Marathons | Running Without Music

Marine Corps Marathon Here I Come!

03-07-2012

Registered earlier today for the Marine Corps Marathon 30 minutes before they sold out!

From the event’s Facebook Page:

The record is yours runners – 2 hours and 41 minutes. The fastest registration sell out in marathon history – not just MCM, but the entire United States! THANK YOU RUNNERS!

Wow! That sold out faster than Ironman Canada! I’ve always wanted to do this, so I secured my spot (plus my work reimburses $50 of any endurance race entry fees, so it’s a win-win). I’m still 50/50 wether or not I’m actually going to do this race because it’s dependent on my acceptance to the NYC Marathon via lottery. I’ll know in April, but til then, I’m excited as it will be state #10!

Austin Marathon Pre-Race Thoughts

By: Marvin Tabangay

02-17-2012

marathons

No doubt Austin is one of my favorite cities in the U.S, but I may be biased because the only time I’ve been was for SXSW (South by Southwest), a big interactive/film/music conference. I’m super excited though, going mainly to enjoy the food, bars, and people – running 26.2 miles only to burn it all off.

This race will mark state #8, and marathon #13. This isn’t my first rodeo, so not really nervous here. I don’t plan on PRing it, because I’m still expected to do the IronTEAM workouts when I get back. Luckily it will be a “recovery” week for the IronTEAM and syncs up well with this event. There’s a HUGE difference when I try to hit 4:30 vs 5:00. Would I rather be sore and hurt the next few days or not? 5:00+ it is! My “taper” weekend consisted with some tough hills, which I shouldn’t have done – oops.

Somewhat unprepared for this race, from a strategy perspective. I finally saw the race course map this morning, came across this helpful guide from Team Spiridon, and only a few hours ago, I mapped out where I need to be and when all weekend. I still need to pack! What a mess!

Portland Marathon – A New PR!!

By: Marvin Tabangay

10-11-2011

marathons

It’s been almost a year since I ran my last full marathon, which was Athens, Greece last Halloween. I’ve always approached marathons in a non-competitive, very easy pace kinda way. I was very curious though, to see what difference being on the IronTEAM and completing 140.6 would do. I certainly felt the most active I’ve ever been in my life. I’ve pushed myself through some half marathons within the IronTEAM season and PR’ed there, and I was able to manage a 5:10 marathon at the run portion of Vineman, so taking advantage of all this, I actually set a goal for this marathon. Not only to PR (my last PR was 4:58), but to be at 4:45, a pretty good point to my eventual goal of 4:30 at the Rock N Roll Las Vegas Marathon in December.

Portland, Oregon is one of my favorite cities, so I was very excited leading up to this race. I’ve been twice before, primarily to explore the food, and for the MusicFest Northwest (MFNW). I love the greenery surrounding the city, really friendly people, and relatively clean and not crazy busy like Los Angeles. The event took place on a Columbus Day weekend, which my work fortunately gives us the extra day off, so it was a no brainer for me to sign up and do this race. I’ve always wanted to, really.

Registered for the Austin Marathon 2012!

By: Marvin Tabangay

06-13-2011

marathons

Just registered for the Austin Maraton in 2012! This will check off my Texas part of the 50 Marathons in 50 States list. Can’t wait!

Strip at Night

By: Marvin Tabangay

03-10-2011

run

Get your minds out of the gutter! I’m talking about Strip at Night, this year’s Rock N Roll Las Vegas Marathon! There was a lot of hype behind this announcement of this December event, because it will be a nighttime run! Earlier today, I registered for the FULL marathon! Sounds super fun, right? Well… there will be two big factors that will decide how fun it is – 1) weather: it’s going to be COLD. One year it was 30 degrees! Oh don’t forget those desert winds! 2) Cutoff Time: this year’s cutoff is 4:30! My PR for a full is 4:58. Who knows what training for the IronMan will do to improve my time (although it already has for the half @ 2:01 vs 2:30 originally), but I’ll give it a try! Vegas will be my third marathon in three months at the end of the year, which will qualify me for Marathon Maniacs, another side goal of mine that I’d want to check off my list. The other 2 marathons before Vegas will be the Portland Marathon in Oregon and the Rock N Roll Savannah Marathon in Georgia. Can’t wait!

