Sandy Runs

Upon finishing Sunday's Houston Marathon , I'm now 36 states into my 50 states marathon quest.  It was my first full marathon of the year, and even though I was slower than I'd hoped, my plantar fasciitis didn't flare up, and I crossed that finish line. After spending a couple days in Las Vegas for work, I flew directly to Houston to meet up with Scot.  He had already checked us into the hotel and picked up our race packets.  Good thing, as my flight arrived near midnight, and we had a 5K in the morning. Las Vegas from the air en route to Houston We were up early on Saturday morning to run the ABB Houston 5K as a warm-up for the following day's marathon.  More importantly, we dedicated our run to Meg Cross Menzies , the Virginia runner who was recently killed by a drunk driver while out on a run.  Scot had briefly met Meg at a previous year's Richmond Marathon.  Social media was used to get the word out to the country, and the world, asking run...

My plan for 2014 is to average two big races a month, preferably one half marathon and one full marathon.   However, some months will have two full marathons, and some months, like February, may not have any full marathons at all.   In any event, this is the year I want to focus on quality while still maintaining some level of quantity.   Also, I said I’d blog more this year, and here I am writing about my first race of 2014 within just a few days of the race.   I searched for a January half marathon and found the Run to Read Half in Fairmont WV .   This was a small, low-key race that benefits Literacy Volunteers of Marion County and is held in beautiful Prickett’s Fort State Park south of Morgantown WV.   Our friend Christy lives in this general area, so that helped convince Scot to join me for this race.   In the end, Christy’s schedule only allowed her to cheer us on at the start, but not stay and run.   We were happy to see her even for a ...

This is part 2 of my 2013 race recap ( see part 1 ), in which I cover July through December.  And in which I renew my vow to renew my blogging more consistently. July   My Titanium quest was now in full gear, and I couldn’t afford an injury, yet my four-in-four-weeks in June was taking a toll and I was afflicted with plantar fasciitis for the second time in my running career.  This meant that I was going to be very conservative and not run AT ALL in between races.  I needed to save every bit of that plantar fascia for my Titanium-qualifying marathons.  July was an “easy” month with only two marathons, but they were a challenging double in Idaho and Montana.  But first, I volunteered at the Grant-Pierce Indoor Marathon at home in Arlington VA while Scot ran the race.  Several Maniac and 50 Stater friends came from out of town to run the 211-loop marathon or the 50K, including Kino, Steve, Max and Larry.  It was a whirlwind first few...