After 35 years and hundreds of thousands of miles, the race is run for a local running shoe retailer in the northwest suburbs.

Runners High ‘n Tri, a staple of downtown Arlington Heights since 1990, announced it would be closing its doors at 121 W. Campbell St. this month in an Oct. 16 Facebook post.

“We were really, really fortunate to be here for 35 years,” owner Mark Rouse said. “It was a long run, no pun intended.”

A store catering to distance runners was still a relative novelty when Runners High ‘N Tri first opened on Dunton Avenue.

The Chicago Marathon was a little over a decade old when Rouse ran the Hawaii Ironman in 1982; he wore wool, since Lycra wasn’t commonplace yet. Online forums for runners were still a few years out, as was Google search – “why do my feet hurt?”, “Shou

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