Art of Medal Whoring

By: Marvin Tabangay

12-07-2010

run

I didn’t really set out to get the Rock Legend Medal by completing the Rock N Roll Heavy Medal Series, until I finished the Seattle Marathon over the summer (Arizona and San Diego were the events before that). My thoughts were exactly this, “Oh, 3 Rock N Roll events done, what’s 4 more?” I was already planning to do Philadelphia, LA, and San Jose, so I just had to pick one more. Not too bad, right? I ended up skipping out on San Jose because I was on a JetBlue All You Can Jet weekend adventure in Vegas instead. My replacement event was Las Vegas. I admit, I became a medal whore in 2010 because I had this sudden addiction for collecting cool medals. That was pretty much the criteria for signing up for an event. Did they give medals? If so, I was in! Running the Rock N Roll events were even better because we get awarded special combo medals the more and more you run events. The end all be all Rock Legend Medal is approximately 3x the size of a normal medal. So check out the photos above, all the Rock N Roll medals this year.

Note: a Musical 26.2 Miles medal is still missing, I still have to e-mail them about it.

Athens Classic Marathon 2010

By: Marvin Tabangay

11-07-2010

run

Rewind back to 2008, my roommate Carlos suggested to our running circle of friends, that we should all do the Athens Marathon 2009. So many of us were so down to do it and excited, but plans fell through. In 2009, we noticed that the 2010 Athens Classic was going to be a special milestone race, 2,500th Anniversary of the original Battle of Marathon. Sold! I was NOT about to miss this one! Once they announced the next Athens Classic, Carlos and I e-mailed the planning organization of the event and got details. We kept going back to the site to see when registration would open. We would always keep tabs and update each other on the status. It wasn’t a few months later that they opened it, and we were one of the first to register! We didn’t care if we didn’t have a plane ticket or plans for hotels or hostels yet, we figured we’ll get that later. We started a Facebook Group to gain interest, and we had a good 40 or so people interested, but in the end, there were 10. The ten consisted of me and Carlos’ mutual friends from past Team in Training teams and friends of friends. We kept in touch via a more filtered e-mail group of the runners 100%. From there we shared our travel plans, travel deals and tips. We all had different room situations and different flight schedules, but I thought planning of everything went smoothly.

Fast forward to last weekend. Wow, I can’t believe a week already has passed since the big race. I flew via Lufthansa to Germany for a layover. It was delayed a an hour or so though, so I didn’t get to Greece until after midnight! Ok, super late at a country very unknown to me, wasn’t very ideal. This was where I should’ve had my little folder of fun and preparations could have been better. I took a $50 cab ride because I had no idea how iffy the busses or trains were. I didn’t understand any writing or signs, so I played it safe. I also had to make sure the cab wasn’t trying to rip me off either. I didn’t get to my hostel until 1ish. Our hostel situation was sweet at Athens Backpackers, as it was one of the highest rated hostels on Hostelworld.com, super clean, friendly staff, and we were able to meet so many people as they shuffled us around room to room. The first day my roomies were a bunch of girls from Milwaukee who didn’t get to the room until 4am. Super fun bunch, but they had to leave.

A Lot Can Happen in 20 Months

By: Marvin Tabangay

11-05-2010

experiences

It’s been 20 months since my last update on this blog, and so much has happened since! I didn’t get to recap most of my races during this time so I will have to post them later as “flashback” entries. So what have I been up to? I’ve done 8 half marathons and 6 full marathons. One of which is still my favorite to date, The Anchorage Alaska Full Mayor’s Marathon. The course was absolutely beautiful, clean air, nice small town destination race. I’ve also been on track to get the Rock N Roll Rock Legend Medal, which you get if you do 7 Rock N Roll Events in a year. This year I’ve done 6 (3 full and 3 half marathons) so far, and of those events, RNR Chicago was my favorite. A few days ago I completed my 10th marathon in Athens, Greece. It was a huge 2,500 anniversary celebration of the Battle of Marathon, and it ended at the first Olympic Stadium – one event not to forget! So much to tell you all! I’ll recap all of my past events later, but now I just wanted to get up to speed for this blog because there are many big things coming up!

52 in 52

By: Marvin Tabangay

01-26-2009

stories, videos

Amazing! Dane Rauschenberg (www.fiddy2.org) finished 52 marathons in 52 weeks back in 2006. This video tells you why he did it, and how. You know what else is crazy? He still managed to NOT take any time off, and still worked a full time job averaging at 50 hours a week! This goes to show that anything is possible!