkway. That will take you into the prairie itself, which is a landfill area that was the site of the former airstrip. It has since been dredged to create a giant lagoon that connects to Lake Michigan on the south, creating an area with beautiful topography and a serene waterscape, with views of Hyde Park to the south and more amazing skyline views to the north.

The prairie on Northerly Island, looking south, with a view of Hyde Park in the distance.

The trail shown in the photo above snakes around the lagoon, pictured here. Right now the trail only goes about 70% of the way around. Technically, if you’re in for some spicy trail running, you can make the full circuit, but the last 30% of the loop (closest to the lake, on the northeast side) is fairly uneven and soft. It does look as though the Chicago Park District has plans to complete this loop at some point—certainly more of it is completed than when I ran it last winter, as the bridge at the southern end of the loop is now complete.

Coming around the loop drops you out just south of Adler Planetarium, where you can continue back to the west and pick up the Lakefront Trail once again.

I don’t run Northerly Island as often as I probably should, given how gorgeous it is. Part of it is that the loop around the full island adds about 2 miles to the run from Hyde Park, and it’s at the far end of the run, close to the Loop. Psychologically, it’s often easier to just continue north along the lakefront on the trail itself and just make the run a clean out-and-back.

The Northerly Island circuit is a little more challenging mentally if you’re coming from the south, because as you hit the southern tip of the island, you’re just a hundred feet or so away from McCormick Place across the lake, but it’s another two miles or so before you actually pick it up on the return south. But, on the whole, it’s worth it—it’s a huge patch of relatively secluded nature, not far from the Loop itself. If you’re coming on a run from the Loop, hitting Northerly Island is a no-brainer.

The route(s). You can see the routes I took from Hyde Park yesterday and today on Strava. Saturday’s route is pictured here and includes everything shown above except the circuit around Adler Planetarium and Nature’s Courtyard, which I did on today’s run. The Northerly Island route can be done in 14–16 miles from Hyde Park, depending on various shortcuts and detours.

Northerly Island can be run from Hyde Park in a 14–16-mile round trip route along the Lake Front Trail. Cutting north on streets (Dorchester north to the 41st street pedestrian bridge) can make the route a little bit shorter.

By Nick Feamster on July 5, 2020.

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Exported from Medium on October 28, 2025.

There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.

I grew up in northern California, where 40 degrees was considered cold weather. When I moved to Boston for college, I knew I was in for a (literal) phase change when my walks across the Charles River in October felt cold. Now, I live in Chicago, where it’s 15 degrees and negative wind chill as I write—already having finished an 11-mile run outdoors. That sounds cold, but in fact it is essentially never too cold to run outside, if you have (1) the right gear, (2) the right strategy, and (3) the right attitude. Below, I’ll talk about all three. As a native Californian, if I can run through Chicago winters, then anyone can run through a cold winter with these three aspects of preparation!

It’s Never Too Cold for a Run

When I interviewed for a job in Chicago about two years ago, in January 2019, my visit was timed with a polar vortex, which brought temperatures to nearly minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit, with the wind making it feel closer to minus 40. My trip was nearly cancelled, Chicago itself shut down, and my hosts volunteered to defer my interview. But, in fact, I wanted to come check it out, figuring that if I could manage—and run—in those temperatures, then Chicago was a place I could live. I managed a 90-minute run in the polar vortex in an unfamiliar city; I enjoyed my visit, had a good interview, and the rest is history. I survived—and thrived—through my first Chicago winter last year, running outside every day.

For reference, this run was an extreme in terms of clothing, but it is a perfect illustration of the key concept for dressing for cold weather.

Dressed for the polar vortex in January 2019. A cold weather PR of -16F.

During the morning of the polar vortex, I wore the following articles of clothing:

1. six layers on top, including two jackets (short sleeve, long sleeve base, two pullovers, icebreaker jacket, windbreaker),

2. three layers on bottom (tights, fleece tights, shell),

3. four layers of gloves (thin and thick liners, thin and thick gloves),

4. two pairs of socks (compression, wigwam), plus **duct tape on toes **of shoes

5. two neck warmers,

6. three layers on my head (balaclava, hat, headband),

… and vaseline on my face to protect any exposed skin from potential frostbite.

Note: I’ve never had to wear this much clothing on any other run. For example, this was the only time I’ve ever had to duct tape the toes of my shoes (which turns out to be a great trick for keeping the wind off of your toes!). But, this is a proof-of-concept that it really is never too cold to run. This photo illustrates another important benefit of layering: Note that I don’t look bulky. Such a set of thin layers allows you to stay warm without restricting movement too much.

It’s worth noting that some of the process is trial and error. Any runner will tell you that every winter, one has to re-learn how to layer, and how much clothing is appropriate for the given weather conditions. Moreover, some amount of acclimation occurs throughout the winter—I find myself wearing the same clothes at 40 degrees in October as I do at 30 degrees in March. And, occasionally there are some mistakes: The above photo shows me wearing swim goggles, which was a complete failure—they fogged instantly, which is obvious in hindsight. A much better accoutrement for protecting the eyes is a pair of photochromic sunglasses which can work in low light (and even complete darkness). More on that below.

My experiences running in the cold have provided some lessons and insights, often learned through trial and error. I’ll share some of these insights below, which can help you stay comfortable on your cold-weather runs.

The Most Important Concept: Layer, layer, layer.

Layer, layer, layer. It’s 15 degrees in this photo, with a 20 mph wind. But I’m warm!

As in any season, when the body is exercising, it produces heat. Appropriate clothing will trap that heat while still providing the appropriate amount of ventilation so that you don’t end up soaked. Most technical running clothing does this particularly well if you layer it. Technical fabrics are designed to wick away moisture, ensuring that you stay dry.

Layering these fabrics on top of one another helps you retain body heat while making sure that any sweat your produce continues to wick away and evaporate.

When preparing to run in the cold, it’s important to understand how the body heats up (and and which parts of the body don’t heat up!) during exercise. Most importantly: **Your core will heat up, but your extremities will not. **A corollary is thus that you want to pay extra attention to your extremities—especially your hands, feet, and ears—to make sure that they can stay warm. Just about everything else will eventually heat up and stay warm with a suitable number of layers.

The details below will certainly differ by person: Everyone has different circulation, tolerance for cold, and so forth. The invariant, though, is that regardless of exactly what you end up wearing, it should be composed of layers of technical fabric. The rest is details (and lots of trial and error, which hopefully the tips below can save you from, at least a little bit).

Cold Weather Gear

With this basic understanding of how the body heats up, we can now talk more about the appropriate clothing. I find it helpful to think about each part of the body separately. For each “segment”, the main question I try to figure out is how many layers I need for that part of my body. Every person is different, but I find that if my core is warm and my extremities are protected, then I can generally be comfortable. So, I start from those:

• **Core: **On a “typical” winter day, I will wear three layers: (1) a long-sleeve wicking running shirt; (2) a wicking zip-up pullover; (3) a zip-up jacket. The zippers on the latter two items are key: As you warm up, or as you change directions with respect to the wind, you can actually get hot fairly quickly, even on a very cold day. When running into the wind (or when you are cold), zipping everything up can retain the heat; if you have a tailwind or are otherwise overheating, unzipping one or two layers even just a little bit can make a huge difference. When temperatures drop below about 20 degrees Fahrenheit, I start to add layers. I typically start by adding another base layer, such as a second wicking shirt as a base layer. On extremely cold days, I’ll add another jacket. I have a couple of different jackets that I use, depending on the conditions. If it’s a windy day but not too cold, I opt for a Salomon windbreaker shell, which is actually quite versatile: I’ve used it from about 30 to 60 degrees and found that it works well across a wide range of temperatures. If it’s colder, I’ll use an Icebreaker Merino windbreaker jacket. If it gets colder than that, I’ll wear both jackets, or even add another light windbreaker (as pictured above) as an outer layer. The final, nuclear option is a wicking hoodie sweatshirt—I generally never have to resort to that if I’ve done the rest of my layering appropriately, but it’s nice to know that I have it.

• **Hands: **On a typical cold day, I’ll wear wicking glove liners and a pair of running gloves over the liners. I’ve found that adding the liners is actually more effective than a heavier pair of gloves. Again, layering helps, and it’s actually nice to have two layers of gloves, because if it does heat up, you can shed one of the layers and still use the liners. On colder days, below 20 degrees Fahrenheit, I’ll add a pair of knit gloves. If it’s polar vortex-cold, I’ll add a second pair of glove liners underneath the first pair of liners.

• **Feet: **It’s easy to forget that your feet can get cold when running in winter. I generally get by with a single layer of Wigwam socks down to about 25 degrees; once it gets colder, I consider adding a second layer of socks: sometimes a pair of Balega running socks that I use in the summer, which I throw over the first pair, sometimes a pair of compression socks that I wear underneath the first pair. They key here is that each layer of socks should be thin, because you still have to comfortably fit into your shoes! It can also get slippery, particularly if you are running in a place where snow turns to ice and sticks around for awhile. Black ice is a common phenomenon in many places in the winter; it’s prevalent in Chicago. When it is particularly icy, I wear a pair of Nanospikes. I also have a pair of Yaktrax that are designed for running, but I find the Nanospikes just a bit more durable and versatile, particularly when the running surface is a mix of asphalt and ice. As I mentioned earlier, it is rarely needed, but on extremely cold days, some duct tape over the toes of your running shoes will keep the wind off of the front of your shoes and keep your toes a bit warmer, as well.

• **Head and neck: **Covering your head is fairly straightforward, but it is important because most heat escapes through your head. On most days, I wear a running beanie, with an additional headband to keep my ears covered (since the beanie doesn’t fully cover the ears). If it is raining, I will swap the beanie for a running hat, so that the bill of the cap can keep the rain out of my face—often it’s not the rain itself that ruins a run, but rather that it’s hitting your face and eyes. A hat with a bill can make all of the difference on a rainy day. Keeping wind and cold off of your neck is also essential: without proper protection, wind can hit the front of your neck and get underneath the core layers, thus negating all of that effort you put in to keep your core toasty. A simple neck gaiter (“buff”) will do the trick. On super cold days, I sometimes wear two buffs: One that always stays low on my neck, and one that I can pull up over my face if my face starts to feel cold.

On a particularly cold morning last January, I wore three neck gaiters. It was 4F, but I was quite warm.

• **Eyes and face. **Protecting my eyes was my latest discovery, after moving to Chicago where it can be pretty windy. Technically I think it’s probably fine to just run without anything over your eyes (I managed in the polar vortex since I had to chuck the fogging swim goggles), but wind in the eyes can be unpleasant, and so I’ve found photochromic lenses to be useful. Generally speaking, that’s about all you need to do for your face, although if it is particularly windy or cold, some Vaseline on any exposed skin can help keep it warm, moist, and protected.

• **Legs. **My legs typically don’t get too cold, even on very cold days, and so I find that a single layer of tights suffices most of the time. When it is very cold and windy (e.g., as above, during the polar vortex), I may add some additional layers. I’ll first add a layer of merino wool tights underneath regular running tights. In extreme conditions such as the polar vortex, I’ve used some shell pants. I’ve really only worn those one or twice—80% of the time, a pair of tights will do, and the rest of the time some additional fleece lining does the trick.

• **Other “extremities”. **Lest we forget, however, men have other extremities to protect. On some cold days, I’ve underdressed below the belt, which can make for a very unpleasant experience, particularly if you need to use the bathroom during the run (note: urine stays warm, even when other body parts are ice cold…ouch!) and after you return to warmth. In a pinch, I’ve found myself ducking into the local corners store and shoving paper towels from the bathroom down my pants—this absolutely works if you forget to dress warmly, but of course it’s not optimal. Another option I’ve read about is a wool sock. I’ve tried this with some success, but I’ve found it’s not perfect because it can slide around and ultimately fall off, so it needs continual re-adjustment. The best solution I’ve found are a pair of wind briefs—essentially boxer shorts you can wear under your tights that have a layer of wind-blocking material on the front, where it matters most.

Cold Weather Strategy

Now that you know how to dress for the weather, the next thing to get a handle on is your preparation and strategy for actually running in the cold. Mostly this amounts to route planning—when it’s cold and the weather is inclement, the choice of route can make all the difference in whether your run is enjoyable or an absolute nightmare.

**Check the weather early and often. **As a winter runner, you’ll get into a habit of checking the weather regularly. I find it’s useful not only to check the current weather, but also to look at the future weather. Most importantly, I’ll check the weather the night before to get a sense of what the morning holds in store. This helps me lay out clothes—especially additional layers—the night before. If you’re a morning runner like I am, the last thing you need to be doing when you’re half awake is trying to figure out where your third pair of gloves is, or fishing through a pile of laundry to find an extra headband. I look at the weather the night before and lay out everything I need in advance so that in the morning it’s a simple matter of just putting it on—no thinking. When it’s cold and dark, the temptation to pull the plug on the run is great; anything you can do to reduce friction and thinking before heading out the door will make sure that you actually go.

Wind chill is a really important factor to consider when running in the cold. The photo above with me in three neck gaiters was taken with these wind chills. The ability to quickly cover the face is key. It’s pretty easy to tell from this set of splits exactly where I turned around!

**Check the wind speed and direction. **Aside from temperature, the next most important thing to pay attention to is wind speed and direction. As a general rule, you should plan a route that **starts into the wind and finishes with the wind at your back. **This strategy is helpful for a number of reasons. One of them is mental: It’s always hard getting started, even when the weather is good. The first mile will be cold and tough, but the first mile is always tough anyway. You can at least take solace in knowing that you are putting the hard miles behind you and that the second half will be enjoyable. Here’s an example of a run with some of my “splits” where I’ve taken this strategy: Note that the first half is almost a minute per mile slower than the second half, and in fact I sped up in the second half, since I had the benefit of the wind at my back. While this example looks like a textbook example of headwind vs. tailwind, this kind of pattern is actually pretty regular for me in the winter when headwinds are strong. (I had a similar run this morning.)

**Check precipitation. **The main thing to be aware of with precipitation is rain; snow is actually more manageable. Rain is a bit more complicated because (1) you get wet (obviously); (2) the rain can get in your eyes and make it tough to see. If it’s raining lightly, few adjustments are necessary. If the rain is heavy, I do make sure to swap out the beanie for a hat with a bill; if it’s cold and rainy, I keep a headband. There are even some hats with bills that also have ear coverings; I have one of these and use it occasionally, as well.

**Figure out if (and where) there’s likely to be ice. **Just about any condition is manageable for running, but ice is very dangerous, for the obvious reason that it’s slippery. Every winter, I slip and fall on the ice at least once or twice, even though I tend to be prepared. It’s not that slipping on ice is inevitable, but rather because I make some mistake in preparation, or that I’m not paying attention for a second and the next thing I know I’m on the ground. Ice is slippery, and it’s also hard. I’ve banged up a finger and my knee on ice in the last two years alone. Your best friend with running on ice are Yaktrax or Kahtoola Nanospikes, but if you don’t want to spring for those, another tried and true trick is simply to put a few sheet metal screws into the sole of your regular running shoes. These solutions provide just enough traction without interfering too much with your gait and allowing you to wear your normal running shoes. The spikes take a little getting used to—they’re actually super comfortable when running on the ice itself, but less fun when you’re on asphalt, and downright slippery on smooth stone surfaces—but once you get the hang of the “feel”, you’ll be on your way.

**Know the places to avoid. **When the conditions are cold, windy, rainy, or icy, certain routes are almost invariably worse than others. In the case of Chicago, on a windy day, the lakefront is considerably worse than even a mile inland. What I tend to do on these days, if I want to run on the lakefront, is plan my route inland, running into the wind, and loop around on the lakefront with the wind at my back. If the weather is particularly bad, I’ll avoid the lakefront altogether. Another landscape feature to be aware of are skyscrapers, which can act as wind tunnels. If you have skyscrapers in your neighborhood and you run around them often, you’ll come to appreciate the wind patterns that they generate, and you can learn that altering your route by even a block or two, or a few hundred feet, can make a significant difference in helping you avoid the wind tunnels that skyscrapers generate. Outside of the city, skyscrapers are less of a concern, but on particularly windy days, when I lived in the suburbs I would take care to avoid parks and forests with lots of trees—you never know when the wind will bring down a large tree branch (and potentially power lines with it), and while there are no guarantees that you’ll avoid such a freak event, I’ve always found it wise to err on the side of reducing risk.

**Remember the risks of snow banks. **If you run on the roads, keep in mind that when it snows, some roads can become really narrow as snowbanks pile up, putting you directly in harm’s way with cars and traffic. Snow banks also mean that if you find yourself in the path of a car, it can often be more difficult to get out of the way. Whereas in summer, you can simply pop onto the shoulder or curb anytime and anywhere, in the winter you may find yourself “boxed in” with nowhere to go. Thus, when planning a route on roads, try to plan a route that involves wide roads — ones with bike lanes or shoulders, for example. For this purpose, I find it helpful to look at a city map that shows which streets are amenable for cyclists — these roads are often wider, have less dangerous traffic, and typically have (sometimes protected) bike lanes.

Cold Weather Attitude

Perhaps the most important thing about running through the winter in cold weather is having the right attitude. I personally have come to really enjoy running in cold temperatures: Particularly when it is coldest, the skies are often clear, and the air can feel incredibly crisp. If you are appropriately dressed and your body is warm enough, breathing the cold air can feel refreshing. Running paths are often less crowded, providing solitude and a feeling of being one with nature and your surroundings. You also generally don’t have to worry about overheating that come with running in the summer (for this reason, I’ll take 20F over 80F and humid any day!).

Snowy winter landscapes are some of my favorites. Running through the winter allows you to see so many beautiful things that you’d otherwise be missing out on. Even a grey day can provide a beautiful backdrop to a surrounding landscape.

**Practice gratitude, and find your inner child. **In inclement weather, in addition to all of the above preparation, ultimately I find that you have to have the right attitude. I find that having the right attitude can make all of the difference. Practicing gratitude is extremely beneficial: You don’t **have **to go out for a run — you **get to run. **How many people would find themselves so lucky as to simply be in your position, running outside in nature, or even able to run at all?

When all else fails, my favorite “mental trick” when the weather is rough is to imagine myself as a young child, playing in the snow or splashing in puddles. As kids, we would all beg our parents to let us play outside, and once we got out, nothing felt more free. As adults, we can also find that childlike spirit as we make our way through puddles, over ice, and through the snow.

I had the Lake Front Trail all to myself at sunrise on New Years Day 2020.

By Nick Feamster on December 24, 2020.

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Exported from Medium on October 28, 2025.

Planning to keep more of these sunrises to myself going forward. Maybe I’ll print a bunch of photos and do an art gallery show or something. Or just hang them on my own wall for me and my close friends.

The quote in the subtitle is from a Postal Service song, where the songwriter, Ben Gibbard, talks about the feelings of regularly returning to a bar for solace and interactions that ultimately don’t amount to deep connections. While the song lyric is about drinking in a bar, I feel like the analogy very well carries over to my experiences with social media over the years.

And, over time and after various periods of engagement, I’ve gradually but eventually decoupled from all of it, breaking free of these social media prisons and re-discovering what it feels like to live in the real world, interacting with real friends and real people. In the case of Strava, it gets even worse because the tendency to compare and keep up not only affects the psyche, but it can also (as it did in my case) negatively affect one’s physical health.

