Impromptu 5K in Illinois

We were in Illinois last weekend for my cousin's wedding.  We were a bit worried about the weather because it was an outdoor wedding....in October...in Illinois.
As it turned out, the weather was perfect, and the wedding was absolutely beautiful.  It was on  a farm in the middle of nowhere, next to a small pond.  There was a large outdoor tent with chandeliers, bonfires, and dancing well into the night.

The Saturday morning the day of the wedding, we didn't have anything going on, so like any good runner I jumped on Active.com to see if there were any racing events we could partake in.  As it turned out, there was a 5K less than 5 minutes from our hotel.   Even though my foot isn't really ready to run much yet, I decided it would be a fun morning to get the whole family out there for a small 5K race.  Besides, it was for a good cause.

So that was the plan anyway.   The website said "registration at 8am, start time at 9am."   Perfect.   We arrived about 8:10 to the church where it was supposed to start, and the parking lot was empty.   "We must be early," I thought.   So, we ran down to a store to pick up a couple of things and came back around 8:40am.  Still no one there.   Instead of waiting until 9am, I decided that they must have cancelled the race and not updated the website.   But it was such a beautiful day that I still wanted to get the family out for some exercise.

So we searched and found some great walking/riding trails about 10 minutes away.   There were a grouping of about 4 or 5 parks connected with an awesome path, winding through forests, over bridges, with creeks and streams nearby.  It was really a beautiful setting.   We took our time, enjoyed the day, and walked for over an hour.   I'm guessing we went at least a 5K, if not more.  So we got our family exercise in, and it didn't even cost us an entry fee.

Here are a few pics:

Running with my son....

There were sculptures in some of the park...this is a sculpture of two bikes...



My sweetie and son....

The beautiful scenery of our trail...

here is a map of our trail..the green areas are all the parks we went through...



We stopped at a shoe store on the trip...this was an actul HUGE running shoe...

Review:

Coming shortly, I will be reviewing an item from CSN Stores.  If you haven't heard of the collection of CSN stores, they are great.  They have pretty much any type of item you would ever want to purchase, from dining sets to swing sets and everything in between.  Stay tuned.

These Feet Weren't Made for Running, Apparently....

I went to see the doctor last week....again....for my foot.....the other foot...

This time it was not due to my chronic plantar fasciitis, it was due to a bony protrusion on the back of my heel that got stepped on during a volleyball game, and forced me to limp around for several days....

The doctor said the bump is tied to me having achilles tendonitis at some point, and is called haglund's bump, or a "pump bump" because women who wear pump shoes get these bumps on their heels.....they took an xray and it showed calcification on the back of my heel, as well as the under side of my heel (the beginning of a heel spur)....so, he gave me a prescription, told me not to run for 3 weeks and come back for a check up....I actually felt better after a few more days, and have done some light running (shh, don't tell), but it definitely has me thinking that maybe I shouldn't run, if I am going to continue to damage my feet....I am definitely going to have this discussion with the doctor at my next check up....maybe I need to focus more on biking....not sure, just yet....then again, if the bump isn't causing me pain, maybe it will be okay to continue running....anyone have one of these heel bumps?    Here is what the xray looked like