Sandy Runs

On Sunday I ran the Navy-Air Force Half Marathon for the second year in a row ( last year's race report here ). It's a nice race, but I didn't do as well as I'd hoped. That was my fault. I was feeling pretty good after last weekend's Abebe Bikila event, but it only takes one mistake to cause problems in a race. The shirt and medal were nice; the airplane on the medal spins I went to the race expo at the DC Armory on Friday. When the Marine Corps Marathon expo is held there, it is packed wall to wall with vendors, activities, and people. Last year's Navy-Air Force expo was held at Nationals Park, which I thought was an odd location. The Armory is a better location, but the vastness of the Armory highlighted just how small the Navy-Air Force expo was. There were very few vendors and no lines. That was fine with me. I got in and out quickly. The Armory, almost empty for this expo On Sunday, I parked at the Courthouse Metro station and rode the t...

The lottery results for the 2016 Tokyo Marathon were announced this week. I was not selected. But Scot was. This means we had to make a decision. And now I'm registered too, as a charity runner. The charity program works differently than the charity programs for marathons in the US. Instead of being provided with a fundraising site where donors can make individual donations directly to the charity, I had to donate ¥10,000 up front, in addition to my marathon registration fee. This converts to about $850 for the charity. The charity I chose is Discover Tomorrow Tohoku and it benefits the victims of the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami  by providing educational opportunities to victims. Not much information is available on English language websites. Here is a poorly translated (by Google) screen shot of the charity logo and description. Not a perfect Google translation, but you get the point You are probably aware of the nuclear accidents at the Fukushima Daiichi Nucle...

This past weekend my training plan called for a 20 mile training run. But the half marathon training program I was running with ended Labor Day weekend. Knowing that I would not have anyone to run with for even part of my 20 miler, I registered for the Abebe Bikila Day International Peace Marathon . Scot registered too. This is a smaller, local Washington DC marathon that we'd been looking at for the last couple years. Some background: Abebe Bikila was a famous Ethiopian marathoner known for winning the 1960 Olympic marathon in Rome. And he ran it barefoot. This local marathon was organized to honor Bikila and to celebrate Ethiopian heritage. Abebe Bikila coming in for the win at the 1960 Olympic Marathon in Rome Coming off a not-so-great half marathon the previous week, I was feeling a little nervous about being registered for this marathon. But I needed to get in some training miles because my real marathon come-back was to be Berlin Marathon in just two weeks. Betwee...

I decided to run the Rock 'n' Roll Virginia Beach Half Marathon this weekend in lieu of a training run. I was scheduled for an 18 miler, but frankly, I didn't think I'd do it. For one thing, my training group was only running 13 miles. I'd need to do 5 miles on my own either before or after the group run. And it's been years since I've done a training run that long. I usually do marathons more frequently, so I never need to run longer than a half marathon in between. So, I thought I'd register for the race in Virginia Beach and maybe try to push myself beyond training pace. Fewer miles, but more effort... in theory, anyway. My plan was to drive to Virginia Beach late morning or at least by noon on Saturday for the race on Sunday. It should be a little more than a three hour drive. It took five hours. I expected some holiday beach traffic slow-downs, but I did not expect to sit in the exit lane and ramp in Richmond from I-295 to I-64 for an hour. I kne...

The 2013 Wildcat Ridge Romp was supposed to be my first 50K and my New Jersey race for the 50 States Marathon Club. But I only ran 10 miles that day. What happened? I was looking for a New Jersey marathon to fit into my schedule after having bad luck with that state. I was registered for the 2012 Atlantic City Marathon, but had to defer that due to my grandmother's death. Then I registered for the inaugural 2013 Liberty Run Marathon in Jersey City. This race was canceled only a couple weeks before race day. Turns out the race organizers neglected to secure the permits to hold the race. So, I found the New Jersey Trail Series website and the Wildcat Ridge Romp was an August race that fit into my schedule. I had not run a 50K, and this would be a 50K on a challenging trail course, but there was a 12 hour limit. I had heard good feedback from other runners about the New Jersey Trail Series, so I figured I'd go for it. Scot had already run a marathon in New Jersey, but he is a...

I'm going back to 2013 again to catch up on old race reports. During this time I was working on running 30 marathons in 30 different states within 365 days to achieve Marathon Maniacs Titanium status. I was running a lot of "doubles", or weekends with one marathon on Saturday and another marathon on Sunday. Usually the start times of these races were about 24 hours apart. My August Utah and Nevada double was something else. Scot and I ran the Park City Marathon in Utah on Saturday, and then the ET Full Moon Midnight Marathon in Nevada later that SAME DAY, at midnight. Technically, the Nevada race was on Sunday, but just by one minute! We had to drive 7 hours in between the races and got very little sleep. It was a crazy weekend, and I was so focused on the job at hand (get to each marathon, and finish the course) that I didn't take photos from the course like I normally do. It was my first trip to Utah, though Scot had run there before. We landed in Salt Lake Cit...