Spring 2005
Juice e-mail: Pacers@LincolnParkPacers.org As
I sit here writing the SPRING Juice, the wind is howling fiercely outside
my window, and at the Pacer run this morning, everyone was back to wearing
full winter attire-tights, hats, gloves, etc. etc…and this is supposed
to be SPRING!!!…Well hey, that’s spring in Chicago!! Last week we were
wearing shorts and tanks, and it was up to almost 80, and today with the
wind chill, it is about 25 at best!! No wonder we’re all fighting colds
and flues!…There is still some lingering WINTER news…Our winter Vail,
Colorado resident, John Turchan,
finished 7th overall in the Snowshoe Shuffle 5K out in Vail on
March 27th. It seems that snowshoeing is just one of the sports
that John has taken up while in Colorado for an unknown time-out!!..The
question is, will John EVER return to Chicago??….The BIG RACE (if you
don’t know--that would be Boston!!) is over, and for those who ran, a
big congratulations for finishing in the once again dreadful heat!
That’s three years in a row that Boston has produced higher than normal
temperatures and clear blue skies on race day. Our tough Boson bound
Pacers prevailed though, and no one dropped out…. Pacers who ran Boston
are Kate Handley (our token
female!), Urs Weber, Rick Kennedy (who qualified at the New Orleans Marathon), Johann
Lustenberger, and Calvin Ma.
(If I forgot someone, it’s your fault for not telling me!!!) Calvin and
Urs even re-qualified for Boston 2006 at Boston!! Check out the Boston
finish times on the Pacer website/race results……There was a pretty
good Pacer turn-out for the Shamrock Shuffle on Sunday, April 3rd.
The Shamrock is one of the first major races of the season, and
this year there were over 20,000 finishers. The weather turned out to be
perfect for racing, and the sun shone down on everyone drinking beer at
the post party afterwards……On Sunday, April, 17th, the day
before Boston, the Pacers set up a Gatorade table on the path near the
trough, and proceeded to promote the club!!..It was one of the warm spring
days and lots of runners stopped for Gatorade, and asked about the
Pacers…some even took applications. Welcome new member Kathy
Elwood, who signed up right there on the spot!!…Thank you to those
Pacers who gave up their Sunday morning runs to work at the table…Jim
DesJardins, Denise DeBo, Janet
Omer, Steve Helfrich, Colleen
Fahey, Joanne Kaeding, and last but for sure not least, Little
Joe Hausfield (a wanna be Pacer!!?)…..After the promotion, some of
the workers headed to the Golden Nugget for breakfast and basked in the
glory of being a part of such a wonderful running club!!!….Gordon
McIntosh, who spent the winter in Australia with wife Meredyth, wrote that they were a bit confused at times with words
and phrases that the Aussies use. One word that struck me as most unusual
was the word “piss”, which is “beer” in Aussie language! He was
also trained by the locals in how to enjoy the questionably tasty??
VEGEMITE, a national treat in Australia. Gordon also ran with the local
running group, and at first thought he wouldn’t fit in, as they talked
about running an easy 6 minute pace…Well, much to Gordon’s delight, it
was a 6 minute kilometer pace rather than a 6 minute mile pace!!! Gordon
and Meredyth returned to Chicago the end of April………Cary
Adams gave a very impressive classical piano recital on Saturday,
March 19th at the People’s Music School of Chicago.. Many
Pacers were in attendance, and afterwards everyone went over to Cary’s
place for a post-recital celebration…Russ
Ramaswamy and wife are busy with their new baby Octavio! Will Russ
join the other dad’s pushing baby strollers out on the running path?
Octavio will have to learn to handle a 6 minute mile in the stroller—to
keep up with his dad!!…Hal and
Joan Olin entertained Pacers at their place in the Indiana Dunes on
Sunday, April the 24th. The group met first for a hike,
complete with a guide, and the group not only enjoyed all the spring
flowers on the hike, but took a bonus tour of homes in Beverly Shores,
including the architectural masterpieces of Hal himself!! After sufficient
exercise, everyone went back to Hal and Joan’s for pizza and
camaraderie. Thanks to Hal and Joan for inviting the Pacers to their
home…….The Pacers had the largest turnout for dinner in a long time
after the Pacer fun run on Tuesday, April the 26th…What
brought everyone out on a work night? Lori
Soderholm Weber just happened to be in Chicago on business, and
decided to grace the club with her presence! It was fun seeing Lori,
hearing about Urs’s Boston run, and catching up on their lives in New
York City. We are all anxiously awaiting their possible? return to Chicago
to live!!……Also in town for a weekend visit was Dana
Maurer, who now lives with husband Brian and 3 children in Edwards,
Colorado. She joined the Pacer’s for a Saturday run, and then came to
breakfast. Those Pacers who were in the club during the mid-90’s,
remember Dana as the adorable, always upbeat, and energetic Pacer, who was
the club social chairman and Trick or Treat Trot race director…There is
a Pacer who is celebrated a milestone birthday (age 40!!) on May
6th…Now…I am not allowed to say the name of this person, because if I
did, it would be edited out anyway…so, just know that there was a
quietly celebrated, but significant birthday for a special and significant
Pacer that we all know and love!!!!!….Ted McClelland, (formerly Kleine), known for his articles written
and published by the Reader, recently had his first book, “Horseplayers, Life at the Track”
published by Chicago Review Press, Incorporated. On May 5th,
Ted did a book reading/signing at the Book Cellar Bookstore (known for
it’s wine cellar!!) in Lincoln Square. It was a packed house, and quite
a few Pacers were there to enjoy Ted’s
reading, while eating cake and drinking mint-juleps.