One of my good running friends recently broke up with Strava and has had nothing but good things to say about that experience. Those exchanges with him and several others recently about the ills of social media (both in general but also especially for sport), really have gotten me thinking seriously about what this next chapter of training — and life — should look like for me.

One of the beautiful things about a major injury that lays you out completely is that you get a chance to start over completely. As I come back to activity and eventually training, I’ve been rethinking everything, including my relationship to this platform.

One of my favorite activities this summer was a 3.1 km open water swim across a lake. I wasn’t all that fast, certainly not competitive, and it didn’t matter. I wasn’t there to win, and to be honest I didn’t even care if I came in dead last (although I certainly didn’t, which was nice). The fact that I had no expectations and nothing to compare to made the experience one of pure joy. And I’ve enjoyed getting better at it — not relative to anyone else’s ability, but relative only to past versions of myself. It reminded me a lot of when I started running, when it wasn’t about paces, or comparison. It was just about movement, being out in nature, and being present with friends.

As I get back to running, I’ve been running solely on RPE and time, and I’m remembering somewhat fondly the days when I ran totally on feel and wasn’t ruled by devices. I ran a lot, and well, but I wasn’t a slave to weekly mileage totals, paces on any given day, or the need to do a workout on some day just because that’s what a spreadsheet says or because that’s what everyone else seems to be doing. I’m old enough to remember running without a watch and just relying on my friend’s timex and gmap-pedometer to get a rough sense of distance and pacing, just out enjoying the day and not worrying so much about pace or how I stack up against other amateurs. The thing is, before all of this, I was still a runner. I’m enjoying rediscovering that, and doing it for me. Ultimately, I do a lot, but the things I do are ultimately because they bring me joy. Much like sharing anything (e.g., a piece of cake!), I’m starting to feel like the act of sharing activities make them less “mine” — for me. I’m feeling like I want more of my experiences to be just that. For me.

As far as Strava is concerned, it really is not all bad; many parts of it I think are great, which does make it hard to pull back. I love the cycling segments, the maps for route planning, and looking at other posts to ideas for workouts. Using this site to prepare for my first Comrades was invaluable, as there just aren’t really many training and racing plans out there for that kind of race. I’ve certainly made some real-life friends and community on this, for which I’m grateful, especially as one gets older and it gets harder to make friends with common interests.

But as I get back to regular running, I’m no longer interested in maintaining a permanent public record of all of my comings and goings. And the daily grind of the feed seems increasingly pointless and likely even counterproductive, at least for me. And so, I’m going to toy with keeping public posts to a few noteworthy postcards, or maybe (likely?) just bailing entirely.

Don’t worry, for anyone who cares enough to read my “feed” (to be honest, for all of us I think it’s less than any of us think), I’m still alive, well, and active. For some actual content that isn’t just boring commutes and easy run splits, I feel like focusing on that and more creative pursuits in general is a better use of my time, such as writing on this blog (something I haven’t admittedly done in a while).

I have to admit, bailing from social media does feel… anti-social. But I’ve bailed from several other platforms over the past several years and I’ve found that life goes on, and can in fact be better when one’s mind is clear. I do aim to still be social. If we’re already in contact and you want to get together for a run or a ride, you know where to find me. (And likewise, I’ll also reach out if I’m planning to head your way or thinking about a run or ride together.)

Hope to see more readers over here as I get motivated to post more here.

By Nick Feamster on September 20, 2023.

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Exported from Medium on October 28, 2025.

View of Promontory Point (on the left) from 57th Street Beach at dawn this morning.

The entire route between Hyde Park and McCormick along the Lakefront has stunning views—especially going north, which affords views of the Chicago skyline most of the way.

**Promontory Point. **If I had to choose one favorite spot along the trail, it would be Promontory Point in Hyde Park, a man-made peninsula jutting out into Lake Michigan right at about 55th Street. There is easy access to the point from either 55th or 56th Streets; I tend to hop on at 56th Street because there’s also a great view from 57th Street Beach.

Promontory Point offers fantastic views of the Chicago Skyline. It is one of my favorite places to run anywhere in the world.

“The Point” is only about 1km from my house, and so I’ll often sneak out there for a quick walk to or from the store, even, and it’s close enough to home that I manage to work it into a lot of routes—it’s the easiest place to get a view of the skyline from Hyde Park. I have so many photos from The Point—every day, the view is different and gorgeous, and while I typically don’t run with a phone, when I do, it is impossible not to stop for a photo. To the right is a photo of Chicago from The Point from just after sunrise this morning. The sky is expansive out at the point, and even on a day that seems like it will be mostly cloudy, I find that going out to The Point at sunrise hardly disappoints—the sun sometimes peeks over the horizon before disappearing into clouds, and when it does, it can light up the sky with magnificent colors. One of the most stunning sunrises I’ve ever seen was Christmas Morning 2019 at The Point; the two photos below are actually taken just 30 seconds apart from one another, demonstrating how dramatic and dynamic the sunrises over Lake Michigan can be.

The photo was taken at 7:02 am on Christmas Morning 2019 at The Point. This photo was taken less than a minute after the one above, at exactly the same location.

I could fill up an entire photo album with photos from The Point, even after being in Chicago for less than a year.

Running north along the Lakefront Trail takes you under a pedestrian overpass at about 5000S, which leads to another gorgeous part of the trail. The best views from this part of the trail are from the pedestrian part of the path which has unfortunately been closed since winter due to flooding and storm damage, but is due to open again soon, thanks to generous funding from Ken Griffin to repair this segment of the path. Continuing north, soon you pass the 47th Street Bridge, which is one of the few “hills” that the trail has to offer. The most elevation on the trail is actually on the bike portion of the trail as it goes up and over the hill, whereas the running path goes around the hill. But, to the east side of the hill there is a pedestrian path that goes up the hill. The pedestrian path is a bit short for hill repeats, but in Chicago we take what we can get for elevation.

**The Embankment. **My second favorite part of the Lakefront Trail is the embankment, which runs north from about 4500S all the way to about 1800S, with a few breaks. It runs right along the shoreline, and so it is generally not runnable for a lot of the winter—water from the lake tends to come up over the embankment in winter storms and freeze, so unless you have ice skates, it can be tough to navigate. Furthermore, it is really exposed to the lake—fantastic in summer when you really need a cool breeze, but pretty unbearable in the winter.

The embankment runs from about 4500S all the way up to 1800S, just south of Soldier Field. It offers runners a chance to be right along the shoreline, with awesome views of the city most of the way.

So, in the summer, I take as much advantage of the embankment as I can. The views from the embankment are phenomenal. Even in summer, it can be slippery, particularly when the water level is high; fortunately, it has multiple levels, as shown in the photo. I often find myself running on the first “step” of the embankment, which is consistently dry. There are a couple of places along the way where the embankment breaks to let lake water up, so if you’re up on one of these steps, you need to step down and back up again (there are also ramps, but they zig-zag too much for running at speed and so I tend to use these breaks as a place to do some step-ups). The embankment is pretty easy to find most of the way. The only tricky place where it’s easy to lose is at 31st Street Harbor. When coming to the harbor, run east of the harbor building itself (in between the buildings and the boats).

La Ronda Parakata, a sculpture whose design is inspired by a Monarch butterfly. As the name suggsests, the sculpture itself makes a full circle, and there are wood stumps to sit on in the middle, as seen at the bottom of this photo.

**Parakata Corridor. **My other favorite part of the Lakefront Trail is the Parakata Corridor. (I don’t know if that is its official name, but this is the name of the Strava segment, so I’m running with it, so to speak.) This is technically an offshoot of the paved Lakefront Trail—a crushed woodchip path that runs from about 3200S to 3700S. I’ll often run it north to south on a return, but this morning I picked it up from the south and ran north. The segment itself is short—less than half a mile—but it’s a nice little break from the pavement and it even offers a few ups and downs on the trail, and a good view of the lake. At the top is a gathering spot called La Ronda Parakata, a sculpture of interlocking butterfly forms, inspired by a monarch butterfly (Parakata means butterfly in Purepecha, a language of an indigenous Mexican people).

The 35th Street Pedestrian Bridge, built in 2016 to connect Bronzeville to Lake Michigan.

From this point, I will often continue north on the trail—it is just another three miles north to the South Loop, with great views of the city from up close. But, this morning, I took another cutover that I like to do, heading west at 35th Street, where there is a pedestrian flyover bridge that was built in 2016. It’s a really beautiful structure and is the longest pedestrian bridgein Chicago. It is one of only a few mono-cable suspension bridges in the United States. At night, it is lit at the top with a blue light. The city has done an amazing job building new bridges on the South Side to connect the neighborhoods to the lake; there is another one at 41st Street which was completed in 2018, as well. I imagine these are doing wonders for the Bronzeville community just west of Lake Shore Drive. Just earlier this week, I talked with someone out on the 31st Street Pier who grew up right on the other side of this bridge and was walking out to the lake at 31st street for the first time. The bridges themselves are utilitarian, but they’re also architectural wonders in their own right (photo of the 41st Street bridge to come in a subsequent route/post!).

It is about two miles due west from the 35th Street Bridge to Bridgeport. Heading west on 35th Street, you first pass through Bronzeville, a neighborhood worthy of its own post. 35th is a major artery and you’ll pass some interesting sights, including the Victory Monument at 35th and King Drive, which is a monument to World War I veterans from Bronzeville. The next landmark along the way is the new Comiskey Park (or whatever it happens to be called this year), home of the Chicago White Sox.

In the parking lot just north of 35th Street, across the street from the “new” Comiskey Park, there is a place marker for home plate in the old park.

The current ballpark itself is not much to write home about, architecturally—it’s a giant stadium, the last one built before Camden Yards, which spawned an architectural revival of traditional stadiums. And so, the more interesting stop is actually the home plate of the old Comiskey Park, in the parking lot for the new ballpark. And unlike the new park, you can step up to the plate and run the bases.

The 3200S block of Canal Street has some interesting architecture that I’ve never seen anywhere else in Chicago. This block of homes reminds me of California.

After passing the park, you can get into Bridgeport a number of different ways. One is to continue due west to Halsted and turn left. A slightly more scenic route involves turning right (north) immediately after the ballpark, passing by Armour Square Park, and turning left on 33rd Street. From here you can continue zig-zagging north and west into Bridgeport. One of my favorite streets to cut through on is Canal Street. There are some houses on Canal Street between 32nd and 33rd Street that look like they could be in California. I’m not sure of this history of this part of town, but I’d love to learn at some point why these houses exist here, and why their architecture is so different from their surroundings—and indeed pretty much all of Chicago.

**Palmisano Park. **Bridgeport technically starts around 35th Street, but the highlight for me is Palmisano Park, whose southeast corner is at 29th and Halsted. Here, runners can have another pretty decent climb up to the top of an old quarry. There is also a small, narrow running “track” in the west end of the park. Running up to the top of the hill also affords nice views of the former quarry itself, and you can even run “down” into the former hole, which is now a man-made pond.

A view of the Loop from the top of the hill at Palmisano Park. Don’t be fooled by the photo—it can get pretty crowded, especially early in the morning!

The top of the hill itself has some great 360-degree views of Chicago. You can see Comiskey Park and Bridgeport to the south, and the Loop to the northeast. Below is a photo from the top of Palmisano Park this morning. Palmisano Park is just south of Chinatown, and so it is almost always crowded with walkers and runners, even very early in the morning, and even in inclement weather. I don’t think I’ve ever found myself alone in this park!

A hidden pathway along the east side of the South Fork of the Chicago River in Bridgeport, near 33rd Street and Racine.

Exiting the park at the southwest takes you back into Bridgeport. 29th snakes around to Throop, and turning right on Throop, left on Lyman, and south on Bonfeld takes you through another little enclave and Bosley Park, which has an interesting little fountain. Exiting the park at 31st, I often like to take a right and then a left to head south on Racine. This street doesn’t look like much, but if you turn right (west) on 33rd Street, you’ll enter a pretty fancy neighborhood, with giant houses. It pretty much comes out of nowhere, and all the way on the west side by the south fork of the Chicago River, there is a brick walkway shown here. The path is short, but a nice way to break up running on the streets.

Exiting this neighborhood takes you past the Bridgeport Art Center at 35th and Racine, which always has great public art outside. This morning, there was a giant sculpture of someone’s head, covered with a huge bedsheet as a mask.

**Union Stock Yards. **At this point of my run, I often head back east to Halsted and head south. From here, it is a straight shot down to the site of the former Union Stock Yards. The Stock Yards opened in 1865 and covered 320 acres, from Halsted to Ashland, Pershing to 47th. Of course, the stock yards themselves are now gone. For about 100 years, the yards took up a huge portion of real estate on the south side of Chicago, as a place where meat from livestock could be loaded onto trains and shipped around the country. The advent of refrigerated train cars essentially made the Stock Yards obsolete, and they closed nearly 50 years ago, but its halcyon days lasted about a century. One of the more well-known restaurants in Chicago, such as Swift and Sons, bears the name of one of the most prominent meatpackers at the stockyards. It was cool to make this connection.

The Union Stock Yard gate, with a memorial to the “Fallen 21” from a 1910 fire at the Stock Yards. This is the view of the Stock Yard Gate facing east from what would have been “inside” the yards.

Now, pretty much all that remains of the yards is the Union Stock Yard gate, designed by famous Chicago architects Burnham and Root. Near the gate, there is also a memorial to a 1910 fire at the Stock Yards that killed 21 firefighters as a result of an explosion during the fire. The yards are mostly unremarkable now, although they have been re-developed as a very large industrial park. A nice way to return to Hyde Park is down Union Avenue, just east of Halsted, and then west on 47th or 51st Street. Taking the 51st Street route takes you under a remarkable number of railway viaducts just east of Union Avenue, stretching about a quarter mile. I especially like to take this underpass in the winter during a storm, as it is shielded from the weather.

**Garfield “L” Station and Washington Park. **Once on the east side of the tracks, you will cross over the Dan Ryan Expressway and back into the Washington Park neighborhood. At 55th and Garfield is the Garfield Green Line “L” station, which is the closest L station to the University of Chicago. I’d been to the station and run past it many times on the north side of the street before one day passing it on the south side, where an interesting gem lies beneath the tracks: Beneath the overpass, an “L” station from 1892 built for the Columbian Exposition still remains. It is one of the oldest surviving mass transit stations in the United States and is now being re-developed as L1, a creative business incubator.

The Garfield Boulevard Green Line “L” station is one of the oldest surviving mass transit stations in the United States. The University of Chicago is now re-developing the building as an arts incubator.

Just east of the station is Washington Park. There is lots to see in Washington Park, but my favorite part of the park is the south half of the park, in between Garfield Boulevard and 59th Street, where there are number of nice running paths, and a large lagoon. In the middle of the lagoon is also a wooded area called Bynum Island; the middle of the island is fenced off for reasons I cannot figure out—it looks perfectly habitable. No matter, it’s possible to hit the outskirts of the island from running paths on both sides. Continuing south of the lagoon, you again encounter the Fountain of Time (which I’ve written about in a previous post) and the Midway, making a nice finish to the run.

The lagoon at Washington Park.

[The full route of this morning’s run is posted on my Strava activity feed and is shown in the figure below. The route as described goes about 17 miles, but it’s quite doable to do this run in shorter segments; the lake front portion and back from Hyde Park is 7–8 miles (you can cut back south on Cottage Grove or Lake Park, for example, and Bridgeport and back from Hyde Park can be done in about 13 miles if you cut north on Lake Park and west on 35th.]

The running route described in this post, which can be shortened in various ways, as described above.

By Nick Feamster on June 27, 2020.

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Exported from Medium on October 28, 2025.

For much of the spring, Chicago’s main Lake Front Trail has been closed. Technically, the trail’s southern terminus is at 71st Street and South Shore Drive, just south of the South Shore Cultural Center. Yet, one of the best kept secrets of the Chicago lakefront is that some of the most serene spots and awesome views along the lake are actually south of the trail itself. Highlights of South Shore include Steelworkers Park at 87th Street and Lake Shore Drive, as well as Rainbow Beach Park, which runs from 75th to 79th Street along the lake front—a full half-mile long and a good quarter mile wide, as well.

A common running route from Hyde Park to Steelworkers Park and back via Rainbow Beach and Hyde Park.

Since I moved to Chicago, I’ve run down through South Shore many times, and the route has become a mainstay. Last Saturday (the day before my 90 km run through Chicago), I took a 15-mile route that starts in Hyde Park and heads south on Dorchester to South Chicago Avenue. Dorchester itself has some nice spots, including a well-maintained garden just south of 63rd Street by the viaduct, as well as several well-decorated viaducts, such as the running-themed one pictured below, one at the corner of Marquette Drive (66th Street) and Dorchester.

Last Saturday, I cut over on 85th Street and then down south to 87th Street on Baltimore Avenue, but other fantastic way to cut over is on 83rd Street, which takes you by Russell Square Park and St. Michael the Archangel Roman Catholic Church, a towering feature on the South Shore landscape which is visible all along the shoreline south of Rainbow Beach. Russel Square Park is a serene park, bordered by St. Michael’s church and many old houses.

An inspirational mural on the south side of the viaduct at Marquette Drive (66th Street) and Dorchester.

Heading east on 87th to Lake Shore Drive drops you right out at the entrance to Steelworkers park. Alternatively, you can come out at 83rd and turn right to head south to 87th. A shorter version of this run simply turns back north on Lake Shore Drive and heads through Rainbow Beach Park (discussed below), but that skips Steelworkers Park, a true highlight of the South Side.

Steelworkers Park, with three artifacts from the former U.S. Steel factory placed in the middle of the park.

**Steelworkers Park. **East of Lake Shore Drive, the approach to Steelworkers Park on 87th Street runs for a good 0.4 miles, and it’s pretty barren—you’d be forgiven for thinking you were running through some kind of abandoned apocalyptic wasteland. Keep going, as when you get to the end of the road, you’ll be treated with a serene park with lush green space and gorgeous views of Lake Michigan. Just about every time I have run through Steelworkers Park, I am the only one there. The park has fantastic interpretive signs discussing this history of the land on which the park now sits—it is the site of the former U.S. Steel factory on the South Side, which employed 30,000 workers at its peak and was responsible for creating the steel that was used for many of Chicago’s buildings, including the Sears Tower and the McCormick Convention Center. Standing on the site and reading about the history puts a lot of the neighborhood history in context. There are even some old parts of the steel mill, as shown, including a blast furnace bell, which weighs 26 tons and came from the former Acme Steel Blast Furnace.

A view of the pathway on the south side of north slip in Steelworkers park. You can find this path by running north out of Steelworkers park and coming around the ore wall. There’s a fence at the end of it, but it’s easy for a pedestrian to navigate around.

It’s worth running both sides of the inlet. The photo here shows the view east from the south side. It’s then possible to head north on Lake Shore Drive, cross north over the inlet, and then run back east again, shown on the far side of this photo. A stunning feature of this part of the park is the giant ore wall, shown on the right side of this photo.

**Park 566. **Coming to the end of the inlet on the north side brings another treat: the unnamed Park 566, which offers a giant undeveloped prairie with paved paths and a glimpse of the downtown skyline as you round the bend on the north side of the park.

The Chicago Skyline from Park #566.

This particular park has a fairly runnable asphalt path for most of it—it’s a little uneven and can be slippery in the winter, but most of the year it is quite nice. Most importantly, there is solitude: I’ve never seen another person in this part of the park, and you can hear and see tons of birds in the spring and summer.

