For four weeks, Ellie Adams of Concord, Massachusetts got up early every morning and ran to the border of Evanston and the neighboring village of Wilmette, Illinois. She ran along the Lakefill, one of Northwestern’s most picturesque locations.
“I just think it’s a really nice way to start the day,” Adams said. “First, it’s very grounding, and second of all, I’ve just gotten to see a lot of pretty things I wouldn’t have gotten to otherwise.”
During the first week of the program, some cherubs began flocking to the lakefront at 6 a.m. for a morning run. Some trained for their cross county or track teams back home, others just to stay active. Over the course of the four weeks, the 6 a.m. crowd became a consistent community of runners and athletes.
“We exited Fisk Hall for the first night, and I woke up the next morning and saw Ignas Petrus run nine miles,” Athan Joshi of Los Altos, California, said. “I just felt inspired. I do cross country and I wanted to run fast this year, so I wanted to train during cherubs.”
Like Joshi, Petrus runs cross country for his high school — Jones College Prep in Chicago. At cherubs, Petrus averaged eight miles per day, fitting in as much running as he could between what he said was a “strictly scheduled program.”
“Our most intense training isn’t actually the school year,” Petrus said. “It’s the summer.”
A fellow cherub taking advantage of summer training is Charlie Edwards of Evanston. Edwards is preparing for the Chicago Marathon in October, and ran to build endurance with the 6 a.m. crowd.
“It was a bit bigger in the first couple of weeks and then some people gave up a bit,” Edwards said. “But for the people who keep getting up, it’s really great to have that support for each other.”
Though the group’s numbers thinned out over the four weeks, the energy stayed consistent among runners and nonrunners alike. Some kept getting up, and some stood in solidarity.
“I’m not an early bird,” said Ryder Bingaman of Evanston, who ran a total of four times over the course of the four-week program. “6 a.m. is a little too early for me.”
