On the Record with: Half marathon-running Huntley Police Sgt. Linda Hooten

HUNTLEY – Linda Hooten has run half marathons in 42 states and counting.

The Huntley Police Department sergeant is working her way to all 50, having checked off Utah with a run in Salt Lake City in September and then North and South Carolina with back-to-back races one weekend in October.

The trips started after English teacher Kay Meyer asked if Hooten wanted to do a half marathon with her in Memphis, Tennessee. Hooten, who will have been with the Huntley Police Department 15 years in December, was working then as Huntley High School’s school resource officer.

After the race, Meyer suggested trying to hit all 50 states, and Hooten thought she was joking.

But then they just started finding races and recruiting people along the way, turning them into girls’ weekends or little getaways with trips to wineries or the beach. They’ll research places to eat, sights to see and especially out-West hikes to do.

“We really do try to enjoy the areas that we’re in,” she said.

Hooten sat down with reporter Emily K. Coleman to talk about the races and her job at the department.

Coleman: Do you have criteria for how you pick the races? Do you try to go to big cities? Or mix it up?

Hooten: There’s some criteria. We’re getting down to the point where we want to finish because we’ve been doing it for so long. Like the East Coast, it’s easy to do one on a Saturday, one on a Sunday, so we try to find back-to-back ones.

We struck out with some races where we show up and the start is ready, set, go. It’s really like 150 people, and then we’ve done some with 40,000 people. When you get to the 150 one, you’re looking around and, ‘OK, I’m going to be last.’ It’s just a totally different mindset when there’s only 150 as opposed to 40,000, where you have the motivation and everything.

But every race has its fun to it. The scenery, that’s the main thing that I think kind of interested us. Running the same course or the same neighborhoods all the time – you don’t know where you’re running.

We never check out the path or the course ahead of time so that we’re surprised every time. We’ve actually met people that way, that travel with us then. We see that they’ve done the race before and ask them about it, and then you talk about the race and things like that. Runners are just very nice people.

Coleman: Do you have a race that stands out in your mind?

Hooten: We just did in May – Idaho in Coeur d’Alene, which I had never even heard of. That was just absolutely breathtaking – the whole area. And the race was hilly, but it was along the lake. Just beautiful. Most of the West Coast ones.

We did Sedona [Ariz.], which was just beautiful in the south. We did Steamboat Springs [Colo.]. We ran up a ski slope at a ski resort. We ran up it and then zigzagged down. It was so pretty.

Coleman: This first race, you had never done a half marathon before?

Hooten: No.

Coleman: What kind of prep work did you do?

Hooten: For work, every year we do a fitness test, and we have to run a mile and a half in a certain amount of time based on your age. For years, that’s about as far as I ever ran, and so when my friend, Kay, said let’s start doing this, I started running on the treadmill, and when I got to my first half mile, nonstop on a treadmill, I was ecstatic. I couldn’t believe it. She kept telling me, ‘You’re going to have to run a little farther than that.’

Then when I did the first one, it’s such a great feeling at the end. You’re tired. You’re exhausted. But you are just so excited that you just completed this. It’s just enough that you really can’t just get up and run it, but it’s not enough that you’re killing yourself, either. It’s such a perfect distance to challenge yourself.

I did one full marathon in Duluth, [Minnesota]. Grandma’s. It’s one of the most popular marathons, and it was beautiful. It was along Lake Superior. Point A to Point B. No big loop or anything. That was long, and I more or less got bored. I just wanted it to be over. That’s why I think I realized halfs are more for me.

Coleman: How about now?

Hooten: We started to do them more frequently so your body just kind of remembers. I know that I’ll finish them, so I don’t train as hard. I want to save my knees. I’ll try and cross train. I bike ride. Things like that. But I try not to run too far of distance. I save that for the races. And I don’t go for speed. I go for the enjoyment of it. I go to finish. I’m not breaking any records.

Coleman: What do you do at the Huntley Police Department?

Hooten: I am the sergeant of investigations, so I oversee the detectives and the school resource officer, and then I have a lot of other responsibilities like internal affairs – I’m the domestic violence coordinator, I’m in charge of evidence. I’m not on the streets. I have an office. I work Monday through Friday normal hours.

Coleman: What do you like about what you do?

Hooten: I’ve always wanted to be a police officer.

Coleman: Why?

Hooten: I don’t know. Everybody always asks that. I honestly don’t know. Since I was in middle school. It’s what I’ve always liked. The only the thing I can really attribute it to is I loved puzzles as a kid and solving things. It’s pretty cliche to say I like helping people, but I do. That’s what every police officer says. Nobody in my family’s a police officer, so it kind of came out of left field. My mom was a nurse. My father was a teacher.

Coleman: What’s the one thing about your job that you think people wouldn’t realize is a part of your job?

Hooten: I guess destroying evidence. Everybody knows that we take in evidence, but after a while, it has to be destroyed. Alcohol that we take in, we have to open it and dump it out. Drugs need to be destroyed. Guns need to be destroyed. Those we send out.

There will be a couple days where me and the other evidence tech will sit by the Dumpster and – you know, you have to break bongs. Sometimes, it’s a stress reliever.

You have to make it so the item is not usable in its original form, so if that means you have a pair of blue jeans, you get a knife and you slice the blue jeans.

Some things go to auctions, and I can donate through the village to not-for-profit places. That way some of the usable things can be passed on.

The Hooten lowdown

Hometown: St. Charles

Lives in: Woodstock

Family: Was one of six kids.

Favorite recommendation from running trips: The best meal we’ve had hands down is Nicola’s in Cincinnati. We just stumbled upon it. We weren’t going to go, and we did.

Unexpected discovery: One of the most surprisingly beautiful places we went to that nobody would ever think of is Green River, Wyoming.