This particular park has a fairly runnable asphalt path for most of it—it’s a little uneven and can be slippery in the winter, but most of the year it is quite nice. Most importantly, there is solitude: I’ve never seen another person in this part of the park, and you can hear and see tons of birds in the spring and summer. The park winds around to the north and west and eventually drops you out just east of the bus depot in Rainbow Beach Park.

**Rainbow Beach. **As you come out of the park, you can turn right into Rainbow Beach Park. The park itself is great, with lots of shaded and well-maintained pathways. It turns out that the park itself also has some interesting history: It was the site of a “wade-in” in on August 28, 1960, led by the NAACP to challenge the de facto segregation of many of the city’s beaches. The plaque is located right at the entrance to the main fieldhouse in the park.

The park itself offers a beach that curves around the lake and is nearly half a mile long, again offering fantastic views of the city skyline along the entire shoreline. For whatever reason, this beach is not very crowded early in the morning, and it’s just about four miles from Hyde Park, so it’s a nice place to stop and take in the views for a few minutes. The southern end of the beachfront also has a short prairie path that takes you all the way out to the breakwater; it’s only about 0.2 mile, but it offers some nice undulating terrain, and some rewarding views.

View of Chicago from Rainbow Beach.

**South Shore Cultural Center and Nature Sanctuary. **The north end of the beach has an entrance at the east end of 75th Street; it’s a cul de sac and a bus turnaround that takes you right back out onto South Shore Drive. Following that road then brings you past the South Shore Cultural Center and Golf Course, a former country club that is now a city park; it also happened to be the site of the Obamas’ wedding. The cultural center itself is hard to miss—it’s a magnificent building. A bit harder to find and perhaps a bit less well-known is the nature sanctuary that is located just to the southeast of the cultural center building itself. It’s a little bit hard to find, especially these days with the construction on the beach behind the cultural center.

The South Shore nature sanctuary features a butterfly meadow. It is just on the far side of the cultural center building itself.

My preferred route is to run east along the golf course along the southern end of the park, and turn north into the sanctuary just north of the 7th tee on the golf course. The sanctuary is small but it has a nice boardwalk, a butterfly meadow, and some more great views of the city. Heading north out of the cultural center brings you back to the southern end of Jackson Park—which is worthy of its own post—and then back into Hyde Park.

By Nick Feamster on June 22, 2020.

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Exported from Medium on October 28, 2025.

The Chicago Comrades 2020

A 90 km Run Through Chicago

One of the things I love about running the streets of Chicago is passing by all of the historical landmarks and plaques, which really give you a sense of place as you are running through it. Much of the time, I’m on a training mission and blow right past signs; during the pandemic, however, with all racing cancelled for the foreseeable future, and with the closure of the lake front, I’ve been taking full advantage of opportunities to both explore the city, and to stop to read the signs and learn some history.

A few months ago, I passed a plaque less than a mile from where I live that marks the starting point of the first-ever automobile race in the United States, which took place on Thanksgiving Day in 1895. The race started and finished in Hyde Park, going all the way to Evanston and returning via the parks on the West Side of Chicago (Humboldt, Garfield, Douglas) before a finishing stretch on the Midway Plaisance, a centerpiece of the University of Chicago campus and the midway for the 1893 Columbian Exposition.

The commemorative plaque for the Chicago Times-Herald Race in 1895 is at 60th and Cornell in Jackson Park. I first ran by the plaque on the morning of April 8, 2020; I took this picture the following morning and started to get the idea of running the route.

When I saw the plaque, I was naturally curious and proceeded to look up the race when I got home. It was called the Chicago Times-Herald Race; the course was just under 55 miles, and the winning car finished in just under eight hours of racing (and just over ten hours of overall time). A little bit of sleuthing turned up a book that had a schematic of the route, and enough details of turns to put together a race course.

The route of the Chicago Times-Herald Road race, which I found in a book. The map is not quite detailed enough to build a turn-by-turn cue sheet, but the book itself provides enough clues to piece together the route.

I’ve done some interesting “bucket list” loops in the past, including the 32-mile loop around Manhattan (twice; a post on that is long-overdue!), and so naturally the idea of running the auto race course was something that immediately entered my head. Of course, 55 miles is quite a bit further than 32 miles; I’d run the 32-mile loop in Manhattan as a training run for the 90-kilometer Comrades Marathon in South Africa a couple of times. But, this route was almost 90 kilometers itself, and so it was hard to justify as a training run. It’s a monster of a route, cutting north along Michigan Avenue, down the Magnificent Mile, through Lincoln Park and the north side neighborhoods to Evanston, and then all the way back down. I’d only ever run to Evanston from Hyde Park—a full 20 miles in and of itself—and when I got there, I took an Uber home. Still, I’m always thinking about “bucket list” runs, and so on April 22, I mapped the route with the help of an old book that commemorated the race that has something of a cue sheet (on page 44), and I put the idea on the shelf, figuring maybe I’d run the route someday.

The route plan.

Then, in late April, shortly after I’d mapped out the route, the 2020 Comrades Marathon was cancelled; I had been planning to run it for a fourth time, and while cancellation was a foregone conclusion for quite some time, the official announcement offered some finality on the matter. We weren’t going to South Africa, and I wasn’t going to run the Comrades. But then a couple of things happened: First, my older daughter started asking me if I was going to do a long run on the day of the Comrades anyway. Second, in early May, the Comrades Marathon Association subsequently announced “Run the Comrades Legends”, essentially a virtual race with the option to run a variety of different distances from 5 kilometers to the “full” 90 kilometers. In the week leading up to June 14, which was to be the date of the Comrades, I put all of the pieces together in my head: I had the local encouragement, a virtual race that gave me the excuse, and even a route that was almost 90 kilometers—and in fact, if I ran the 0.8 miles to and from the start of the auto race from home, that would give me essentially 90 kilometers on the dot. On the preceding Thursday, June 11, just three days before I was due to run the Comrades, I decided I’d have a go at the first-ever Chicago Comrades race, on the course of the Times-Herald Auto Race.

While the course itself is relatively flat compared to the Comrades Marathon (about 300 feet of elevation change, largely due to overpasses and bridges, as opposed to the 5,000 feet of elevation change in Comrades), I knew I was in for a challenge. First of all, I had been injured in February for a couple of months, and while I (like many runners) slogged through the injury, I was unable to get much meaningful speed work into my training. That said, I’d been running 90–100 miles each week throughout the pandemic lockdown, and I knew the distance would be no problem, even if I ended up falling off the pace completely. Second—and more significantly—there would be no race environment or crowd support. Part of what keeps you going in a race are the runners around you—supporting you, running with you and against you—as well as the crowds cheering you on. As I’ve previously written about, the Comrades is the Super Bowl of running—it’s 55+ miles of roads lined with supporters who are cheering you on, offering you sustenance, and generally giving you an audience. The Chicago Comrades, on the other hand, would be a solitary affair. As I would discover first-hand, that difference turns out to be hugely significant.

On the morning of June 14, I woke at around 2:45 a.m. to get ready. I wanted to get started early for a few reasons. First, I wanted to run the route and get back home with some time left in the day to spend with family. (Part of the reason I started running early mornings is that I don’t have to make a choice between running and family time; it rarely conflicts this way.) Second, I wanted to try to avoid as much of the midday sun as I could. I was fortunate to be blessed with a relatively cool day, with temperatures in the low 60s for most of the run, but if I ran solidly and without interruption the entire time, I would’ve been done just before noon, which would be pushing it a bit.

The start of the Chicago Comrades, setting out from Hyde Park at 3:45 a.m.

Anyone who has ever run or watched the Comrades knows that the spectacle of the starting line is enough to keep any runner coming back year after year. Sometimes, in the weeks leading up to the Comrades during training, I tell myself that maybe this’ll be the last year, that the distance is taxing and it’s a lot. Then, I show up at the starting line—a party of 20,000 runners with grown men hugging, crying, and singing the South African national anthem and “Shosholoza” at the top of their lungs—and I’m already starting to make plans to come back the very next year. The Chicago Comrades was different: instead of 20,000 runners at the starting line, there was just one, at my front door. But, keeping with the spirit of the Comrades, at 3:45 a.m., I played the starting line sequence (which I actually keep as a recording on my phone and play every now and then for motivation!). On this morning, I played the sequence at my front door, and headed out towards the starting line of the auto race from my front door, with 90 kilometers to go.

In the absence of aid stations, I reported home via text message (with photo updates) every 10 kilometers. This naturally slowed me down, but it provided a way for me to let the family know I was still en route, and the connection to some supporters at home was a huge mental boost for me, especially in the last 30 kilometers when I really needed it most. As a result, I have fairly good photos about every 10km along the route, with a few scattered photos here and there otherwise. I’ll use each 10 km as an organizing principle for the rest of the post.

You can have Michigan Avenue to yourself at 4:30 a.m.!

**Start - 10km (Hyde Park to South Loop): **Starting off from my house, I headed towards the start of the auto race, with fresh shoes (and feeling as fresh as I possibly could having run 15 miles about 18 hours prior to this run!). Running west along the Midway, I felt pretty excited. I ran all the way easy to Michigan Avenue along 60th, still in darkness, but guided by the flood of streetlights that reminded me of my winter runs in the morning darkness. Turning north on Michigan, still in darkness, I had the four-lane road to myself; at 47th, I did encounter a few cars clearly still out from the night before, but other than that it was fairly quiet. This was a fun stretch; my legs were still fresh, the sky was starting to get light (civil twilight is at about 4:45 a.m. this time), and this stretch north of 35th overlaps with the Chicago Marathon, so it’s always a fun stretch to run.

**10–20 km (The Loop, Magnificent Mile, Lincoln Park): **The next stretch of the route is mentally quite easy; my legs were still fresh, the route was familiar, and it also goes through the Loop and Magnificent Mile, so there’s plenty of scenery and things to look at.

Sunrise over Lake Michigan just north of Oak Street Beach at 5:15 a.m. (the earliest sunrise of the year).

By this part of the course, it was coming up to almost 5 a.m., and early risers were out walking and running. I hit the north end of the Magnificent Mile just before sunrise, and I was able to take a few photos of the sunrise over Lake Michigan just north of the Oak Street Beach. Running through Lincoln Park just after sunrise was both peaceful and stunningly beautiful.

**20–30 km (Lincoln Park, Buena Park, Uptown, Edgewater): **The next ten kilometers take you through many of the neighborhoods on Chicago’s North Side: Lincoln Park, Uptown, and Edgewater, with a short cut-through in Buena Park/Boystown. Much of this part of the route goes straight up the slip road for Lake Shore Drive before cutting north on Sheridan Road up to Loyola University. I’m sure that the road race course probably didn’t cut through the Loyola Campus, but rather stayed on Sheridan Road.

Taking a break at the 30 km mark on the campus of Loyola University, which has a beautiful lakeside park.

Nonetheless, I was curious to check out the campus, and I’m glad I did, since there’s a beautiful park right on the lake—right at the 30 km mark when I was due for a break. At this point, I took my first gel and took a breather. One advantage of this not being a race was that I could stop and take a little break, and I did take full advantage of that at this point. I was just over 18 miles at this point, and most of my weekend long runs aren’t much longer than this, so for the first time I was starting to feel the distance.

**30–40 km (Rogers Park to Evanston and back): **The next stretch of the course is the only part of the route that leaves Chicago. Going north from Loyola University through Rogers Park on Sheridan Road; I’ve run this stretch of road a few times—it’s a common segment running from Evanston, and I’ve also done it once when running a one-way route from Hyde Park to Evanston. It’s a stretch of sidewalks and a residential neighborhood that opens up to a magnificent view when the road turns east just north of Juneway Terrace. This part of Sheridan Road takes you along the lake shore, and there’s a nice sign welcoming pedestrians to Evanston!

The sun rises higher over Dawes Park in Evanston, the northeastern-most point along the route.

Highlights of this stretch include the beautiful parks of Evanston, including Clark Square Park, Lee Street Beach, and Elliot and Dawes Parks. With the pandemic lockdown and closure of the Lake Front Trail in Chicago, it was a bit surreal to see so much activity on the lake front paths in Evanston. It was also quite an abrupt chance of scenery to suddenly be running down tree-lined streets and large suburban houses. At Dawes Park, the route turns west on Davis Street, a major street in Evanston, before turning south on Chicago Avenue (which becomes Clark Street when it hits Chicago). Even though the turn south only comes just past 20 miles on the course, it was a bit of a mental boost knowing that I’d reached the northernmost point of the route. Turning south back towards Chicago down Chicago Avenue is perhaps one of the least scenic parts of the route. The street parallels the railroad tracks on one side and a cemetery (with a high concrete wall) on the other side, so there’s nothing much to look at. And, the road is a narrow two-lane thoroughfare, so as a runner you’re stuck on a fairly ill-maintained sidewalk for this stretch. Crossing Howard Street, Chicago Avenue becomes Clark Street and you’re back in Chicago.

Just about 40 km into the route is Touhy Park in Rogers Park.

Touhy Park marks about 40 km on the 90 km route, and so I stopped for a check-in. Just south of Lunt Ave, I stopped in at a Dunkin Donuts for a couple of donuts and some chocolate milk. It was a much-needed stop, and the first real extended break of the run so far. I probably took a good 5–10 minutes at this stop to regroup.

**40–50 km (Andersonville, Sheridan Park, Wrigleyville, Lake View): **The next part of the route is a straight shot down Clark Street. This stretch of road was fairly busy, even early in the morning, and I found myself on the sidewalk for a lot of the route. The route takes you past a couple of cemeteries, including Graceland Cemetery, before passing the Metro music hall and ultimately to Wrigley Field. I took a pause for an obligatory shot in front of the marquee Wrigley Field before continuing. This leg continues down to Diversey Parkway and is the closest point to the northbound part of the route coming out of Lincoln Park. The route then turns west on Diversey and north on Lincoln Avenue. I sent a 50 km check-in at a fairly non-descript intersection along Diversey. Among the checkpoints, it may have been the only one in a totally uninteresting spot along the route.

Stopping at Wrigley Field.

**50–60 km (Roscoe Village, Avondale, Logan Square, Palmer Square): **Around mile 32, the route turns back towards the northeast along Lincoln Avenue for about a mile up to Roscoe Street. This part of the route is brief but mentally challenging, as you start to hit cross streets that you’ve just hit coming south, but now you’re headed in reverse, back north. At the corner or Lincoln and Ashland is a very busy intersection and a Whole Foods; crossing that takes you up to the Paulina L station, where the route then turns west on Roscoe.

Hydrating at 33 miles in, at the Starbucks in Roscoe Village.

At the corner of Paulina and Roscoe, I passed Frasca Pizzeria, which I ate at with the family on a weekend trip to Chicago more than a year ago, when we were deciding to move here from Princeton. It was a nostalgic sight, and fun to put it in the context of the entire city that I was now running through. At this point in the route, it was starting to get a bit warm, and so I took an extended stop at the Starbucks at Roscoe and Seeley to get a large cup of ice water. The staff was unexcited to see me without a face mask, but kindly brought me a large cup of water as I waited outside.

At this point in the route, I was starting to really feel it. The weather was getting warm, and I had some real miles in my legs. Roscoe Village is cute, but then the route takes you south on Western and west on Belmont through Avondale to the corner of Milwaukee Avenue. This stretch was hot, sunny, and rather industrial. The bridge on Belmont crossing the north branch of the Chicago River is also a serious climb, and I was doing it without shade as things started to heat up. This part of the route was perhaps the least fun. Reaching the corner at Milwaukee Avenue, I turned left and headed southeast towards Logan Square. This stretch is not particularly great running, but it’s only about a mile before you reach the main part of Logan Square at Logan Boulevard. Logan Boulevard is lush and green this time of year, and it was some welcome green space after running through the concrete jungle of Avondale.

Clicking past 60 km in Logan Square. It’s getting real at this point.

There’s a nice little green patch at the center of Logan Square, which I ran past before turning south on Sacramento Ave. The 60 km mark is right in this area, near the corner of Logan and Sacramento. As you can see from the photo, the sun is bearing down, and in a typical Comrades run, this is the point in the race where things start to get real; you have a marathon and a half in the legs, and everything is telling you to stop. One of the tricky things about running solo is that there’s no crowd to keep you going, no ticking race clock, and no other runners to track ahead of you or to urge you on. Even though by this point I was not running at race pace, things were getting pretty tough and I needed to take a break for some positive self-talk. I took a breather in the shade at the corner of Belden and Sacramento. At this point I was just trying to take it 10 km at a time, and sometimes less. 60 km is about 37.2 miles, so I’d tell myself “just make it to 40 miles”, and then getting to 40 miles I’d say “only 3.4 miles to go to 70 km”, and so forth. I found that in the absence of mile markers on the road—and the Comrades has awesome ones, with kilometer markers that count down (great for the mental game!)—switching back and forth between mile and kilometer milestones was a good way to keep myself motivated and keep things interesting. Just before entering Humboldt Park, at 1667 North Humboldt Boulevard, is a nice tribute to L. Frank Baum, the author of *The Wizard of Oz, *on the fence outside of his former home.

Just north of the entrance to Humboldt Park is the former home of L. Frank Baum, author of The Wizard of Oz.

**60–70 km (The Parks! Humboldt, Garfield, Douglas): **This stretch of the route was challenging mentally and physically, but it happened to include a string of three giant parks on Chicago’s West Side that I’ve been wanting to explore on a run since moving here. Except for Douglas Park, the parks are generally out of reach from Hyde Park for any loop that’s 20 miles or less, so I’ve been putting off running them for awhile. This route went through all three parks, which offered some lovely green space.

Swan Boats in Humboldt Park, with the Sears Tower in the far distance.

First, you encounter Humboldt Park, and coming south along Sacramento takes you straight through the middle of the park. To the east (left), there are gorgeous views of the lagoon with swan boats, and a great view of the skyline. I particularly enjoyed the skyline views over the park, since the perspective of the skyline from the west is one that I don’t see as often as the north or south perspectives.

The route exits Humboldt Park, and crosses under some railroad tracks before hitting Franklin Square. Here you can see some street toppers commemorating Chicago’s Boulevards—there are some signs about these, including down in Hyde Park, that talk about the city planners’ vision to connect neighborhoods in Chicago through green space and boulevards, from Jackson Park all the way to these parks I was now running through.

The Chicago Boulevard system, conceived in the 1830s and now being preserved and developed. The circuit starts in Logan Square and runs all the way south and east to Jackson Park.

The plan for the string of parks was quite visionary, starting in the 1830s, decades before Central Park even existed. I don’t have a photo of the historical marker handy, but this graphic shows the circuit, which is extensive and effectively parallels the last 15 miles of the route. Visitors to Chicago who never leave the Loop can be forgiven for thinking the city is a concrete jungle, but it turns out that the city’s motto is *Urbs in Horto *(“City in a Garden”) for a reason. The city’s park and boulevard system is extensive and deserves its own long run and writeup. I didn’t stop to check out the many cool monuments and landmarks along this part of the route on this jaunt, but I plan to do that in the future.

On a map, Sacramento and Franklin appear to have ample green space, but they are literally boulevards—wide, busy roads, with grass on the median and slip roads on the side, but not much in the way of nice space for pedestrians. Franklin at least has a decent bike lane to run down, but I was happy to turn left on Central Park Boulevard and enter Garfield Park. Hopefully at some point there will be a pedestrian median added, much like the one that exists on Douglas Boulevard.

