Frankfort’s Lindsay Schultz and Crete’s Keagan Morgan love running around in Tinley Park.
On July 4, Schultz won the women’s division and Morgan was the overall winner in the Stars and Stripes 5K run at McCarthy Park.
Schultz, a Hall of Fame athlete at Dwight High School, won her second Tinley Park race in eight months. She also claimed the Turkey Trot Nov. 7 in much cooler weather than during the Stars and Stripes event.
She won the Stars and Stripes women’s division with a time of 19 minutes, 45.6 seconds, well ahead of the second-place finisher, Calista Stefaniak, who ran a 20:36.3. Schultz finished ninth overall.
Schultz, 42, trains with the area’s Yankee Runners club and ran the Boston Marathon this year and is eyeing this year's Chicago Marathon and another in Indianapolis.
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“I’ve been running my whole life,” she said. “I like the competition of it, and camaraderie and friendships that we make.”
She is training partners with Tinley Park’s Chris Diaz, who finished seventh July 4. They have trained in the hills of Palos Park to get ready for Boston and in sub-zero temperatures to prepare for the summer schedule.
Schultz ran a personal record of 3 hours, 16 minutes and 11 seconds in Boston and is now looking forward to Chicago Oct. 9.
“Chicago is hometown and fun,” she said. “Boston is just … Boston. It’s an experience. We trained in Palos Park all winter to get ready for the hills of Boston, and it was an awesome experience.”
Tinley Park’s McCarthy Park course is not quite Boston, but she said “It has some hills that can creep up on you.”
Morgan has been in the winner’s circle before as he won the Stars and Stripes in 2021. This year, he won the race in 16:13.8, well ahead of Tinley Park’s Matt Jung at 16:59.7.
In 2020, Jung ran the second fastest time in the 5,000-meter run in St. Ambrose University history.
Morgan, 20, doesn’t have any college history to look back on but hopes to change that, soon.
He is a civil engineering major at Marquette University and has spent the first couple of years there running on his own through Milwaukee. But the Marian Catholic grad said he hopes to latch on with Marquette’s cross country and track teams this year as a walk-on.
“It will definitely be a step up, but I think I can handle it,” he said. “I have a lot of friends on the team.”
Morgan is having an interesting summer.
He said he won a race in Homewood but at the Miles For Maddog race in Frankfort, things didn’t go so well for him.
“I got sent the wrong way,” he said. “So I got some extra miles in.”
Morgan said he has been running since freshman year in high school, and he used the down time of the pandemic for running.
“I got more into it during the pandemic,” Morgan said. “I’ve been running consistently ever since, and I have been making a ton of progress.”
It’s not just the runners in the winner’s circle who have interesting stories. There were 351 finishers in the race including legendary Jamie Parks, who finished 57th. The veteran Tinley Park runner pushes his wife, Lynn, in a wheelchair and this was the 309th race they have run together.
Tinley Park’s Conor Driscoll, 36, who finished 52nd, said he just took up running four months prior.
His father, Jerry, last ran the event 20 years ago and was on hand to watch his son run in his first Stars and Stripes.
Driscoll did pretty well for a novice, even admitting he wasn't all that confident when he got out of his car.
“I saw all of these high school runners and said ‘Ohhh boy,’ ’’ he said. “I’ve done a couple of races this year in Western Springs, Burr Ridge and Gurnee, and I have to say out of all of those, there were more athletic-looking type of runners here.”