{"id":11526,"date":"2026-07-21T20:15:57","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T01:15:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/?p=11526"},"modified":"2026-08-02T20:04:43","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T01:04:43","slug":"the-6-a-m-crowd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/07\/the-6-a-m-crowd\/","title":{"rendered":"The 6 a.m. crowd"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">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\u2019s most picturesque locations.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cI just think it\u2019s a really nice way to start the day,\u201d Adams said. \u201cFirst, it\u2019s very grounding, and second of all, I\u2019ve just gotten to see a lot of pretty things I wouldn\u2019t have gotten to otherwise.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">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.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cWe exited Fisk Hall for the first night, and I woke up the next morning and saw Ignas Petrus run nine miles,\u201d Athan Joshi of Los Altos, California, said. \u201cI just felt inspired. I do cross country and I wanted to run fast this year, so I wanted to train during cherubs.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like Joshi, Petrus runs cross country for his high school \u2014 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 \u201cstrictly scheduled program.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cOur most intense training isn\u2019t actually the school year,\u201d Petrus said. \u201cIt\u2019s the summer.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">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.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cIt was a bit bigger in the first couple of weeks and then some people gave up a bit,\u201d Edwards said. \u201cBut for the people who keep getting up, it\u2019s really great to have that support for each other.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Though the group&#8217;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.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cI\u2019m not an early bird,\u201d said Ryder Bingaman of Evanston, who ran a total of four times over the course of the four-week program. \u201c6 a.m. is a little too early for me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Morning runs and training kept cherubs active on campus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":373,"featured_media":11398,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[671],"class_list":["post-11526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus"],"acf":[],"authors":[{"term_id":671,"user_id":373,"is_guest":0,"slug":"zeller26","display_name":"Owen Zeller","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/e12b8da554ba65d7215ae9b59dcb419d022d6624b5621b04e1ef3fa58cb117bc?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"Zeller","first_name":"Owen","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/373"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11526"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12952,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11526\/revisions\/12952"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11526"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=11526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}