The Garfield Park Conservatory. No water fountains for runners today!

Mentally, this part of the route has some ups and downs—at Central Park Boulevard, you see “3600W” on the street sign, indicating just how far west you are in the city at this point (the start is at about 1700E, about six miles west of this point), and there’s still a good 16 miles to go at this point—a good long run, after 40 miles of running. The route passes the Garfield Park Conservatory, another place that I have yet to visit; at least on this day, I was fortunate enough to see the outside.

An unfortunate side effect of the pandemic is that all of the potential water stops in this 10 km segment—the conservatory, the park water fountains—are all shut off or otherwise disabled. This lack of water stops on this day resulted in some dire straits, where I ended up stopping at a BP gas station just south of Garfield Park across the Eisenhower Expressway that was largely boarded up and only taking cash due to the recent unrest. The shop keeper kindly gave me a bottle of water, despite me not having any cash to offer. If the parks and conservatory remains closed, fueling or stashing water somewhere on this leg of the run is a must—there are essentially no gas stations or stores along this entire stretch, from Logan Square to McKinley Park.

The route continues along Independence Boulevard before turning east on Douglas Boulevard and into Douglas Park. This stretch of Douglas Boulevard is pretty. There’s even a nice tree-lined pedestrian path cutting down the median in the middle of the road, making for a very large park. Because I was pretty tired at this point in the route, it was all I could do to just forge straight ahead, and so I stayed on the asphalt road rather than navigate the footpath—but I’ll certainly be back on a future run to check out the median strip. Douglas Boulevard terminates at the entrance to Douglas Park, and turning south takes you into the park. The initial stretch is fine, with some nice views of the skyline over the golf course, but I particularly enjoyed the part of the park south of Ogden Avenue/Route 66, which had a nice footpath, well-kept green space, and even better views of the city.

Another view of the Sears Tower and Chicago Skyline, from the north part of Douglas Park.

**70–80 km (Little Village, Marshall Square, McKinley Park, Back of the Yards): **Crossing west across Douglas Park and turning south on California Avenue brings you through an interesting part of Little Village, near the Pink Line stop. Crossing South of 26th, things get less run for about four miles. First, the route passes the Cook County Department of Corrections/Courthouse at 2600 California, followed by the corrections facility itself, which is somewhat interesting as far as architecture goes—but, it’s still a jail, heavily fortified, and not what you’d call well-landscaped or pedestrian-friendly. By now, it was around noon, and so there were also a ton of characters along this street presumably waiting for their friends to be released from jail. I probably sped up a little bit during this segment. The route turns east again along 31st and under a viaduct before hitting Western Avenue, where the route turns south. I kind of messed up the route at this point and ended up hiking on a median strip up to Western Avenue and crossing at a fairly busy part of the road, just north of the canal. I think the “right” way to navigate this intersection is to hug the north side of 31st Street all the way up to the intersection, staying to the left/north when the viaduct splits.

Powerade at the Home Depot in McKinley Park. Eight miles to go!

Turning south on Western and crossing the canal brought me into more familiar running territory—McKinley Park, which I sometimes visit on weekend runs from Hyde Park. This part of the course was familiar, and yet running down Western Avenue at the peak of the day, with little shade, was a bit challenging. I stopped once just south of McKinley Park itself in the shade to catch a break (again, no water yet!), before finally ducking into the Home Depot at 47th and Western for a Powerade with about eight miles to go.

I got a bit of a second (third? fourth?) wind after the rest stop and felt pretty good coming down to Garfield, where the route turns to the east. By this point, I felt like I was “almost home”, but there was still seven miles to go. I had to spend most of this part of the run on the sidewalk, since Garfield is pretty busy; it’s tough to run on an uneven sidewalk after nearly 50 miles of running—that’s something you never have to cope with in a road race, either!

The 80 km mark is just a little bit west of Garfield and Wolcott. I stopped for a check-in at Wolcott before realizing I was actually about 0.2 miles shy of the “10 km to go” mark. Nonetheless, it was nice to start seeing familiar street names and know that I was heading west towards the finish.

**80–90 km (Englewood, Hyde Park): **Shortly after the 80 km point, the route hits Halsted Street and turns south. Mentally this was really hard—there’s still about five miles left to go at this point, so you’re not that close, and the route actually turns in a direction that feels like you’re getting farther from the finish, since continuing on Garfield would take you right back into Hyde Park. Not so fast, you’ve got a stop in Englewood! The run down Halsted was fine—this is a reasonably developed part of Englewood, and there’s a nice shopping center at the corner of 63rd and Halsted, where I made a final “aid station” stop for water at the Whole Foods. It was about 70 degrees by this point in the run, and I was absolutely cooked, temperature-wise and fatique-wise. From here the route was familiar, but there were still about four miles to go. I felt a fair bit better as I crossed over the Dan Ryan Expressway and turned north on State. The route then turns east on 61st and north on King as it enters Washington Park; at this point there were still about two miles to the end of the auto route and three miles to the end of the run, but I’ve run the last three miles so many times I felt like I could do it in my sleep. As I crossed Cottage Grove and entered the Midway, I started to see other runners out for their midday run—I thought it was funny that if I encountered any of them, they’d have no clue that I’d already run more than 50 miles by that point!

I felt really good coming down the Midway, and it felt great to see the auto race plaque again! Overall, the auto race course took me 7h56m of running time, which was three minutes off the pace of the cars themselves. My total time on course was 9h55m, which did beat the wall clock time of the cars, of 10h23m. It’s amazing to think that we now run just about as fast as the cars of 1895. So, time-wise, I knocked off one milestone for this course, but I suppose there are two left to go: (1) beating the time on course (shaving three more minutes off of my running time), which should be totally doable, given that for the last half of this route I was running an extremely mellow pace; (2) beating the race time, but without stopping (this would be a real challenge to do with no support).

Back at the auto race plaque just before 2 p.m. I completed the auto course in 7h56m on the watch, just a tad slower than the 7h53m of the winner of the auto race. My “wall clock” time on the course was 9h55m, which beat the cars’ wall clock time of 10h23m.

At this point of the course, there was still about 0.8 miles to run back to the house, but of course that stretch just felt like a victory lap.

Among all of my running medals, I will cherish this one the most. A supportive family is the best!

I passed a UChicago student who had been following my social media posts about the run and said “Nick! Congrats on the run!” during this last stretch, which made it almost feel like the home stretch of a race. Back at the house, the cheering squad was waiting for me, with cupcakes, running-themed music (“Eye of the Tiger”!), and even a finisher’s medal. I have a wall full of medals from running road races over the past several decades; this one from the kids is the one I will cherish the most.

**Final Thoughts. **It was only about two months ago when I hatched a dream to run the route of the Chicago Times-Herald Race. I was fortunate that events came together to make this possible, and that I had a loving, supportive family virtually cheering me in this virtual race. It was an epic journey that took me through many interesting neighborhoods across all three “sides” of Chicago. I would do it again, without question; though if I did, I would make sure to have a water plan for the miles on the west side if the parks are closed, and I might start even earlier, or do it in a cooler month, to avoid the midday sun. I enjoyed watching the pulse of the city as I ran through different parts, watching the landscape evolve around me as the day itself progressed. One of the things I love about running the streets of Chicago is how much you get to see and how much running a city can teach you about its geography and landscape. I feel now that I have “run this town”!

(For those who are curious, here is my Strava activity for the run. I’ll have to lay down a segment for the entire route and challenge someone else to beat the time!)

By Nick Feamster on June 21, 2020.

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Exported from Medium on October 28, 2025.

On my long run last Saturday (June 6, 2020), I ventured to the Southwest neighborhoods of Chicago. I had once found the Dan Ryan Woods and had been looking for an excuse to return, and I had read about Beverly, but had never visited before and so decided to find it on foot. You can find the entire route described in this post on Strava.

Sunrise over Lake Michigan.

In the summer, the sun comes up over Lake Michigan early—sunrise these days is at about 5:15 a.m.—and even as a habitual early morning runner, I find myself scrambling to make it out to the lake to catch the sun peering over the horizon, particularly on the weekends. Last Saturday, though, I managed to wake up early and catch it. A few years ago, I began the habit of waking up early to run. This is what James Clear calls a keystone habit in his book Atomic Habits*—*changing this one habit about my life resulted in many other positive changes to my personal and professional routine and outlook. More on that later. The morning sunrise over Lake Michigan is one of the best gifts that Chicago offers. No matter what else happens on any particular day, I feel that it was a good day because I enjoyed a peaceful, meditative sunrise.

A view of the Museum of Science and Industry from the Japanese Garden. (I took this photo on an evening walk through Jackson Park on March 18, 2020, not on this run.)

After catching the sunrise, I headed south through Jackson Park, the site of the 1893 Columbian Exposition. There is much to say about the history of the exposition, but as I run through the park, I particularly enjoy thinking about what the area must have looked like nearly 150 years ago, as Chicago rebuilt from the Great Fire of 1871. The most visible remaining artifact from the Exposition, other than the land itself (including the gorgeous Wooded Island), is the Museum of Science and Industry. A good place to appreciate the park is within the Japanese Garden on Wooded Island itself. Another cool artifact from the Columbian Exposition is the replica of the Republic statue. It’s an impressive imposing statue—even moreso when you realize that this statue is merely a replica, and the original was three times the height of the replica!

Heading south, I exited the park on Jeffrey and turned left on 79th Street, and headed west on this commercial corridor in South Shore, the neighborhood that borders the south side of the park and was home to both Michelle Obama and Kanye West (this particular run did not feature those landmarks, so I’ll save those for another post).

Very interesting building at the corner of 79th and Cottage Grove.

**Chatham. **Crossing under the viaduct that parallels South Chicago Avenue brings you through the the northern part of Chatham. Just south of 79th Street is a part of Chatham with gorgeous homes and well-manicured lawns, but this morning the route took me further west. The corner of 79th and Cottage Grove features a gorgeous building with an extremely intricate top. I’d love to know more about the history and architecture of this building. Like many business on 79th Street, this one was boarded up because of the protests and demonstrations. Heading further west, I encountered several stores selling merchandise for the times, as well as businesses that were open but boarded up, clearly struggling to survive. I stopped a moment to reflect on our current times.

The 79th Street Commercial Corridor during the protests. Most of the neighborhood showed no signs of unrest, but this particular segment definitely revealed signs of the times. The “Open” sign is telling.

The neighborhood also has some gorgeous murals, such as the one shown below.

A mural on 79th Street in Chatham, just west of Jeffrey Ave.

Crossing over the Dan Ryan Expressway then brings you into Auburn, and particular through a small neighborhood called Auburn Lakes. The neighborhood is just north of 79th Street, and the easiest way to find it is to run towards what looks like a cell tower just north of the area.

The Auburn Lakes neighborhood, a relatively undiscovered idyllic oasis on the southwest side of Chicago.

**Auburn Lakes. **Turning north on Stewart drops you right into this idyllic neighborhood, with a giant lagoon and fountain. The homes that surround the lake, as Lee Bey notes, are kind of “just there”; more investment and attention to this neighborhood could truly help it reach its potential. This is a place on my run where I like to stop and look around. The lake has a couple of gorgeous bridges, and there are usually people from the neighborhood out walking, running, and enjoying the morning.

Before Jeanne Gang designed towers in the Loop, she designed this masterpiece in Auburn Park, the Lavezzorio Community Center.

Ordinarily I would have continued on a straight shot to the Dan Ryan Woods, but I wanted to take a quick stop at the Lavezorrio Community Center, also in Auburn Park, at 76th and Parnell. This building is notable, first of all for its unique architecture—I really like how the concrete structure gives way to the glass front, and the multiple shades of grey concrete that give the building a softer look. Second, the building was designed by Jeanne Gang, who is now more one of the more well-known architects in Chicago, for her work downtown (e.g., the Aqua and Vista Towers), as well as buildings on and around the University of Chicago campus (e.g., the Solstice apartments, the North Campus dorms). This building is one of my favorites of her portfolio because it is both understated and beautiful, and a marked contrast from her skyscrapers.

**Brainerd. **Heading east and turning south on Halsted brings you through Chester Highlands and eventually into the Brainerd neighborhood of Chicago, which is part of Washington Heights.

Beautiful 1920s Chicago bungalows at the corner of 91st and Aberdeen.

This neighborhood is filled with classic Chicago bungalow architecture that were built in the early 1900s. Some of the homes are extremely well kept and have gorgeous gardens. This particular row of homes at the corner of 91st and Aberdeen was particularly striking. Running through this neighborhood, you could be fooled into thinking you were in the suburbs, except for the density of homes. Running west on 91st Street takes you through Brainerd Park. I ran south the park and then turned west on 92nd Street, eventually hitting the Major Taylor Trail, which runs north-south and can take you straight into the Dan Ryan Woods.

**Beverly. **On this run, I turned south to 95th and headed further west, into Beverly Hills—part of the Beverly neighborhood, and up one of the few significant hills in Chicago. Beverly is one of the few areas in Chicago that has a hilly terrain, lying on the Blue Island Ridge. It is filled with tree-lined streets and large mansions. Running through this neighborhood reminded me a little bit of parts of Princeton. I turned north on Damen from 95th, which took me down a tree-lined street with some topography (not flat!), and some stunning homes.

The Beverly neighborhood features mansions and tree-lined streets. Here are a group of houses on Damen, just north of 95th. This street has some nice ups and downs and is well-shaded by trees. It’s a stunning segment. Wooded trails in between Beverly and the Dan Ryan Woods.

Continuing north on Damen brings you into a wooded area, which comes out of nowhere. Suddenly, you are running wooded trails in the middle of Chicago! This particular area lies just north of Damen and 90th Street, west of Major Taylor Trail (you have to access the area from the south or west; it’s not accessible from the Taylor Trail itself). This particular trail area is a bit overgrown right now, and so I bailed out to Longwood Drive a little bit early; I plan to try it again in the Autumn when the flora is a bit less lush.

**Dan Ryan Woods. **Crossing over 87th Street brings you into the Dan Ryan Woods, which, despite its name, is more of a park than woods. It has a lovely paved trail that runs about a mile around the park, as well as a large hill (!) and a staircase that is popular with runners from the surrounding neighborhoods. The interpretive signs in the park will tell you that the Dan Ryan Woods is not only one of the highest points in Chicago, but it also used to be on the shoreline of Lake Michigan before the glaciers receded. From the right place in the park, you can catch a glimpse of downtown, including the Sears (Willis) Tower.

The most convenient way to exit the woods if you’re headed back to points northwest is via the Major Taylor Trail; there’s a cutover that will dump you out onto 84th Street and back into South Englewood. This part of Englewood has some fantastic parks, including O’Hallaren Park at 83rd and Wood.

**Englewood. **Heading back through the streets of Englewood, I encountered this unique church near the corner of 73rd and Racine. I’ve come to be impressed with the architecture of churches in some of these neighborhoods. We often think of churches as majestic structures with spires. Often, the only sign that a building is a church are glass bricks on the side of the building in the shape of a cross, as pictured below.

A purple church near the corner of 73rd and Racine in Englewood. You could be forgiven for missing the fact that this is a church, but the glass bricks in the shape of a cross are a giveaway.

I headed north on Racine and turned east on 63rd Street, the main commercial street in Englewood. The viaduct has a lovely mosaic mural on it, shown below. This neighborhood has a reputation for violence, which has some irony since it was probably much more violent in 1893; you can read about H.H. Holmes in Devil in the White City. The protagonist’s “hotel” was at the corner of 63rd and Wallace, now the site of a post office. The neighborhood definitely shows signs of revival; a Whole Foods on 63rd and Halsted is a canary in the coal mine that Natalie Moore writes about in The South Side. (There’s also the beautiful Englewood Line Trail, which deserves its own post, especially since I didn’t manage to hit the trail on this route.)

A good message from the times, from the heart of Englewood.

Heading east, I crossed back over the Dan Ryan and then north on Prairie, which has some strangely industrial buildings just north of 63rd, but also some interesting looking modern houses, which I can only assume are the city’s latest attempt at affordable housing. I liked the shapes, the different colors of bricks, and the colorful front doors.

Modern houses just south of 61st and Prairie.

**Washington Park. **Crossing over 60th takes you into Washington Park. On this run, I took a right on 59th and into the park, stopping at the Fountain of Time sculpture. Most people at the University of Chicago are familiar with this sculpture; it sits at the southeast corner of Washington Park and the west end of the Midway (also an area of historical significance for the 1893 Exposition).

The Fountain of Time, at 60th and Cottage Grove, in the southeast corner of Washington Park.

The sculpture’s accompanying signage has an interesting philosophy lesson: We often think about time passing us by, but this sculpture shows Father Time watching as the world passes by—rather, time stands still, but the world continues to march on.

I very much enjoyed this exploration of southwest Chicago. I wrote about this route towards the beginning of this series for a couple of reasons. First, I ran this just last weekend and so the route was fresh in my mind. But also, the route cuts through some neighborhoods that have a particularly bad reputation; even after having lived here for nearly a year and having explored other South Side neighborhoods, the southwest felt like out of reach for me, as well. And so, my first time through these neighborhoods was only a month or two ago, but the beautiful homes, landscapes—and hills—will have me coming back. The route is a treat for anyone visiting the South Side of Chicago.

By Nick Feamster on June 14, 2020.

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Exported from Medium on October 28, 2025.

Running has taught me many things, including perhaps most importantly the importance of consistency in reaching one’s goals. I consider it the ultimate salve for the brain; a common saying is “sleep on it”, but I prefer to “run on it”. I’ve left for many a run with unfinished business, or something that needs to be worked out, only to return home at the end of the run scrambling for a notebook because of an epiphany that came to me out on the road. I do most of my running at or before sunrise; I love the feeling of waking up in the morning and seeing the world while everyone else is still asleep. The newness of each day brings hope, and I hope to write about all of these things eventually. I’m also not too bad at it.

This past Saturday’s sunrise over Lake Michigan, at the start of a long run to Auburn and the Dan Ryan Woods.

I’ve been wanting to write about running for a long time, and many people have encouraged me to do so. I’ve done a little bit of writing up of race reports, particularly about my experiences running the Comrades Marathon. But for a long time I’ve put it off because I feel like I have nothing new to say. There are many excellent books and memoirs on running, from coaches and elite athletes, and I wasn’t convinced I had anything new to say. Plus, I’ve always found the sport highly personal, and so any “advice” that works for one person may not work well for the masses. What could I say that was new?

Then, about a year ago, I moved to Hyde Park, on the South Side of Chicago. I live about 1 kilometer from the Lakefront Trail, which is perhaps one of the most beautiful places in the world to run. But, the Lakefront Trail is linear—you go out for a run up the trail, and then turn around. For my entire life I’ve been someone who runs loops, and so the out-and-back idea didn’t sit well with me. I also tend to run long distances, and so running long loops on the South Side immediately drops you into the neighborhoods.

Much of what people hear about the South Side suggests that it’s a war zone, with gunfire everywhere and people dying in the streets. But many people—even many people who live on the North Side of Chicago—have never set foot here. On my run this morning, I ran into a North Side resident who had never even heard of Woodlawn. Of course, not having been here doesn’t seem to stop people from disparaging it or simply being afraid to venture here.

