Birthday Post & Marathon Preview

It's my birthday today, and I just received a great gift (well, a gift I need to pay for): I was selected in the Marine Corps Marathon (MCM) lottery. Therefore, I'll be running my 3rd Marine Corps Marathon in October. I've never done any marathon more than twice, so this will be a record. Some people may wonder why I haven't run MCM more times, after living just a couple miles from the starting line for several years. In fact, I've run the MCM 10K more times than the marathon. Some years I had other race goals, or injuries, so I chose not to run the marathon. I ran MCM in 2006 and 2015. And 2017 will make three.


I'll still need to run MCM two more times to qualify for the Runners Club, which will allow me early entry (no more lottery) for any future MCM. We'll see how that goes. For now, I'm just happy that I'm in for 2017. It will be my first MCM since moving to Columbus, so I'll need to book travel. Southwest usually has good deals, so I'll watch for those. I've already booked a hotel within walking distance of the start. So...Happy Birthday to me!

Another exciting thing is happening today, and I'm paying for this one too. In a few hours I'll be flying off to Rome to run the Rome Marathon this Sunday. I'll stay in Europe for the week, ending up in Paris the following weekend for the Paris Marathon. So, two European marathons in two weekends. I've done this before: Berlin and Jersey in 2015. Should be fun! I've been to Rome, but not to Paris, so that will be all new. I'll be traveling without a computer and I'm not sure how well blogging will go with my phone, so I might not catch everyone up on the Rome and Paris races until I return home. In the interim, here are some images from those races.

Wow, what a starting line! (Photo credit: Maratona di Roma)
Another awesome start! (Photo credit: Schneider Electric Marathon de Paris)

So, that's what's going on with Birthday 2017. I'm treating myself to some great experiences. It sure beats what I usually do, which is almost nothing at all. This year I'm going to have fun. Happy Birthday to me!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2019 Hong Kong Marathon Race Report

Image
I registered for the Hong Kong Marathon  on a whim. I was already going to Asia to attend my friend Christine’s wedding in Thailand and then run the Tokyo Marathon the following weekend. My friend Dave posted on Facebook about the Hong Kong Marathon, which was a week before the wedding. I entered the lottery not expecting to be selected, but I was. It was going to be a two-country-marathon adventure.  It’s the year of the pig (or boar) and we got this medallion in our race packet.  I was woefully under-prepared for the Hong Kong Marathon. My training suffered through the winter, but knowing I had a 6-hour time limit for the marathon, I wasn’t terribly worried - until I got sick. At the end of January I caught a severe cold that I’m still not fully over, three weeks later. I was weak, slept little, and worked out zero times in all of February. But the Asia trip was coming anyway, and being a realist, I gave myself permission to DNS (did not start) or DNF (did n...
Read more

2017 Hefei International Marathon Race Report

Image
Most of my regular followers will know that I was selected as part of a team of five to represent Columbus, Ohio at the marathon of our sister city Hefei, China. I blogged about the announcement here and here , and about my team's fundraiser here . On November 8, 2017, we set off to the Far East, arriving in Hefei, China late evening on November 9th. We spent five days in Hefei, after which everyone went separate directions. My travels took me to Bangkok, Thailand, and then back to China to spend time in and around Beijing. But this post is about Hefei and the marathon I ran there. Post marathon with Courtney, Bernard, me, Echo and Lily in back The Hefei International Marathon is a large event, with tens of thousands of participants across all race distances (marathon, half marathon, 5K and 10K). The marathon had the smallest race field of all events, but included some very competitive elite runners. The Lead-Up Through the sister city marathon exchange, our team o...
Read more

2018 Running Recap

Image
I haven't blogged all year. In fact, I didn't even finish my 2017 race reports. What happened? I still ran. In fact, I ran several races, and did meet some of my annual running goals. But I also focused on other areas of my life that needed attention. I dropped the ball on some things, and I missed some of my other running goals. Right now I'm not going to write new running goals, because I'm not ready. I will, however, state one broad goal, and that is this: I will post a running-related story once per month in 2019. So, here's the 2018 recap: My 2018 Goals I will lead the 11:00 pace group for CWRC. CWRC is the Columbus Westside Running Club , which I joined after moving to Columbus, and this goal was about the winter/spring training program leading up to spring races. I started this, but I didn't finish. Very early on it became clear to me that I was not in the game mentally and not prepared to lead others on a weekly basis. A January training run ...
Read more