Disclaimer: As an ambassador for All Community Events, I received free race entries.
When 2020 started, I declared that I had goals, but I was 'keeping them close to the vest'. What was I thinking about for the upcoming year? I really was excited for a trail race in the Everglades in March. Whomp whomp. COVID and my son's snowboarding accident put a kibosh on those plans.
I also shared my spring race plans, which included a race on the ice in Madison, a race at the Chicago Auto Show, the Shamrock Shuffle, the CARA Lakefront 10 miler, and the Chicagoland Spring Half Marathon. Whomp, whomp again. I only ran one of these, although I did receive the medal for that 10 miler in the mail. Thanks to the Chicago lakefront path being shut down for half of the year, I never truly earned it, although I ran plenty of 10 mile runs this year. Does one of them count? Can I hang that medal on my medal rack?
Everything changed this year, didn't it?
With pretty much everything canceled, I fell in love with trail running, did a 12 week virtual challenge, ran a few virtual halfs, and yes, eventually ran a few live races. This was definitely not the year any of us had planned for. But we runners pushed on. I kept seeing the words "running is not canceled" and nope, it wasn't. Running took us outside where we could socially distance and breathe freely. Running made us grateful for what we could do. COVID couldn't take running away from us.
This isn't my typical end of the year race recap. Compiling this list was a bit of a challenge. Some of the races I ran had bling, some didn't, a few races were live, but most weren't. As an ambassador for ACE and CARA, I ran quite a few virtual 5ks and 10ks, which I didn't include in this recap. I also ran a distance challenge, which helped me push my monthly miles up during the 2 months while I did it. While I'm grateful for all the efforts race directors made to keep runners challenged, after this year, I hope to never run another virtual race again.