The Strava “Global Heat Map” shows popular areas to run. With the exception of Hyde Park, most of the South side is noticeably dark. Kenwood and Bridgeport have definitely been “colored in” more, even in the year since I’ve lived in Chicago. I hope we color in the entire South Side together.

And, checking the Strava Heatmap to the left (which I often jokingly refer to as “where white people run”) confirms that many people don’t bother to venture out of Hyde Park or off of the Lakefront Trail.

This is a shame, because the South Side is actually stunningly replete with gorgeous architecture and rich history, which we have much to learn from. It even has large expanses of beautiful nature, some of it right on the lake.

From the minute I found Promontory Point and Rainbow Beach, I felt like I’d found a slice of heaven in my own backyard, and that a different narrative needed to be told.

The truth of the matter, as I’ve discovered, and as I hope to share with you, is that the South Side is filled with beautiful places. There are places, of course, that are in need of investment and development, but even in these neighborhoods, you can look up from the street at the houses and buildings, or cut through a gorgeous park, and see the glory that once was, and, what I think and hope will someday return (and, in some neighborhoods, some of the residents have told me already is). An important part of this, I believe, is sharing the beauty of the place, telling the stories—and not being afraid to actually go there and see it for yourself. Exploring the South Side on foot as been a pleasant surprise and an awesome adventure for me, and one that I am excited to share with you.

When I moved here, I wanted to learn more about the surrounding neighborhoods, and I picked up a copy of Natalie Moore’s The South Side, which I highly recommend. The book talks about neighborhoods on the South Side, including Englewood, Bronzeville, Chatham, and others, as well as the infamous Chicago Housing Authority projects on State Street. Being someone who runs loops, I had been running south from 31st Street through Bronzeville to Hyde Park since the week I moved here, but Cottage Grove was initially considered “far west” (for those not from Chicago, Cottage Grove is at 800 East, a full mile east of State Street; the city stretches more than seven miles further west). As I became more comfortable and curious, I began venturing further and further west—and south. The book that really opened my eyes, however, was Lee Bey’s Southern Exposure, which discusses both the history of the South Side and highlights architectural gems all over the South Side, from Auburn to Pullman. The photos are gorgeous, and I wanted to see some of the sights for myself. These books made me want to understand more about this part of the city—how it got to be the way it is today, and the people who live here. Reading these books has been formative, but running the neighborhoods and seeing the places as I read about them is what really makes things come alive.

As I ran into more and more people from around Chicago, especially other runners, I’ve received comments from people who have lived here their entire lives and never run through (or even been to) these neighborhoods. “What’s it like?” “Wow, those photos you posted look amazing, it would be cool to run down there with you sometime!” I suspect people don’t venture out for a variety of reasons. One reason is that people (especially runners) are creatures of habit and stick to their routines and routes. But another I think goes back to a misconception that the South Side is a dangerous place with nothing to offer. This is a huge mistake, and a missed opportunity.

This, I realized, is what I can offer that’s different: I run through these neighborhoods, almost every day and have covered a lot of ground in a year. I embraced the closure of the Lakefront Trail due to the pandemic to hit as many parks and neighborhoods on the South Side as I could. I make it a game of sorts to tick off the parks like a bucket list (Note: Chicago has an incredible number of parks, many of which barely get any mention but would be marquee parks in many cities. The city definitely earns its Urbs in Horto motto.)

These are the areas on the South Side that I have run over the past year. I am still expanding and exploring. I plan to share stories and sights from these neighborhoods and others in a series of posts.

I see beautiful buildings, I see people and talk to them and try to see the world through their eyes. I see a historical marker in a South Side neighborhood, and I stop to read it and reflect: The place in Marquette Park where Martin Luther King Junior was pelted with rocks during his protest with the Chicago Freedom Movement. The site of the former U.S. Steel Works site, now a giant park. The Marynook and Auburn Lakes neighborhoods. The political, physical, and street coordinate centers of Chicago (they’re different, and two of them are on the South Side). The Stockyards. East Chicago (yes, it exists!). In contrast to the Strava global heatmap, my heatmap is shown to the left. I’ve been able to explore many parts of the South Side. All of these places have opened my eyes about Chicago, and the world we share, and I hope to share them with you.

Since there is so much to share, and even more ground yet to cover, it’s hard to know where to start, so I’ll begin with a post about my run this morning, which revisited some of the neighborhoods that gave me the idea to start this series in the first place, many months ago.

This plaque can be found just north of the 31st Street Beach along the Lakefront Trail. I have a better photo of it which captures it at sunrise, but this one is from today.

First, heading up the Lakefront Trail to 31st Street, where there is a plaque commemorating the start of the 1919 race riots in Chicago, which were set off when a black child swam on a portion of the lake that was deemed for whites.

Next, the State Street Corridor, running from 35th Street to 51st Street, and the site of the former Stateway Gardens and Robert Taylor Homes. I think the first time I ran over on State Street in this neighborhood last year, I encountered these massive expanses of green space and did not think twice.

The former site of Robert Taylor Homes is now a massive green space.

Then I read Natalie Moore’s book and came to understand more. This area is the site of some of the most infamous public housing projects in the United States, and in many ways has come to symbolize housing segregation, in Chicago, and across the country. If you are unfamiliar with the history, I encourage you to read Natalie’s book and a related piece, The Case for Reparations, which discuss at length how both the real estate market and the Chicago Housing Authority policies conspired over decades to segregate the city, and how this segregation and opportunity gaps persist to today.

The Overton Hygienic Building on State Street.

Invariably on my runs, I look up or across at a building and ask myself wondering what the building is. Here is one of those surprise highlights from today, the former Overton Hygienic Company building. Typically, mode is to note a building like this and then either look for a plaque on the building or try to read about it later. This particular “find” dates to 1922, and was one of the largest producers of African-American cosmetics. The building is now an incubator for small businesses.

Next to it is the Chicago Bee Building, which was also commissioned by Overton and built in 1929; it is another gorgeous gem and is now a branch of the Chicago Public Library. The Chicago Bee was founded by Overton in 1926, a newspaper serving the African Americans of Chicago.

The Chicago Bee Building

As part of my writings, I also hope to share anecdotes about things I see and people I meet. Most of the time, I run alone and my runs are uneventful. Occasionally, I meet someone and have an unexpected or interesting discussion. This morning, as I ran through Taylor Park, I spotted a Chicago Police Department cruiser parked across the street.

I stopped and took a photo of the empty State Street Corridor, which is a rare sight. All of the recent events which have blocked and shut down traffic made for a particularly quiet morning. In light of all of the recent events, I decided to stop and talk to the officer, who also happened to be black. He told me stories of 18-hour days, having is car belted with bricks and spray painted, and other recent misadventures due to recent events. He told me “just because you wear blue doesn’t mean you are a bad person”. This is the thought I carried home with me. It’s not the skin you’re in, or the uniform you wear to work that makes you good or bad, or who you are. It is the decisions you make every day, how you hold yourself, and how you treat yourself and other people that make you who you are.

A police officer keeping watch over Taylor Park, the former site of Robert Taylor Homes.

By Nick Feamster on June 8, 2020.

Canonical link

Exported from Medium on October 28, 2025.

The down run gets its name because of the fact that the run is a net downhill, starting at about 2,000 feet above sea level and ending at the ocean in Durban. Most of that drop occurs in the last 20 miles of the course, starting through Hillcrest and continuing down Fields Hill, a particularly killer downhill stretch about 40 miles into the course that drops about 700 feet over the course of about 4 miles.

A second silver medal, and the extra-special “back to back” medal for completing two consecutive Comrades runs as a novice. How sweet it is!

What people often don’t talk about as much, though, is that the down run has a significant amount of climbing, especially in the first half of the race. Overall, the down run still has more than 3,500 feet of elevation gain, and the climbs in the first half of the race can really tire out your legs if you don’t take the first half of the race a bit conservatively. More serious runners can see the “numbers” from my race splits here.

Leading into the 2018 Comrades, I had never run 90 km; the “up run” course is a little bit shorter, measuring about 87 km, so the 90 km distance was completely uncharted territory for me. Comrades also gives out different medals according to overall time, and the time cutoff for a silver medal—my goal for this year’s race for a second year in a row—is 7h30m. At 86km, silver medal pace is around 8:15 per mile, which is a pretty leisurely pace relative to most of my training runs. On the other hand, at 90km, 7h30m is closer to 8:00 per mile, and to comfortably be in silver medal territory, I wanted to run closer to 7:45 per mile.

This pacing difference may not sound hugely signifcant, but at distances that exceed 50 miles, that slight difference in pacing can be significant. I was also especially concerned about running downhill; I run enough hills in Princeton that I wasn’t concerned about keeping pace on the uphills. On the other hand, running downhill uses different muscle groups, and in the end running downhill really amounts a lot more to how strong your quads are and how much pounding your body can take, as opposed to aerobic fitness. Given that this was completely uncharted territory, I had no idea what to expect for the race. As with last year, I had no idea what the race was going to throw at me, but I knew from experience that the best thing I could do was to prepare both mentally and physically, with consistent running at consistently high mileage.

Preparation and Training for the Down Run

I did several things to get ready for this year’s race. First, I was very consistent with my training, keeping consistent high mileage so that 20-mile runs would feel comfortable, and that I could recover quickly from them. At the peak of my training, I was putting in 20-mile runs on both Saturday and Sunday—getting out the door around 5:30am to start my runs so that I could be back in time to enjoy the rest of the weekend with family. Naturally, this does require a fair bit of discipline; for example, I suspect I’m not very fun at parties, as I tend to want to go to bed by around 9 p.m. But, I found that going to bed early was a lifestyle choice I could really thrive from. I’m generally not super productive with work in the late evening hours in any case, and I found that sleep is just about the most productive thing I could be doing at that time, anyhow. The body definitely needs time to recover and recuperate from high-mileage training, and taking rest and recovery seriously is something I’ve really learned how to do well over the past year.

Second, I incorporated some quality, specific training into my runs and races. Even though I didn’t know what to expect on the down run, I suspected that racing a downhill marathon that also had some climbing would likely be good

At the northern tip of Manhattan on a 36-mile training run. Did you know there is a 220th and Broadway in Manhattan?

preparation. The Boston Marathon fit the profile, and so I registered for Boston as part of my training for Comrades. The 2018 Boston Marathon was an epic affair in and of itself, with cold, driving rain (I’m overdue for a writeup on that experience but will update with a link here once I get that report up!), but it was great training both for downhill running and for the mental tenacity and focus that is required for a race like Comrades.

Third, in addition to my regular training, I incorporated one longer run into my schedule, with a 36-mile loop around Manhattan. My Manhattan loop run was also accompanied by rain for much of it—and I went off course at about mile 29, so my planned 32-miler became a 36-miler—all of which was good mental training for Comrades. (I’ll also update this section with a link to that report when I write it up, but for now, here’s a picture of me on that training run.)

Leading Up to the Race

My family and I arrived in South Africa on Wednesday, and we flew into Durban on Thursday for the Sunday morning race, leaving ample time to relax and mentally prepare for Sunday. This arrival was one day earlier than last year, and I wholeheartedly recommend it. 90km is tough, and in addition to resting your body, you also don’t want to be putting too much strain on your mind leading up to the race. Arriving early gave me a chance to relax a bit, and also to get into (and out of) the race expo on Friday, rather than trying to run around the day before the race trying to get oriented and set up for Sunday.

We spent Saturday relaxing on the beach and staying close to the hotel. I spent downtime reviewing the race course and thinking about my race plan. The down run is a little bit harder to plan, because the first half of the course doesn’t have the same hill “landmarks” of the Big Five that everyone talks about on the up run. For example, I kept forgetting whether Cato Ridge or Camperdown came first on the down run (hint: it’s Camperdown).

Everyone talks about physically tapering before a race. Something that I think is equally important, especially for Comrades, is a “mental taper”. Tapering essentially is giving your trained body a bit of a rest before the demands of a race, so that you hit the starting line rested and ready to go. Tapering is important for the legs, but it’s equally important for the mind. In the week leading up to a race like Comrades—and especially in the preceding day or two—I make an extra effort not to let anything generate undue stress or spend unnecessary mental energy. I switch off work-related email for at least two days and try to have some time to myself to think. Independent of running and race preparation, I find this practice incredibly healthy, and I would recommend it as a general practice to anyone stuck in an “always on” cycle. (Note to self: I should find other reasons to do it at other points in the year!)

To make my life a little bit easier, I downloaded the route on to my Garmin Forerunner 935 (an awesome birthday present for any Comrades runner, by the way!), which allowed me to keep track of both elevation and course progress without having to keep all of it in my head along the way. I also set up a screen on my Garmin that gave me average pace over the entire run in a big display, as well as total distance and total time as smaller numbers on the same display. As runners, we can get obsessed with mile splits; I figured that on the down run, that would be a mistake, and rather my strategy was to track my average pace over the whole course and make sure that I was staying within target. I could still see my mile splits as the watch ticked off miles, but not seeing it all the time encouraged me not to obsess about it if I was going a little bit too slow for some part of the course.

The Night Before

The night before the race, I tried to go to sleep around 7 p.m. Most accommodation is in Durban, so making it to Pietermaritzburg for a 5:30 a.m. race start means getting on a bus at around 2:30 a.m. for the one-hour ride to the starting area. (Apparently they now start the buses super early, because one year they cut the timing too fine and many runners missed the starting gun!). This meant essentially waking up around 1 a.m. to do everything to get ready—eating, drinking, applying sunscreen, using the bathroom, and so forth—and so even a 7 p.m. bedtime meant only six hours of sleep. I was so worried about oversleeping, and thinking so much about the race that I was up and about at about 12:30 a.m. I think this definitely qualifies as the earliest I have ever awakened for a run! (The up run is a bit more civilized; you can wake up at about 4 a.m. and walk from your hotel to the starting line and still be there an hour before the starting gun. Yet another reason to love the up run.)

The bus ride is definitely part of the experience, and I wholeheartedly recommend it to any Comrades runner. I had the privilege of sitting next to a runner from Brazil on one side who was working on his sixth Comrades, and a runner from Soweto on the other side who was running his first Comrades. I alternated between trading war stories with the veteran and reassuring the novice. It was probably the most fun I’ve had on a bus in the middle of the night. Once we got off the bus, I was able to use the bathroom a couple of times and walk to the starting corrals. Ordinarily the bathroom line is really no fun at all, but at Comrades it’s an opportunity to make some new friends. Everyone running the race has a story, and it’s a lot of fun to meet and talk to everyone; doing so also definitely helps calm the pre-race nerves.

In the couple of hours before the race, I had three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches before the race, plus a couple of bananas. Last year, I felt as though I had made a mistake with nutrition, and was determined not to make the same mistake this year. I bought a Flip Belt to hold as many gels as I thought I would need (I took eight gels with me, but ended up eating only five; more on that later), and I ate as much as I could hold down in the twelve hours leading up to the race, mostly carbs and protein.

I think eating too much before the race was a mistake. My stomach didn’t really want to eat along the course. I also felt like I didn’t want to drink in the early part of the race. One of the things everyone has to figure out for an ultra-marathon is what nutrition strategy works for them. Personally, I seem to have been blessed with the ability to keep going at full throttle through the race without eating all that much, but I definitely don’t have the race fueling strategy figured out for Comrades yet. This is something I plan to think about and work on over the coming year in preparation for next year.

The Race: Start to Top of Polly Shortts (5 miles)

The start of the Comrades Race is always really special. Runners start assembling in the corrals more than an hour before the start of the race (around 4:30 a.m.). Over the past year, I’ve been following a bunch of Comrades runners around the world on Strava who run at a similar pace to me. (I tend to follow people who are a little faster than I am to get an idea of what kind of training they’re doing.) Having “met” a number of people online in the past year or so, and having followed their training, the starting line was a different atmosphere. I quickly recognized a few virtual training buddies, which was great fun. I also met a few more runners in the corrals; one of the things I love about the Comrades that’s different from most races in the United States is that the runners are incredibly friendly to one another. Talking to people in the start corrals, everyone knows that they’re all in the challenge together, to some degree, and there’s an atmosphere that you’re immediately surrounded by hundreds of your closest friends.

The magical Comrades start. I’m not clearly visible, but a zoomed-in version of this picture shows my orange shirt near the red divider in the middle.

The start is immediately preceded by a singing of the South African National Anthem, and Shosholoza. Everyone belts out both songs full-throated. It is hard to fully understand the sensation of the Comrades starting line without experiencing it first hand. There are plenty of online videos that capture the moment, but they hardly capture the magnitude of the spirit, which is enough to bring many grown men to tears. Along with the finish, the start is something that likely keeps runners coming back year after year. Part of my preparation this year included reading up on Shosholoza and learning the words.

From the start in Pietermaritzburg, it is cold and incredibly dark. It is winter in Durban, and the sun only rises around 6:50 a.m., so the first hour of the race is in complete darkness. The street lights of Pietermaritzburg make the first kilometer or so tolerable, but very quickly you run onto some dark suburban streets, and it is literally pitch black. The only thing you can do at this point is to try not to step on another runner or into a pothole. There’s a particularly challenging stretch that parallels the N3 before a right turn where you really can’t see much of anything at all. The race organizers have put a few painters’ floodlights along the course at this point, but these lights are almost for comic effect, as they only light up about 10–20 feet of the roadway. Nonetheless, it was fun to run along the N3 and hear the cars honking at us as we ran by; it was definitely the first signs of encouragement and cheering, and that felt good.

At this point in the race, I was running 7:20/mile. This was much faster than my target pace of 7:45/mile. I was tapered and feeling good. In the end, I finished at an average pace of 7:34/mile, so it is clear that I went out too fast. Everyone warns you extensively about going out too fast on the down run; I thought I heeded that warning pretty well, but even taking the warning seriously I took the beginning a little bit too fast and ended up paying the price during the last 10km. Live and learn.

Top of Pollys to Camperdown(5–15 miles)

The first five miles is a rather consistent climb, and so I kept thinking we were already to the top of Pollys before we actually got there. When you get to the top of Pollys, you know it, because the road immediately turns sharply down. This point in the course has about 1.5 miles of uninterrupted (and fairly steep) downhill. Some people seemed to really hammer this downhill, which I imagine is a huge mistake: it’s still very early in the race at this point. I ran down Pollys at a 6:59 pace, which was probably about right. I felt very controlled on the downhill. Another runner actually came up beside me and started running with me as he said “I like that you’re running a controlled pace.” I figured this was a good thing!

One thing that struck me about running down Pollys is how long that hill actually is. I had “run” it in the other direction in the up run last year, and I ended up succumbing and walking a fair bit of it. Coming at it in the other direction this year, it was pretty clear why—it is really a monster of a downhill, as well. I was ready for the downhill to be over by the time we hit the bottom of Pollys.

At the bottom, you immediately start climbing again to the top of Little Pollys, which is comparatively smaller (as the name would suggest) but is still a 5% grade for nearly a mile. To put things in perspective, the “little” hill of Little Pollys is about as big as most of the hills I run on my training runs in Princeton, and it barely gets a mention on the Comrades course.

Climbing into Camperdown. Glad to finally get some sunlight!

