Champaign, IL

University of Illinois Campus; running time 55:21.5 + 2-minute kick

Another All Trails Fail. I had planned to run on a trail around the perimeter of a city park. I made it about 300 yards and then found swamp. No bueno. I then drove to a middle school track, but there was track practice in progress, so that would not work. I then drove to the University of Illinois campus, where I found a running track mostly empty, but there were workers doing repairs, so…

I found some green space with gravel roads and went for a leisure run. There were some soft trails, and some running over grass, and I might have inadvertently triggered an allergic spell by running through a research area with a sign that said “Pollinarium.” There were tons of people out walking around, including a lot of parents, so it must have been a parents week or something. And it also must have been “take your parents out for an awkward and silent walk hour,” because there seemed to be a lot of that.

It was a pleasantly warm afternoon, so I ran in shorts and a t-shirt, which felt great. I really was stuffy in the sinuses, which was not great. I didn’t try any sequentially faster circuits – just ran slow and steady.