“Horseplayers includes stories that Ted was told from the real
“horseplayers” during his year hanging out at the track. The book is
about a world that most of us are not familiar with, and it is creatively
written, interesting, and sometimes quite humorous. Ted is now traveling
east for several book signings, and then spending the summer months
traveling around the Great Lakes working on his next book, but don’t let
his absence stop you from checking out “Horseplayers” at your local
bookstore, and while you’re there, don’t forget to pick up a copy
yourself for a good summer read…..The current “couples” news for May
marriage of our co-president Jim DesJardins to Debora Bear
on May 24th. Since Deb already lives and works in Guatemala, the
marriage will take place in Central America…in San Lucas, only “5K”
from Copan Ruinas, Honduras. This makes one more Pacer couple to make
their union official!! After the “honeymoon”, Jim will come back to
Chicago until around October, and then will join Debora wherever she gets
relocated with her job!!! Maybe with a little help from Stuart
Schulman, the “Pacer Relationship Historian”, we can figure out
the # of married Pacer couples in the past 20 years. (It’s gotta be
around 20??)…Besides Ted
McClelland’s summer book trips and Jim
DesJardins trip to Central America, Jennifer
Leslie is off to Ireland to visit family, Janet
Omer to Las Vegas to do likewise, and maybe gamble a bit, Cary Adams to revisit Indonesia to see places he didn’t see in
’01(of course Cary would go somewhere exotic!!), and Joanne Kaeding to Arkansas (NOT that exotic but at least
warm!!!)…Joanne’s goal is to kick some old lady Arkansas butt at a
local 5K while she’s down there!! FUN? Probably not!!!……….The
Annual Kettle Moraine Ice Age 50K/50 Miler was not exactly what you’d
call a “FUN run in the park” run either?? The race took place on
Saturday, May 14th up in Wisconsin. Mike
Ward, David Farley, and Jennifer
Leslie ran the 50 grueling miles with very few problems on the
course; maybe a few tumbles due to tree roots and rocks on the HILLY path,
but they all finished STRONG. This is NOT a flat fast course, but is very
challenging with continual hills, some so steep you cannot run up them.
Most of the smart runners find out right away that it is better to walk
most of the hills anyway to save some energy, which seems like a good
decision running 50 miles!!!…The weather was good for the runners, cool
and partly cloudy, however, about hour 11 into the race, a significant
rain and hailstorm popped up and literally stopped some of the runners
cold, and COLD it got…about a 20 degree wind chill temperature drop
within about 2 minutes… Our speedy Pacer runners however were all
finished by then, and only had to stick around the finish line long enough
to collect Jennifer’s 2nd place age group award!!!… A HUGE
congratulations to Jennifer for her fantastic accomplishment on her FIRST
ever 50 miler!! She not only ran a super time, 10:11, and if that wasn’t
enough… she won a 2nd in her age group.
Jennifer’s new beautiful crystal trophy is one that she can
proudly display on her mantel…All three runners got the famous coveted
Ice Age belt buckle for finishing in under 12 hours. The guys
didn’t run too shabbily either: David Farley put a little extra effort into this ultra, and finished
in 9 hours and 1 minute – a PR by almost 1 hour; Mike Ward also did a super time of 9 hours and 30 minutes…. The
Pacer spectators for the Ice Age included
Stuart
Schulman and S.O.,
Diane, Jim DesJardins, Steve
Helfrich, Janet Omer, and Joanne
Kaeding. They supported our three runners by cheering them on from
Horseman’s Camp, or walking and/or running part of the course.
The best part for the runners and spectators was cleaning up and
warming up a bit after the race and then heading for a local eatery on the
way back to Chicago!!!……………. Happy
winter running, stay warm, and we’ll touch base with “ya all” in the
spring. ____________________ |