After Little Pollys, one comes down the back side and into Tumble Inn, at which point there is a steady, prolonged climb into Camperdown; the hill crests at about Mile 12 at Umlaas Road (which is also the highest elevation on the course, although on the down run there is so much climbing to come that this is basically mere trivia), and then there’s a pretty steady decline at Mile 13, followed by a fairly flat stretch through Camperdown, where runners get their first taste of the awesome Comrades crowds. I ran a 6:49 pace for Mile 13 which was likely too fast; the combined downhill after steady climbing and the positive energy after coming through the time check can contribute to a bit of over-enthusiasm here, so it’s advisable to be careful on pacing and not push it too hard.

During the climb before Camperdown, the road passes under the R103, where runners pass the first cutoff point at Lion Park; for those unaccustomed to running the Comrades, the course has about six time “cutoffs”, which runners must pass through by a certain time in order to be allowed to finish. Runners going for a silver medal don’t really have to worry about the time cutoff—we’re way in front of the required times—but the cutoff points serve as a serious mental boost as you mark your progress along the course. It is impossible to wrap one’s head around a 90 km run; it’s much easier to think about the run in terms of seven 10–15-km runs.

At this point in the race, the sun is also starting to come up, and runners get an awesome view of the Valley of 1,000 Hills. I’m not sure exactly what mountain features we were looking at, but I believe the sun was peeking out in between the mountains of Emalangeni and Inchanga. The geography was really striking, and the sunrise was beautiful.

Camperdown to Cato Ridge and Harrison Flats (15–21.5 miles)

Cruising through Cato Ridge. I’m ahead of someone in the 40-year-old age group who also has a “Green Number”, indicating he’s run at least ten Comrades races.

Cato Ridge comes at about 18.5 miles into the course, after which point, runners pass through Harrison Flats. The course at this point is generally downhill. In the up run, I was cursing this part of the course because “Harrison Flats” is really anything but; it’s only flat relative to the rest of the course, as the course undulates continually during this part of the course and is actually a net downhill on the down run. It’s generally a pleasant part of the course—albeit a bit boring, scenery-wise. It’s definitely a part of the course where one could ignore the fact that the course is undulating a lot and push too hard.

Coming out of Cato Ridge and before Inchanga, runners pass Ethembeni School for the Disabled. This is an incredibly emotional part of the race course. The children at this school have a wide variety of maladies, and needless to say they are physically evident. When you’re out there having run 20 miles already (or 60+ in the up direction!), it can be easy to think that the going is tough. Seeing these inspiring kids who brave the day to give high fives to runners always lifts my spirits; it reminds me of a quote from the running coach Greg MacMillan: “Run happy. If you’re trying too hard & running has lost its joy, take a step back & be grateful that you can even run. Some can’t.” At times like these, I take a moment to be grateful for my good health, and grateful that I live a life that allows me to run the Comrades at all.

Inchanga to Drummond (21.5–27.5 miles)

After Harrison Flats, there’s a pretty steady downhill for about three miles, at which point runners encounter the back side of Inchanga. Climbing Inchanga is not nearly as serious on the down run as it is on the up run, but it kind of epitomizes everything about the down run: you’re still climbing almost 300 feet over 1.5 miles, so it’s a serious climb, and one to be taken seriously at this point in the race, with more than half of the race still to go. By this point in the race, I knew what was to come, and I knew that my average pace was well in hand, so I took no risks and backed off the pace significantly, running up the incline at about a 7:50 pace.

Note that my pace coming up Inchanga was almost a minute per mile slower as I was running some of the downhills earlier in the race, and this is part of what makes the down run so challenging: to guarantee a fast average overall pace, you need to alternate between going pretty fast on the downhills, but not so fast that you crack on the uphills. This is really something to think and plan carefully, as going too slow on the downhills can lose you too much time, but going too fast on the downhills can make it impossible to conquer the uphills at any appreciable pace.

Coming down Inchanga was fun. It’s a steady downhill—as I mentioned, the Durban side of Inchanga is the more serious climb, and thus the down run treats you with a nice break. I really used this part of the course to recoup some energy. The subsequent miles are famously tough, and this is a good part of the course to take a breather. I did pick up the pace coming down Inchanga, running about a 7:15 pace, but relative to my earlier downhills, this one felt easy.

Drummond to Hillcrest (27.5–40 miles)

Coming out of the halfway point at Drummond. I’m clearly smiling to take my mind off of the pain here. This part of the course was very tough.

Coming to the bottom of Inchanga, you can hear the crowds at Drummond, which is the traditional halfway point of the race, and the third cutoff point—although on the down run, Drummond is slightly less than halfway. Make no mistake by the smile on my face climbing out of Drummond—the climb is a monster, steadily rising more than 300 feet in about 2.5 miles. After a brief respite, it is then immediately followed by another climb up Botha’s Hill. Coming out of Drummond the course really starts to get tough. One cool part of this portion of the course, though, is that you pass the Wall of Honor, which has markers for many of the great Comrades runners, as well as “Arthur’s Seat”, which you’re supposed to tip your cap to as you pass by to give yourself good luck for the challenges to come.

Cruising up Botha’s Hill just past the PheZulu Safari Park.

Indeed, tipping one’s cap to Arthur is a good idea—I found the 16 miles from Drummond to the Durban side of Cowie’s Hill the most demanding stretch of the down run. When I prepare for my next down run, I will focus much of my mental energy and preparation thinking about how to run this part of the course.

Botha’s Hill looks small on the elevation profile, and by the numbers, it is a small hill as far as the down run is concerned—it rises about 100 feet over two miles. Yet, after the climb out of Drummond, it is a challenge, and it seems to break quite a few runners. I think this was the first part of the course where I first saw people walking, and where I felt compelled to slow down a bit myself. I had a couple of eight-minute miles in this part of the course, and even at that pace I passed quite a few seasoned runners. I felt like I was really suffering at this point in the course. Strangely, one of the things that kept me going was a random spectator who observed, “Wow, that guy looks like he just started!” And, another one of my Strava-mates told me that I was looking really strong (I sure didn’t feel it!). The fact that I looked strong to other runners and spectators even though I felt like I was struggling gave me a bit of a second wind at this point on the course.

Coming through Hillcrest was a bit of a surprise. There’s a little rise in the course in Mile 34 that has about a 4% grade. It’s not long at all by Comrades standards—only about 0.7 miles, and not even long enough to register as a net elevation gain over the mile, which has a net drop of 50 feet. But, this is one of those hills with no names that really gets you, since you’re wondering why on earth you’re running an eight-minute mile over a stretch of the course that’s supposedly flat.

Next time around, I plan to mentally note Mile 34 as a “phantom challenge” mile, with its nasty hidden rise that doesn’t really register as a real hill by Comrades standards but is enough of a speed bump to really slow you down and sap your spirits if you’re not ready for it!

Hillcrest itself is another part of the course that has an strong cheering section. On the up run, it’s a steady climb. On the down run, except for the little phantom hill in Mile 34, it’s mostly pleasant and forgettable. The only thing that makes this part of the course challenging is knowing that Fields Hill and some of the subsequent climbs on the course are yet to come. The run out of Hillcrest into Kloof is a steady downhill run through a fairly populated area, and you pass through another time cutoff at Winston Park, which is a nice mental boost before coming to Fields Hill.

Fields Hill and Pinetown(40–44 miles)

Right around Mile 40, you encounter Fields Hill, a steady and steep two-mile descent that brings you into Pinetown. Runners—myself included—learn to respect this portion of the course, and it’s the stretch everyone talks about and knows about in advance. Running it on the up run, I knew that it was memorably long and steep, so I knew I was in for a challenge coming down.

This part of the course took its toll on me as well: coming into Fields Hill, I was running 7:40/mile, and by the bottom of Fields Hill itself, I was averaging 8 minutes per mile on a downhill. My slowdown was not a result of pain, as I might have expected, but rather because at this point in the course, I was starting to confront exhaustion, and I felt like my heart rate was going to spiral out of control if I didn’t keep things under control coming downhill. I feared essentially losing control of the rest of the race, including the climb up Cowie’s Hill, if I didn’t slow down. I felt like things were dangerously close to going out of control, and so I even stopped for a brief walk on the downhill just to calm down a little bit. Never have I been so happy to see the bottom of a hill than when I got to the left turn into Pinetown.

Pinetown. It’s crowded, as you can see. I’m in the zone, thinking about Cowie’s.

Pinetown is a straight shot through the middle of a busy suburb, with tons of crowds. Ordinarily it would be a huge lift to the spirits, and I tried hard to view it that way. In my mind, all I could think was that I had to save myself for Cowie’s Hill. My two miles through Pinetown were also relatively slow, despite the fact that the road is slightly downhill here, too, dropping another 100 feet over two miles. At this point on the course, I was really tired of running downhill—but, at the same time, I knew that the infamous Cowie’s Hill was next, and I needed to enjoy the gentle downhill while it lasted.

Cowie’s Hill to 45th Cutting (44–50 miles)

Cowie’s Hill has a reputation on the down run: It is where many Comrades down runs have been one and lost. It is essentially the Polly Shortts of the down run, coming at a point in the race where runners have nearly two full marathons in their legs. It’s just under a mile and rises 150 feet; it’s quite steep in parts, with the average grade about 4–5%, but with grades as much as 12% in parts.

Adding to the fun, the climb up Cowie’s Hill twists and turns, with a couple of false summits. There’s a sharp right turn about halfway up, which is where the road is the steepest, at which point the road essentially snakes around the mountain as it continues to climb another 100 feet after the initial turn. The fact that most of the climbing comes after that turn was a surprise to me, and getting to the top was indeed a real grind.

Coming down Cowie’s Hill. Yasssss. This was a welcome downhill.

Cresting Cowie’s Hill is a huge relief. At this point, another descent starts, and you’re only about ten miles from the finish. Given that most of my training runs were in that distance, I was able to pep myself up with some positive self-talk, telling myself that I only had a short training run to go.

Side note: It’s worth emphasizing what an important factor positive self-talk is for races like the Comrades. For me, it is often the main thing that keeps me going. At various points in the race, I also looked at my international arm band—good for admission into the international hospitality area at the end of the race—as a reminder that my family was rooting for me and would be cheering me on at the finish. Knowing that my family was behind me and supporting me the whole way is a huge motivator for me to keep going at the Comrades. At this point in the race, self-talk becomes incredibly important, as the last 30 km of Comrades are almost 100% mental.

After hitting the bottom of Cowie’s, the course takes about four miles through Westville. This part of the course is an emotional boost for me, as I think of my wife and her family growing up in this part of the country. I thought a lot about how my mother-in-law used to watch the Comrades at this part of the course, and what that must have been like. I imagined them cheering me on.

I think at this point in the course, using your mind is *very *important because on the down run, Westville is a bit of a no-man’s land. You’re past all of the major hurdles, but you’re definitely not yet into Durban. You’re running downhill on a suburban highway, and there are lots of spectators, but it’s still tough. It’s really possible to lose focus here if you’re not careful.

Cruising through Westville “no man’s land” on the M13. Some runners call this part of the down run the “death miles”. As you can see, it’s getting pretty hot, and I had to take off my prized Comrades cap to cool down. To my right is a runner with a Yellow Number—someone who has completed nine Comrades races and is gunning for the envied “Green Number” Club. You can also see in this photo that I’m dousing myself with a water sachet. The race organizers give out water in these little water balloon-like sachets. Simply bite off a corner and squeeze it into your mouth, over your head, or both…brilliant!

Everyone talks about how the hill up to 45th Cutting, right before the M13 merges onto the N3, is challenging. Frankly, I don’t remember it very well, which is a bit of a surprise because it’s supposedly one of the infamous climbs on the down run. Looking at the elevation profile, it’s certainly a steep little rise, but it lasts less than half a mile, and I must have just been in the zone and used to the ups and downs by that point that I didn’t really even notice it. One of the things about the Comrades (and the down run in particular) is that although there are many hills that have names, it’s often the nameless phantoms that really get you, because they come at you when you don’t expect them.

The mile with 45th Cutting was one of my slowest miles on this stretch of the course (8:36), but I also stopped for a bathroom break at this point of the course, so I think all in all it was a pretty manageable part of the route.

Tollgate Bridge and Berea (50–53.5 miles)

On the other hand, the Mayville onramp from the M13 up to the N3 was tough. I had to stop to walk twice, on what is relatively a very short climb. The climb rises about 35 feet in 0.2 miles, so it’s short, but steep. It also comes after a hard left turn, so you really have no momentum coming into it. It might have also been that 45th Cutting took some energy out of me and by the time I got to the Mayville onramp, I simply wasn’t ready for another climb.

Tollgate Road right after Mile 52 is the last real climb of the course. It’s a small one, but of course anything at this point in the course hurts. On this part of the N3—from the Mayville onramp to Tollgate—I was basically running above eight-minute miles, significantly slower than my average pace. After Tollgate, however, the road turns down again, and it’s a good place to try to get some time back—or at least not lose too much more time. I picked up the pace a little bit on this part of the course. You can coast through Berea knowing that you have less than four miles to go at this point. It’s also the part of the course where you can finally see the Durban skyline, so you know you’re almost there.

Coming up the N3 flyover, which leads onto the Durban surface roads. This is a beastly 5% grade at Mile 53, and it hurts. You can see the guy behind me walking up. I also took a walk, but I picked up the pace for the cameras. Still hot and humid!

The last difficult part of the course is the off ramp flyover that takes you off of the N3 onto the Durban city streets. On the elevation map, it barely registers—my Strava route indicates a 5% grade over 0.1 mile, for example. The climb was short, but it definitely felt like 5%! This climb was mentally pretty tough, and it was a little bit deflating to have to stop to walk some of this road, so close to the finish. At the same time, this is the first part of the course where you can see the Moses Mabhida Stadium, the site of the finish line. Seeing the stadium gave me the positive boost I needed to pick up the pace again coming off of the flyover: coming onto the Durban streets, I ran a 7:17 mile.

It’s worth noting that the miles on the N3 into Durban have basically zero spectators. I’m not sure why, but it was essentially desolate, aside from one random kid who asked me if he could have my hat (as an aside, every Comrades runner gets a special hat with the Comrades logo on it… I wasn’t about to give my hat away, even though at this point in the course, temperatures had risen enough that I was certainly getting pretty warm).

Durban Streets to Moses Mabhida Stadium (53.5–56.1 miles)

The end of the race is awesome. The route is lined deep with spectators, and the stadium is in full view. Better yet, as you go along a straight shot to the stadium, it keeps getting closer. In absolute terms, you still have a ways to go as you run through the streets of Durban, but the finish line is palpable, and the crowds essentially lift you to the finish. I particularly enjoyed passing Kingsmead, the former site of the Comrades down run finish before it was moved to Moses Mabhida.

On the “victory lap”, about 50 meters from the finish.

Coming into the stadium… there are no words to describe it. After running through Durban, you run along the side of the stadium and turn left through a tunnel that takes you onto the playing field inside of the stadium. You run through a dark entry tunnel, and you can literally see the light at the end of it, which is the last 150 meters of the race. The race ends in a “victory lap” around the playing field. My splits indicate that my last half-mile was pretty quick (7:17 pace), but to me it felt like slow motion.

Finishing the Comrades

There is something about finishing the Comrades marathon that sticks in your mind and keeps you coming back. As you come into the last few hundred meters to the finish—and as you cross the line—you feel like you can conquer anything life throws at you.

Crossing the finish line for a back-to-back silver medal!

The distance of Comrades is longer than we typically wrap our minds around as runners. The sites I saw along the course are so incredibly diverse; many people don’t see that kind of diversity in a lifetime, let alone on a run in a single day. The people I met along the way, from the bus ride to the finish, remain etched in my memory. The words of encouragement that a spectator made at some seemingly inconsequential point along the way carried me to the finish and are still with me. These moments—throughout the race, and the journey of the training as well—will keep me coming back to this awesome race.

Aside from the race itself and the spirit that it has to offer, one of the things I love about Comrades is that it comes at a time of year that is great for personal renewal. The academic year has just ended, and it’s a great time to visit a beautiful city where my wife and her family grew up, and to understand more about where they have come from. Durban has changed a lot since my wife lived there, and sometimes they wonder why I’m so enthusiastic about the place, I think. Part of the reason, of course, is the Comrades itself. But the other part is everything that Comrades and Durban represents—the culture, the people, my wife’s roots and family history, and the spirit and energy that Durban (and Comrades in particular) has that I’ve never experienced anywhere else. These are all reasons that I now look forward to my next Comrades return from the moment the race completes.

Epilogue: Postmortem and Lessons Learned

As I mentioned earlier, I did many things right in my preparation for the race, from consistency to quality training runs. Yet, the last 10 km of this race were really not pretty—not only from a pacing standpoint, but also given how I felt. For many marathons, I cross the finish line feeling like a million bucks. There were points in the last 10 km of this race where I felt I could have managed things better.

Probably the biggest place where I can improve is nutrition. As I mentioned, I ate three peanut butter sandwiches in the two hours before the race. This was probably OK from a nutrition standpoint, but it also gave me a slightly heavy feeling in my stomach. I also was nervous about hydration and thus drank a bit too much in the couple of hours leading up to the race. I started the race well-hydrated, but almost to the point where I didn’t want to drink anything for quite a ways into the race. I also spent a good portion of the first half of the race feeling like I needed to go to the bathroom, and indeed I stopped three times during the race to get rid of liquid. Over seven hours, a bathroom break is probably normal (I also stopped once last year), but three stops felt a little bit excessive. Over the next year, I’ll be thinking more about nutrition, both during the race itself, as well as part of training.

Comrades is tricky because it starts at 5:30 a.m., when it’s dark and cold and finishes mid-day, when it’s hot and sunny (even for the male winners, who finish by 11 a.m., it’s still warm). The differential is even more extreme on the down run, when it’s cold at altitude in Pietermaritzburg at the start and hot and humid on the beach at Durban at the finish. During the early parts of the down run, it can be particularly hard to remember to drink water since it’s chilly. If you forget, however, you will pay the price later when it gets hot, because there’s only so much water you can drink over a given time interval—if you build up a hydration deficit early in the race, things can get ugly in the second half.

The other thing I will plan to do is incorporate a few more long training runs into the training block. One 36-miler was certainly good, but 90 km is a whole different ballgame—not least because you’re on your feet for more than seven hours. Even my Manhattan loop was over in 4.5 hours; Comrades had me on my feet for another three hours, without any rest. Certainly, there will be more long training runs to come as I prepare for the 2019 up run!

Relaxing in Durban the day after Comrades.

By Nick Feamster on July 1, 2018.

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Exported from Medium on October 28, 2025.

A strong finish. Yesss!

Overall, I was very proud of my training, and my execution in this race. Looking at my pacing, if anything I perhaps went out just a tad too fast over the first half and I paid for that a bit in the second half. The weather was decent, but a bit of a challenge that day—about 60F and humid at the start (we narrowly avoided being rained on)—so I also adjusted my expectations a bit for that.

**Pre-Race: The Bus to Staten Island. **I signed up for the 5:30 a.m. bus from the New York Public Library, which turned out to be a fantastic option—one that I will repeat when I enter this race again. I left my hotel, The Gregory, at around or a little bit before 5 a.m., and I arrived at the bus loading area at Bryant Park about ten minutes later, which turned out to be just enough time to work my way through the long lines to get onto a bus. The crowd control to find the bus loading area was quite a scene; I probably walked 4–5 extra city blocks just to make my way through the bus corrals before I finally loaded onto a bus.

