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!

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!

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.

The night before my 7am flight, my friends and I went out, and oh man… did WE go out. We went to several bars and didn’t get home until 5am, but that’s a different story. Won’t explain the details here. Pretty much had a 1 hour nap before it was time for me to leave LAX. I tried to sleep as much as I can on the 3 hour flight, but it wasn’t much. I met up with the same friends I went out with the night before and wandered the city a little bit because the hotel wasn’t ready yet either. Went to packet pickup just a few blocks away at a Hilton. It was a different Expo set-up like the usual Rock N Roll ones I’m used to, but still had everything you expect expos to have.

My hotel was only half a mile from the start, so that was a huge plus with my overall marathon experience. The morning was a little cold, but still manageable. No rain, just overcast. The waves are set up perpendicular to the main start chute, which I thought was interesting & genius at the time time. A teammate, Donovan, suggested I try to run with the 4:30 pacers during the race, so I found them in my wave and waited with them. Overall energy of the race was high. Everyone was so friendly and calm. Once it was our wave to start, we all walked pretty calmly over. I was amazed at how organized and well the crowd was flowing through the start.

The course took us through downtown Portland and took us through surrounding neighborhoods along the waterfront. It had some nice downhills, but also two large hills. One near the beginning from 2-4, then another big one at 14-17ish. The rest was flat. Overall, it was a beautiful course, always trees in sight. Crossed some bridges over the water, and also ran along with nice views. Great crowd support throughout, and the runners were friendly. Even a girl from South Carolina wanted to run with me at mile 15, because we were at the same pace and found out we wanted the same time goal. We chit chatted up the large hill at 16, motivating each other through. We also ended up meeting another woman from Hawaii, who also kept us company. This whole time, remember, I was somewhat near the 4:30 pacers. Once that last hill was over, there were a few minor rollers, then the final 10k was ALL downhill. LOVED that. It started to rain a bit, but it was quite refreshing actually. A nice gust of wind re-energized me, and I noticed that I was WAY under my goal time, so I kept pushing myself through those final miles to see what I can get out of it. I might as well put it all out there! I felt great the whole time. I think it’s the tri-thinking of getting the right calories and hydration throughout the course that helped me! The last mile was a little annoying because I couldn’t really see the finish line (I could hear the announcer though), and it took everyone through some 90 degree zig-zigs until the finish. I sprinted!

4:29:57!!!!!!!

30 minutes off my last PR which I set 2 years ago, and 15 minutes off my original goal time for the day! My first marathon was a 5:50 I think, so you can imagine how happy I was when I finished! I was almost just as happy as finishing Vineman! Felt amazing! Also felt A LOT more sore than Vineman! What the! When I finished, I was given a pretty sweet medal, oh but wait, that’s not all… I also got a finishers long sleeve shirt, a finishers coin, and a finishers pendant. There was also the most amount of food at a finish line I’ve ever seen! All kinds of fruit, ice cream, bread, all kinds of drinks, pizzes, sandwiches… oh wow! They also gave away small trees to plant, and I forget what else. There was just too many to name! This because my new favorite marathon. Well organized, great crowds, great people, awesome finish line food. LOVED it.

Marathon #11, State #6 in the books!

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!

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!

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.

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.

The first few days were all about getting some sightseeing done with Kyle (who was the first of the group to arrive), and getting my racenumber at the Health Expo. A good part of it was exploring the neighborhood to get a good bearing of everything. Carlos and his old IronTeam teammate Kim were the next to arrive, so I showed them the Expo as well. With the marathon the next day, we met up with my friend Nicole whom I went to high school with to find a pasta dinner to carb up with. Food anywhere we went in Athens was so amazing! You can tell there was a lot of care put into any of the dishes, as they should!

The next morning, a shuttle nearby our hostel took everyone to the city of Marathon, which was the start. The location had the Olympic Flame burning, heroic music playing in the background, a track to do warm ups, and plenty of places to sit and rest. The energy was high, as everyone was pumped to run this historic route. It meant so much to me running this event, because as a runner, this is the event that started it all. We were all in awe. Corrals were strict, as there were people checking your race bib if your color matches the corral color, in this case, they call it “blocks.” The start of the race was a bit funny because I think they planned for an epic start with the balloons flying everywhere, but nope, the balloons went in different times, some were still bunched up and tangled. Oops! A helicopter was flying overhead, getting a nice aerial shot.

I was in the block with Kim, and we pretty much ran together from beginning to end. For most of the course, there was no shade, mainly on a highway, and from mile 5 to 20 – UPHILL. It was an overall gradual uphill, and part of steepness. We all weren’t planning on PRing this race anyway, and we knew we would stop if we had to if we’re tired or if we wanted to take pictures, which we did. There were pockets of crowds when we went from town to town, and we could definitely notice the difference in crowds and architecture. You could also tell which parts of the course were new & made specifically nicer for the event. Carlos eventually caught up to us a little after halfway, and we were partying it up with our ipods in our music sessions. We sang when we wanted, sometimes even doing some dance moves. We were basically just enjoying the fact that we were in ATHENS! Carlos dropped off at mile 24 or something so he could take in the sights and sounds in the final miles of the marathon. Kim and I ran it in together, and let me tell you, that finish was one of the BEST finish areas in my now 10 marathons! How can you top finishing at THE Olympic stadium, running on the track, Athenians on the seats cheering you on, music blasting, and everyone just celebrating their finish of the Athens Classic Marathon!

View photos from the Athens Classic Marathon 2010

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!

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!

The Silicon Valley & Monterey Bay chapter of Team in Training ran the Rome Marathon on 3/18/07, and here’s their highlight video.