My bus set off right around 5:30 a.m., at which point we all shared a very dark ride to the southern tip of Manhattan, through the tunnel to Brooklyn, and finally over the Verrazano Narrows bridge, which we were due to run just a few hours later. I did my best to nap as much as I could on the bus, and I had a banana and some sports drink to keep nourished. One thing that I found a bit challenging about this race is the 9:50 a.m. start; now that I am so used to running at the crack of dawn (or earlier), I am fairly settled into the routine of eating breakfast and immediately heading out for a run. I wasn’t quite sure what to do as far as eating with a 9:50 a.m. start. In the future (and for Boston, which also has a late start), I might include a “nutrition dress rehearsal”, which includes starting one of my long training runs around the time of the actual race, just so that I can experiment with the meal and bathroom timing.

The bus arrived at the “athlete’s village” at Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island at around 6:30 a.m. With the start more than three hours later, at least there was no rush! At this point, I had a singular goal of staying warm and getting as much rest and relaxation as I could before moving into the corrals several hours later. I took advantage of the free coffee, ate some more of the food I had packed (basically, several peanut butter sandwiches), and tried to find a place to lie down in what amounted to a parking lot. It was nonetheless comforting to see thousands of people from around the world basically trying to do exactly the same thing!

The Start. Aside from the Comrades Marathon, the start of the New York City Marathon is the most exhilarating start to any race I can remember. I was in the front of the Gold Corral, which put me on the north lanes of the upper level of the bridge, with a start line several hundred meters ahead of the elites, who started just a bit further back on the curve in the center lanes. This setup was awesome, as it allowed me to have a front-row view of the wheelchair and women’s starts. An additional bonus was that the men’s elite started at the same time as the main field, but were in their own corral just a little bit behind us in the center lanes of the bridge. For a brief moment, those of us in the Gold Corral had the privilege of running alongside the elites as we crossed the Verrazano Narrows bridge. It was an incredible feeling to be running across the bridge, looking left and seeing Manhattan and looking right to see the elites right next to us.

The views on the bridge counteracted the fact that the first mile of the marathon is one of the most difficult of the race. My pace was 6:54 through the first mile, which seemed about on target. My goal was to run a 2:50 marathon on a perfect day, which is about 6:30/mile; given the difficulty of the climb on the first mile, a slightly slow start was within expectations. Mile 2 is a descent off of the bridge, and I ran a 6:13 for that mile, which certainly put the time right back in the bank, but in hindsight I may have pushed that mile too hard. Next time, I will try to stay a bit more calm about clawing back time, given that I likely paid for this aggressive second mile during the last 10k of the race.

**Miles 3–13.1: Brooklyn. **Everyone talks about how First Avenue (starting at about Mile 16) is one of the most awesome experiences in marathoning. Actually, I found Brooklyn more exhilarating. The course through Brooklyn is more varied, taking you from the suburban-like neighborhood of Bay Ridge in the early miles, then through Sunset Park and Park Slope, before making a hard right turn near Atlantic Station and into Clinton Hill, on Lafayette Avenue.

Miles 4–8 of the race are basically a straightaway on Fourth Avenue through these neighborhoods. I made a right turn onto Fourth Avenue in Bay Ridge, the street numbers start in the nineties and start counting down, foreshadowing what is to come. Depending on the route (the marathon route bifurcates depending on corral on this part of the course), you may take any number of routes. I made a right turn at Fourth Avenue and 95th Street, foreboding a long “countdown” of streets. At this point, the route takes you down on Fourth Avenue all the way through the street numbers, and for about another mile before turning onto Lafayette.

Through Mile 8, I used the descending street numbers as a way to mark my progress; I also used the blue line on the asphalt that marks the official course as a way to guide my route and give me something to focus on. The only difficulty I had with tracking the blue line is that the course at this point remains somewhat crowded, and at the pace I was going, there were a lot of other serious runners who were trying to do the same thing. This meant either slotting in behind someone and perhaps going a little slow, or facing someone on my tail all the way down Fourth Avenue. I split the difference, zig-zagging off of the line anytime someone behind me started to throw off my focus.

At the start of Mile 9, there’s a right turn onto Lafayette Avenue, which takes you up Clinton Hill. Fourth Avenue undulates, but Lafayette is the first real climb since the first mile. It’s not particularly daunting, but it’s enough to feel. Fortunately, the crowds on this part of the course are awesome. Lafayette is a nice narrow little one-way street with walk-up brownstones flanking either side; the crowds were dense on this part of the course, and the cheering was boisterous. This part of the course reminded me a little bit of the Wellesley Mile at the Boston Marathon. At the nine-mile marker, we took a left turn onto Bedford Avenue, which is a nice consistent downhill. This is a part of the course that gives back a little bit, and I did my best to take some energy from the course and the crowds. Through Brooklyn, I’d been running about 6:25/mile; Mile 10 was a little faster (6:19).

Mile 11 to the halfway point takes you through two neighborhoods, Williamsburg and Greenpoint, which I hear are trendy, but from a runner’s perspective, they are pretty forgettable; I remember running through a bunch of seemingly non-descript neighborhoods with a lot of hipsters out for brunch. The miles were undulating (Mile 12 is a slight downhill, which again, is a nice place to take something back from the course), and at this point my main thought was clicking off miles and getting to the 59th Street Bridge with some steam in the tank.

For a race as heralded as the NYC Marathon, I was surprised to discover that the halfway mark of the marathon is surprisingly anti-climactic: it occurs on an uphill segment of the Pulaski Bridge that connects Brooklyn to Queens, in a rather industrial-looking neighborhood; the bridge itself is basically a concrete ramp that crosses a creek and apparently doesn’t accommodate or invite spectators. It was the quietest halfway point of any race I can remember. However, I have to say that this point in the race was really nice; after running for more than an hour with non-stop cheering, a little quiet is welcome, and I used this point in the race to train my focus on the upcoming bridge climb.

**Halfway Point to Manhattan (and the 59th Street Bridge) (Miles 14–16). **After entering Queens after the halfway point, basically the only thing on my mind was the 59th Street Bridge, which starts about halfway through Mile 15. Long Island City, a neighborhood in Queens, was also chock full of spectators, but the main thing on my mind was what was to come. This part of the course had several twists and turns, in contrast to much of the rest of the course, which involve long straight stretches of road. Right before the Mile 15 marker, the course makes a hard left turn and immediately the road turns up onto the bridge. We ran the lower-level of the bridge, which was an odd experience:

The low-hanging upper-level above us made me feel like I was running through a long tunnel, and the main sounds you hear on the bridge are the pitter-patter of other runners and the hum of cars and trucks driving on the upper-level above you. The view from the lower level is also not particularly great; focused on pacing, I was primarily looking straight ahead and did not have the time or inclination to look sideways at whatever cropped view there might have been. The whole bridge is just a little more than a mile; I am a pretty strong uphill runner, so I passed quite a few runners on the uphill, only to be overtaken by some of them on the downhill.

The descent off of the bridge is pretty stellar: Towards the end of the bridge, you hit the Mile 16 marker, and right before that, you can hear the roar of crowds below you on First Avenue. The descent off of the bridge makes a left U-Turn, and as you make the turn you see a giant crowd at the corner welcoming you to Manhattan and the long stretch of First Avenue.

**First Avenue (Miles 17–20). **Many people talk about the First Avenue stretch of the marathon as being spectacular, with throngs of crowds on either side of the course for miles, as you make your way through Manhattan. Some articles I had read in advance of the race also warned that this stretch of the course is a slight downhill, and that there’s temptation between the grade of the road and the roar of the crowds to kill this part of the course. I had no such problem: Actually, this stretch is a continual up-down undulation, and some parts of the road are distinctly uphill; I remember in particular a short monster right around 80th Street, which was a real mental and physical struggle, since I knew there was still quite a way to go on this supposed “easy” stretch of the course.

The First Avenue Slog.

To make things more challenging, First Avenue is very wide, and the advertised throngs of spectators were really far off of the roadway: More spectators gravitated to the west side of the street, and hence, there was a natural inclination to run that side of the road. Unfortunately, police barriers had the crowds well off of the side of the road. The west side of the road has a protected bike lane, and the crowds were contained on the other side of the bike lane–separating them from the runners by at least 15 feet at the closest point. I’m sure this makes for great security, but from the perspective of a runner (and presumably spectators), the distance between the crowd and the course seemed to tap a fair bit of energy. In short, the undulating elevation profile and the crowd experience that didn’t quite live up to expectations actually made this stretch of the course one of the most difficult parts of the course. When I run the race again, I’ll remember this and prepare mentally for the First Avenue Slog.

Madison Avenue Bridge. “Last %#$ Bridge!”

**The Bronx (Mile 21). **Crossing over the Willis Avenue Bridge takes you on a short, mile-long tour of the South Bronx. By many accounts of past runners, this part of the course has been nothing to write home about and is really a “token visit” to the borough. To my pleasant surprise, I found this mile really fun. Unlike First Avenue, it’s a flat mile, and even the bridge approach is relatively tame. Entering The Bronx, runners were greeted by pumping music, enthusiastic spectators, and large flashing billboards (basically amounting to advertisements, but nonetheless I found them motivating at this point). The Bronx is also the start of the final 10k of the course, so I drew energy from the music and crowds here to prep for the final push back into Manhattan. One of my memories from this part of the course is the return to Manhattan over the Madison Avenue Bridge. First of all, this bridge is elegant; it’s small (it’s about as un-New York as you might think of as an entrance to Manhattan!), and it is nicely architected and painted. I remember one spectator who held a sign that read “Last %#$ Bridge!”; I think I laughed audibly at that sign, and it also gave me a bit of energy.

**Fifth Avenue (Miles 22–24). **I loved this part of the course. The roads are relatively flat, and the first stretch takes you through some pretty neighborhoods in Harlem, including a quick tour around the edge ofMarcus Garvey Park, which is lined by some gorgeous brownstone houses. I wasn’t really stopping to admire the architecture at this point, but the vibe of the route was fantastic. Clearly this part of Manhattan has gentrified quite a bit in the past decade, and you could kind of feel that vibe, too. After rounding the south edge of the park, right around the Mile 22 marker, the course makes a right turn onto Fifth Avenue. I felt a huge rush of adrenaline when I made this turn. First of all, knowing that there were only four miles remaining was a good feeling; second, this part of the course was filled with spectators; finally, a good part of this stretch of the course runs through a beautiful part of Manhattan, with Central Park on the right and milestones like the Guggenheim on the left.

There is one significant catch: Fifth Avenue is a brutal uphill climb. By the numbers, the climb isn’t so bad, rising only about 100 feet over a mile. However, at this point, as any marathoner knows, one’s legs are tired; it was all I could do to run 6:50/mile and not let the pace fall completely apart. Having run Central Park many times before, I knew that the mile through the park was going to be a fairly forgiving downhill, and I took some comfort in that, along with the fact that I was rolling up other runners for the entire climb. I make an effort to incorporate hills on many of my training runs, and I feel like that hill training plus my relatively small size gives me a distinct advantage on the hills; I turn that into mental energy, as well, and I draw energy from other runners that I pass on the hill. Hills like Fifth Avenue aren’t easy for anyone; by reminding myself of that, I was able to push through, and feel good throughout the climb into Central Park.

**Central Park and Finish (Miles 25–26). **The right turn at 86th Street into Central Park is another fantastic moment in the race; the crowds are massive, and the entrance into Central Park gave me a huge mental boost. I have run the Central Park loop countless times, including (in the Knickerbocker 60k) several times in reverse, as the Marathon course runs. I know this part of the park well and I was able to note landmarks to mark my progress. I won’t say that this part of the course was easy, but it was sure a lot easier than the preceding climb up Fifth Avenue. The only challenge I faced was the right turn onto Central Park South: As you exit the park, there are a number of traffic calming devices that can wreak havoc for runners who are all trying to make a tight turn. I distinctly remember giving another runner a slight tap to encourage him to move a hair to the right so that I would avoid having to navigate one of these large concrete curbs.

Making my way south through Central Park. Feeling strong!

Turning onto Central Park South is another exhilarating experience. Like many other parts of the course, it is packed with spectators, and as a runner, you can mark your progress on the course by spotting the skyscrapers in Columbus Circle. Looking at my splits, this mile was not particularly fast (6:50), but I don’t really remember this part of the course feeling particularly effortful. It’s entirely possible that I was simply soaking up the last mile and just let my pace drive a bit.

At Columbus Circle, the course makes a right turn into the park for the final stretch. This stretch of the course has a little uphill segment, including a short little challenge in the last quarter mile up to the finish line. At this point, however, I was enjoying the moment. One aspect I found slightly disconcerting was that there was no clock visible over the finish line itself; usually I use the gun clock at the finish line as a trigger to start a final push with whatever I have left—to try to shave a few seconds off of my time, for example. At this finish line, I had to rely on my watch.

**The Finish Line. **The finish line is at about 66th Street, and the exit from the park is at 72nd Street; hence, there is a bit of a walk from the finish line, with no bathrooms at all along this part of the course. When I passed the medical tent, I briefly contemplating checking into the tent just so that I could use a bathroom. Ultimately, I pressed on. “Mile 27” of this marathon was pretty brutal, given that we’d just raced 26.2 miles and essentially had to walk nearly another mile to exit the race course. Thankfully, I had opted for the post-race poncho, which allows runners to exit at 72nd Street instead of 86th Street, and also provided me with a very welcome warm garment for my trek to the subway.

Approaching the Finish Line. Happy at the Finish!

**Summary. **This race was not a PR for me, but it wasn’t far off of a PR on what turns to a very challenging course. It also marked an important milestone for me: I now have sub-3 hour marathon times on all three U.S. Marathon Majors (Chicago, Boston, and New York). Onto the emaining international majors!

Everyone I had spoken to and everything I had read in advance suggested that the course would be challenging. How hard could it be, I thought? Compared to Comrades, the course is flat! It’s a city, and I spend my weeks running hills; this will be a cakewalk, right? Nope! It turns out that everything is relative.

Fifth Avenue is definitely the Polly Shortts of the NYC Marathon; sure, it’s a shorter, tamer hill, and it’s at Mile 22 instead of Mile 50, but the marathon pacing is also faster than Comrades pacing. And, as I discovered, undulating roads can be just as taxing as long uphills—sometimes moreso.

In general, I executed my training and race plan very well for this race. Perhaps the one mistake I made was getting too anxious in the first two miles—pushing both the uphill and the downhill on the bridge too hard, for fear of losing too much time. In the end, I probably lost that time on First Avenue and Fifth Avenue anyway.

Leading up to this race, I had a difficult time maintaining pace on my tempo runs. By the book, I should have been running tempo at about 6:10/mile; I had a hard time pushing my tempo below 6:50/mile for very long, however, even though my track workouts at about 5:30/mile were fast enough to suggest that 6:10 should be doable. I think my issue with tempo pace was largely mental and is something I’ll be working on in training for my next marathon.

In summary, the New York City Marathon is a fantastic race—it’s a fun course, and a great overall experience, right here in my backyard. Entry isn’t guaranteed, but given how much fun I had with this challenge, I’ll certainly plan to enter again in the coming years.

By Nick Feamster on December 31, 2017.

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Exported from Medium on October 28, 2025.

I first learned of the Comrades Marathon on a visit to Durban in 2012 when shopping for attire for my wedding. We had failed to reserve a rental car and found ourselves in a pickle because our visit coincided with the Comrades Marathon.

I learned that my wife had lived along the course for many years, and that members of our family had run it in years past. I also learned that the Comrades “Marathon” is not in fact 26.2 miles, but rather an ultra-marathon of a distance that is greater than two marathons. I am an avid distance runner; so, since that weekend five years ago, completing the Comrades was a goal. I realized my goal last week in Pietermaritzburg, after more than 87 km of running, much of it in 80-degree heat. I have never run so far in my life, and I don’t think I will until the Comrades next year. I have also probably never been so proud of an accomplishment in my entire life.

Meeting the expectations of my best-case scenario, I finished with a silver medal, awarded to approximately the top 2% of finishers who complete the race in less than 7 hours and 30 minutes. I made the cut-off with time to spare, with a time of 7 hours and 13 minutes. I was overly pleased with my time, but to be honest, it exceeded even my own expectations.

Until I crossed the finish line, I honestly didn’t know what to expect out of my performance. I was confident that I could finish, but, to be honest, I had no idea how racing would feel after 26.2 miles, the typical marathon distance. Although I had trained for nearly a year for the race and have run 15 marathons, I had only once run a distance longer than 26.2 miles—and that one experience was far from exhilarating, so I was cautious and wary. The Comrades is more than twice that distance, and the “up” run has nearly 6,000 feet of climbing, as well. In the end, completing the race was one of the most awesome experiences in my life—one that will have me coming back for more Comrades races.

The Comrades is several orders of magnitude more awesome than any road race I have ever run. First of all, the challenge of running Comrades is simply unparalleled; it is, by far, the most challenging race I have ever run, physically and mentally. The motto of the 2017 Comrades was zinikele (“It takes all of you”). Nothing sums it up better than that. Second, the support along the course is incredible; not only is it consistent for 87 kilometers, but the race takes you through all kinds of walks of life, showing the many, many colors of the Rainbow Nation. Third, the camaraderie among fellow runners is like nothing I have ever seen.

From the start of the race—with 20,000 runners singing the South African national anthem followed by Shosholoza—through the grueling last stretches of the race, where fellow runners were encouraging each other on over the tough parts of the course and the hills, the Comrades brings everyone together—across South Africa and across the world—like no sporting event I have ever witnessed. I’ve been coming to South Africa for nearly a decade now; I was married here, and my family (including my kids) are South African. I’ve always loved coming to this beautiful country. But, it was the Comrades that has awakened a deep love for this country. It is truly something special.

One thing I learned about running an ultra-marathon like the Comrades is that it is not tractable to wrap one’s head around the entire race. One must consider the race in segments or smaller “chunks” and try to tick off one at a time. Below, I describe my experience through different segments of the race. Much of what I write below is a summary of my own experience during the “up” run of Comrades for my own benefit, when I try to remember it in two years for the next installment (when I will hopefully make another attempt!); but, I imagine others who are thinking about attempting the Comrades “up” run may also find these notes helpful.

For those of you who want the clinical details, here is my Comrades run on Strava. The splits are telling—in fact, I used the plans of past Strava runners who had achieved the silver medal on the up run to form my own race plan. Several Strava runners were also immensely helpful in offering me advice, which I used in my training and on race day. But, the splits only tell part of the story. Read on for the gory details.

**Part 1: Durban to Tollgate Bridge 
**I awaited the start of the race from the starting corral; from my marathon finishes in the prior year, I managed to get an “A” seeding, which placed me in the section of runners directly behind the elites.

Unlike many road races, the Comrades is timed as a “gun to mat” race — the clock starts for everyone at the starting gun, and stops when you cross the finishing mat. This means that if you are stuck behind thousands of runners at the starting line, all of the time it takes you to cross the starting line counts in your final time. Given the time cut-offs for Comrades — whether you are aiming for a medal or simply looking to finish before the 12-hour cut-off — minimizing the time to cross the starting line is critical, so a good seeding is important. This also means getting to the corrals early; the race started at 5:30 a.m., but I was at the corral by about 4:30 a.m. and in the corral itself before 5 a.m.

My “A” seeding put me about 20–30 rows of runners back from the starting mat, and it took me about 15 seconds to cross the starting line. From everything I have heard from other runners, getting a seeding in either the “A” or “B” corral is critical if you are hoping to gain a silver medal. Once you are behind those groups, it can take more than ten minutes to cross the start line and precious time is lost.

At 5:30 a.m., after an invigorating starting sequence of the South African national anthem, Shosholoza, and Chariots of Fire, the starting gun was fired, and we were off. The start is packed; it is the only race I can remember where I physically was pushed from behind across the starting line by the throngs of people. The first portion of the race is a straight shot through the Marine Parade in downtown Durban; the surroundings are much like running in any city road race.

This part of the course had many spectators cheering, and my main concern at this point was to control my pace and effort. The crowds and the adrenaline of the race can get you very excited, but the race starts climbing almost immediately from the start. After about 1km, the Marine Parade takes you onto the on-ramp of the N3, which immediately starts climbing out of Durban. In the front corral, people are naturally going out too fast. My only concern was to take it easy, and to let people pass me. If I got stuck behind a runner, I did not worry about that either—the name of the game at this point in the race is about conserving effort, and swerving around other runners is a waste of effort I could not afford. My only concern at this point was keeping the pace as easy as possible.

We eventually reached Tollgate Bridge, where the first landmark exists—it’s a nice-looking arch-shaped bridge crossing the N3. More importantly, it’s the top of the first climb, so it felt good to have ticked off the first landmark.

Part 2: Tollgate Bridge to Cowie’s Hill

Feeling fresh through Westville! My blue number flagged me as an international runner. Behind me to the right is a runner with a green number—someone who has completed at least ten Comrades Marathons (something to strive for).

Cowie’s Hill is the first of five “named” hills on the Comrades up run, and so the challenge was of course on my mind from the start. After Tollgate Bridge, the course exits the N3 and goes onto the M13, which is a smaller highway, but still two lanes in each direction.

The M13 takes you through Westville, which had special sentimental meaning for me, since it is where my wife grew up, and where my mother-in-law said they often watched the Comrades. As you run the M13, it is dark, and you are still very steadily climbing. One of the main things to watch out for—which one of the running experts thankfully warned me about—was the raised cat eye reflectors down the lane separator, which can offer an unwelcome surprise and trip you up if you are not careful.

One aspect I had not anticipated was the crowning of the N3 and the M13 roads, which put some strain on my legs. I remember thinking that I needed to find a flatter part of the road as I ran this part of the course; sure enough, my main post-race aches were in my right leg, consistent with the crowning. There really isn’t a flat part of this road, but I think the edges might be slightly less bad.

The M13 is also quite a bit narrower than the N3, and there is a hill or two where the squeeze in the road, as well as overly gung-ho runners at the start who slow down on the hill, can literally get in your way. My main strategy at this point was to let these people slow me down. At this point in the race, it is almost impossible to go too slow, and, again, any effort spent trying to get around slow runners on this hill would simply be wasted effort. At less than 10 miles into the race at this point, there is ample time to make up ten lost seconds; on the other hand, gunning it around other runners at this point will needlessly expend energy.

At some point, we made a turn and began to run up Cowie’s Hill, which was a beautiful, shaded road. The crowds at the start of the hill and along the climb were phenomenal. A funny thing about the up run is that even though there are named hills, the entire first half of the course is pretty much a steady climb, so I kept wondering “Is this Cowie’s Hill?”, and so on for the other hills.

Here’s the thing: it doesn’t matter. It is pointless to count the hills, for several reasons—one reason is that you’re continually climbing anyhow. Another, which I will discuss later, is psychological. The main benefit of knowing that you’ve climbed this hill or that one is knowing that you’ve conquered one of the “infamous” challenges, but as I discovered later in the race, the hills that often bite the most are the ones that have no name at all.

One of the most memorable parts of this part of the run—aside from Cowie’s itself—was running through Westville on the M13, looking ahead at the uphill, and seeing the massive throngs of runners — literally wall-to-wall across the highway as far as the eye could see. I’ve never seen anything like it, in any race. The closest thing that it reminded me of is the start of the Boston Marathon, but, like many things at Comrades, the sight was even more awe-inspiring. I remember getting a chill and just thinking “Wow, this is amazing.”

Part 3: Pinetown to Fields Hill

As I cleared the top of Cowie’s Hill, I got a huge rush of adrenaline, knowing that I had conquered the first of the five named hills. It was at this point that I made what I think was my only major blunder in the race: I rode the adrenaline and slammed it on the downhill at about 6:50–7:00/mile. (To put that in perspective, my average pace was 7:58/mile, and an 8:17/mile would have been plenty fine for my race goal of getting a silver medal.) As I came off the downhill into Pinetown, I kept the pace high, fueled by the large and encouraging crowds in Pinetown. This was a fun part of the course, because it’s relatively flat and there are boisterous crowds. But, I made the cardinal mistake of letting the crowds carry my pace faster than I wanted to or had planned to run.

Not to mince words: Gunning it off of Cowie’s and through Pinetown was stupid, and is part of the reason having a race plan and sticking to it is so important. I received absolutely zero benefit from running two miles at seven minutes per mile. I shaved a few minutes off of my overall time, which I didn’t need to shave off anyway—and I clearly paid this for later on in the race, at Camperdown and Polly Shortts, where I lost all of this time, and more.

Part 4: Fields Hill, Kloof, and Botha’s Hill

After Pinetown, the course makes a turn to the right and I started the steady climb up Fields Hill. At this point, I saw the first glimpse of sunshine. I took the advice of those before me and let it boost my spirits—indeed, the sunshine was not welcome later in the day, but at this point in the race, it was a beautiful sight to see the sunrise.

Fields Hill is a total monster. It is 3km of steady climbing, up a highway of sorts that wraps around the hill itself. Basically, you cannot see the top, and even when you reach the “top”, the road keeps climbing to Kloof. It’s not even clear when you crest the hill because there is no flattening out. Basically, the main strategy I adopted here was to simply grind out the climb at a steady pace, taking care once again not to expend unnecessary effort. I was monitoring my pace, effort, and heart rate throughout this climb—and all of the climbs in the first half—to ensure that I never left my comfort zone or let my heart rate spike.

Climbing Fields Hill. Easy does it.

People talk about Fields as being one of the most challenging parts of the course; I found it manageable because I took the approach of staying calm and consistent. I found that, like most hills in Comrades, simply staying calm and keeping a steady *effort *(as opposed to a steady pace) can get you to the top of most of the hills in one piece. This approach worked well, and it is one I will most certainly aim to repeat.

After Botha’s Hill—another challenging hill, but with some really encouraging Kearnsey University students cheering you all the way to the top—the course starts to wind its way down into Drummond, at which point the distance ticks past 26.2 miles (42 km). At this point, I felt a surge of excitement and uncertainty, as I had just crossed the threshold of my most common race distance feeling strong.

Part 5: Drummond and Inchanga

Drummond is the traditional halfway point of the race, but in fact it comes a tad before halfway. I had planned to go through Drummond at about 3 hours and 40 minutes, and when I came through, I noticed that my timing was about 3 hours and 15 minutes. I was well ahead of schedule, and feeling strong. There is a huge crowd at Drummond, and knowing that three of the named hills were behind me and that I was at about the halfway point was a mental boost.

Drummond is a bit of a dip in elevation, and not long after that, the course begins to climb once again. As the climb begins, you can see what is the mighty Inchanga in the distance. I felt strong at this point in the course, but also uncertain about how the next climb would go. It is another infamous climb.

Coming down into Drummond

I asked one of the veteran runners at the starting line if he had any advice for a novice such as myself. The one thing he told me: “Take it easy on Inchanga.” He said that on the previous up run, he had hit Inchanga too hard and paid for it for the rest of the race. I therefore consciously tried to go slow and steady up Inchanga—at this point in the race, in fact, I was repeating the mantra “slow and steady”, which, in addition to “easy does it”, I found to be a good mantra for the entire first half of the course.

Halfway Home

It was on Inchanga where I first saw other runners walking. Note: They were almost certainly not spent, and I recall seeing many of them towards the end of the course. I imagine many of them certainly also got silver medals. They looked in phenomenal shape. I opted not to walk, but rather to take it really easy up the climb, as planned. That said, seeing these other runners walking up part of the climb gave me some unexpected confidence that it would be OK to walk parts of the hills if necessary and still meet a goal time. Note that the race guide itself had advice about so-called “controlled walking”, a strategy that I ultimately employed in later parts of the race, as I describe below.

This part of the course is not easy at all. (For reference, Inchanga alone is comparable to five doses of the Boston Marathon’s famed “Heartbreak Hill”, a cute little rise that wouldn’t even get a mention on the Comrades route.) The main strategy here is simply to grind it out and get to the top of Inchanga with relatively fresh legs. Though it is tough to gauge and I probably would not have run this part of the race differently, I think I probably went just a bit too hard on Inchanga, too, and I paid the price in the next part of the race. I don’t think I made a mistake here; sometimes the right pacing is tough to gauge. Too fast, and you blow up; too slow, and you lose time. I was probably just a hair on the “too fast” side here.

Part 6: Harrison Flats, Cato Ridge, and Camperdown

This stretch of the course is supposed to be “easy”. It was anything but. Coming over Inchanga, I was prepared to recover a bit. In fact, the course undulates quite a bit here, but more importantly, there was absolutely no shade. Earlier parts of the course offered striking views to either side on the hill climbs, as well as the benefits of shade from one side of the hill or another.

By this part in the race, the sun is high in the sky, and there are simply no trees anywhere. The route is winding and undulating, and it was somewhere along this point of the course that I took my first walking stint. I remember reading about one of the un-named hills on this part of the course, and I’m not sure if I encountered the same hill I had read about, because this part of the course had a few rollers.

This stretch of the course was, for me, one of the most difficult, and it was probably psychological. Everything you read about concerns the five hills, and the uphill first half of the course. Everything you read also says that the second half of the course is much easier. That is certainly true, but it sure didn’t feel easy at this point, and after coming over four of the five named hills, I was mentally unprepared for even the smallest undulation in the road. I’m sure going back now, if I were to run those stretches of road on fresh legs, they would seem easy. Even with a bit more mental preparation, they would likely feel easier. For me, they were just a beast.

The not-so-flat Camperdown on the “flat” part of the course. I’m holding a gel and the super cool water pouches that I wish every race would adopt.

At some point during this stretch, someone came up behind me and said “Don’t panic, you have the silver. Harrison Flats is just ahead.” I think I was already on Harrison Flats, but he told me that the course was about to flatten out, which is exactly what I needed at that point on the course. This camaraderie is the type of thing I have never experienced in any other road race, and what I think makes Comrades so special. I also saw several other runners doing brief walking stints as I did during this part of the course, and that kept me from panicking. My strategy on any walking stint was to walk for no more than a minute, and to keep my per-mile split as close as possible to the overall average I would need for silver (which I thought was around 8:10/mile, but turned out to be a little more). This strategy worked, and I would repeat it if I had to.

Part 7: Camperdown to Umlaas Road

This part of the course is supposed to be a climb, as it comes to the highest point on the course. For whatever reason, it was mentally easier for me. Several things helped me here. One was the huge crowd at Umlaas Road, which is actually on a hill; the second was that I expected to see family at this point on the course.

As it turns out, I didn’t see my family at this point on the course; this is a crowded place to watch the race, as it turns out, and they could not get anywhere close. But, I didn’t see them for a different reason, as well: I had said that I would be to Umlaas no earlier than 11 a.m. (I had given myself a 30-minute window from 11–11:30), and as it turned out, I came through Umlaas around 10:45 a.m. Knowing that I was at the highest point in the course (2,700 feet) with so much time in the bank—even after my lull through Camperdown—was a huge lift to my spirits.

Crossing the time check at Umlaas Road. This climb is not one of the named hills, but it was tough. In the background you can see a 20km to go sign. In the Comrades, the markers are in kilometers instead of miles, and they count down (distance to the finish) instead of up, both of which I found to be huge psychological boosts.

Part 8: Little Polly’s and Polly Shortts

After coming through Umlaas Road, the course starts to turn down, and this part of the course is finally a much needed break, just at the right time. At this point on the course, I was able to coast down the hills and enjoy the run, all the while gaining back a bit of time I had lost through the rough patches in the previous 15 km.

Mind you, this part of the course is still not easy—for one, there continues to be no shade, and there are almost no crowds whatsoever on this part of the course. It is desolate, sunny, lonely, and you’re pretty much by yourself at this point, except for any fellow runners who you happen to be sharing this part of the course with. But, at last, the course offers a long stretch of downhill to regain time and rest a bit.

At the bottom of the hill—so-called Tumble Inn—the road turns up again to Ashburton, or so-called “Little Polly’s”. I had read that many novice runners think that the hill is the real Polly Shortts and have their spirits zapped when the real one comes later on in the course. As it turns out, even the veterans can sometimes get confused: Someone running beside me at this point asked me if this hill was Pollys. I said I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t think so, and he said “I’ve run this race 17 times, and I still am not sure which hill is Pollys”.

For this reason, I continued to run conservatively. The course turned down again and to the left slightly across a bridge and sure enough turned up once again.

At the bottom of this hill, as the road turned up, I got the first real sense of exhaustion. There was a refreshment station, at which point I asked one of the volunteers if this was Pollys. She said it was, which was actually the best news I could have received at that point—on the one hand, I was about to climb the beast, but on the other hand if it *hadn’t *been Pollys and the main hill was still to come, my spirits would have been totally drained. It is *exactly *for this reason that I decided not to repeatedly ask throughout the course “Is this Fields Hill? Is this Botha’s Hill?” and so forth—I was afraid to get a “no, that hill is still coming up” while thinking I was already on a monster climb. When I got to Pollys, though, I just had to ask. Thankfully, I got the answer I wanted, and I knew that if I could make it over the 2km Polly Shortts, I had plenty of time in the bank for silver.

When seeking advice from veterans, several runners gave me the advice of “get over Pollys any way you can”. In my preparation, I figured that I was a strong runner with good training and that Pollys was a small hill that I would have no trouble conquering. After all, I’d run bigger hills in Princeton many times! In thinking this ahead of the race, I’d forgotten one important detail, however: I hadn’t run anything like Polly Shortts immediately after 80km of running hills. Another aspect that was an unwelcome surprise: most difficult “climaxes” in any marathon or road race are filled with throngs of cheering spectators, and, given the infamy of Polly Shortts, I expected nothing less. For whatever reason, Pollys was essentially devoid of spectators, which was an unexpected psychological blow.

Following the advice I received, I ground up Pollys any way I could. I started by running it slowly, but then slowed to a walk, taking care to walk purposefully and swiftly, and not to walk for too long. Most of the people around me—now almost certainly other fellow silver medalists—were also walking Pollys. This again put me at ease, since I didn’t see anyone else around me blazing up the hill.

Still, I made an effort to pick up the pace when I could, particularly as I neared the top. At about 200 meters before the top of the hill, the road takes a slight turn to the right, and it flattens out ever so slightly (it is still an incline, but not as severe). It was at this point that I decided I would try to run a bit to the top of the hill. I still felt like I was crawling, but when I passed another runner who was walking, I heard him say “Wow!” It certainly did not feel like an awe-inspiring pace to me, but the fact that I actually looked good to someone else at this point in the course was another much-needed confidence boost. At the top of Pollys, you make a right turn where you cross over the N3 and can see the road turn down; at this point (and not a moment sooner!), I knew I could finish strong.

Grinding it up Polly Shortts. I’m glad they took the photo while I was running!

Part 9: Pollys to the Finish

Most everything you read will tell you that the course from the top of Polly Shortts to the finish is easy. Again, easy is relative, and knowing that it was supposed to be easy actually made this part of the course psychologically more difficult than it might have otherwise been. There are a couple of final climbs on Washington Road with about 5km to go that are not difficult at all if you’re just out for a daily training run; yet, at this point in the race, they were a killer. Just seeing the road dip down and turn up again—the rolling hill every runner has seen a thousand times—was enough to mentally test me. I took a very short walking break here on the uphill and quickly picked up the pace again. This part of the course was unexpectedly challenging and is one of the stretches that calls for just grinding it out.

With about 3km to go, the course goes under an underpass and takes a final turn (again, uphill!) into a Scottsville neighborhood. There is a huge crowd at this point in the course, which is a significant boost. Importantly for me, I saw my whole family at this point. This should have been really exciting—and it was!—but actually one of the main thoughts was “I cannot let them see me walking!” I saw them right before the uphill turn, and that was enough motivation for me to push through the uphill. With about 2km to go, there is another small rise—probably nothing more than you might experience on a typical “flat” neighborhood road—but it was enough to slow me to a walk again. This time, though, I kept the walk to just about 15 seconds, because I knew the end was in sight. With about 2km to go, I simply told myself that this was just a little bit longer than a typical 1600m interval that I did in my weekly track workouts—not so far that I couldn’t just persevere and finish strong. After that bump, the course turned down for the final time and into the Scottsville Race Course and, finally, with about 1500m to go, the course really finally did feel easy.

The race course itself is grass, and it seemed to wend its way to the finish. You can’t actually see the finish when you enter the race course, but you know it’s coming. At this point, with less than 1km to go, I knew I was going to finish, and with a time I could really be proud of.

Finishing has never felt so sweet. Silver is mine!

Summary

I’ll write another set of posts on some of the many lessons that I learned from the Comrades experience. There are a set of lessons that I took away from training, and another set of lessons that I took away from the race itself.

The main “big” takeaway that I came to appreciate—not only over the whole year of training, but over the course of the race itself—is the importance of consistency.

You cannot wake up and decide you’re going to run the Comrades. You can’t even wake up three months before Comrades and decide you’re going to run, assuming you want to do well. The training is cumulative, and consistency is important.

I always went for my training runs. I ran through a couple of blizzards. I did a long run in 10F with wind gusts and a long run in 90F and blazing sun. I ran through countless rainstorms. It is easy to make excuses about the conditions and why it doesn’t make sense to do a training run. But, beyond the obvious physiological benefits of consistent training, you can’t control the conditions you will get on race day. When it turned out to be a high of 80F and sunny, I was ready because I had done a long run in the heat. If it had been cold, I would have been ready for that, too. My morning run has become something of a ritual—something that I will talk about in future posts—and the consistency it has afforded really paid huge dividends that I didn’t even expect.

Consistency is also probably the most important approach to adopt during the race itself. You often hear about marathon runners who go out too fast at the start of the race and pay the price later on in the race; in fact, a veteran at the starting line explicitly warned me not to be one of those runners, and that helped. In a race like Comrades, that effect is surely amplified: I am pretty certain that the 2–3 minutes that I put in the bank coming off of Cowie’s Hill cost me at least 5–10 minutes in the second half of the course, as a result of being destroyed by Polly Shortts. When people asked me about my racing goals before the race, I said I had no idea how it would go, so I just hoped for consistency and a strong finish. I pretty much achieved that. My goal for my next “up run” is to be more disciplined in the first half and keep a bit more to my plan so that I can run more consistently in the second half of the race. Meanwhile, I am already thinking about my first “down run” next year, which will be an entirely different kind of challenge.

In this post, I wanted to jot down my memory of the race while it was still fresh in my mind. There are other things I plan to write about, such as my preparation, but since those have been more…consistent over the past year, I will save those thoughts for a subsequent post.

By Nick Feamster on June 11, 2017.

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Exported from Medium on October 28, 2025.