Five whole months, I thought. No problem, I thought. It can’t be harder than running a marathon 13 weeks pregnant, I thought. That was me, a year ago, entering the NYC Marathon lottery for the fifth time. I probably won’t even get picked, I thought, reflecting on my previous unsuccessful attempts. But then I did get picked. And then, in June, I had a baby.
Race: Williams Route 66 Marathon
Location: Starts and ends in downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma
Time of Year: Sunday the weekend before Thanksgiving
Race: The 122nd Boston Marathon
Location: Boston, Massachusetts
Time of Year: Marathon Monday; Patriots’ Day; the third Monday in April
Race: Austin Marathon in, you guessed it, Austin, Texas
Time of Year and Weather: Sunday of President’s Day Weekend, mid-February; 50-55 degrees and overcast for the race; high of 76 for race weekend
Size: With 17,000 runners (half, full, and 5k) this is the 25th largest marathon in the USA. Of course, the vast majority of those runners were doing the half.
Race: Go Beyond Racing’s Mt. Hood 50K
Location: On the Pacific Crest Trail and around Timothy Lake, in Mt. Hood National Forest, about 1.5 hrs from Portland, Oregon and at about 3,225 ft above sea level
This past weekend I completed my first ultramarathon and and am no longer a trail runner wannabe! This was the first time in a very long time that I’ve gone into a race with serious questions about whether I would even finish, but *spoiler alert* I made it! I will separately write a post about what I wore, carried, ate, drank, packed, etc. for this ultramarathon in the mountains, but here are the normal post-race deets…
Race: Ultimate Direction Golden Gate Dirty Thirty
Location: Golden Gate Canyon State Park, Golden, CO. Approximately 45 minutes from Boulder or Denver. The race occurs between 7,500 to 9,500 feet above sea level.
What: TCTC Bayshore Marathon 2017
When: Saturday of Memorial Day weekend
Where: Traverse City, Michigan — Cherry Capital and Caribbean of the Midwest. If you make a mitt with your left hand, this race is at the inside top of your pinky.
Weather: Sunny, 60-70 degrees. Felt pretty warm in the final miles of the race. Luckily most of the race is at least partially shaded, so no sunburn for me.
Race: Big Sur International Marathon, a race that some regard as the most beautiful marathon in the United States
Location: Point-to-point course from Big Sur, California to Carmel-By-The-Sea, California; approximately 2 hrs south of San Francisco
Time of Year: 6:45 am on a Sunday at the end of April, when the flowers are in bloom
What: The BMO Harris Bank Mesa-Phoenix Marathon, aka The Phoenix Marathon, aka The Mesa-PHX Marathon. (There were approx 17 different hashtags associated with this race at various points — a little bit of an identity crisis, I think.) (Not to be confused with the Rock ‘N Roll Arizona race, also held in the Phoenix area.)
Where: Mesa, Arizona, just a few miles outside of Phoenix. Race started in Usery Mountain Regional Park and ended in the Mesa Riverview shopping center.
When: Saturday on the last weekend in February.
Race: Kiawah Island Marathon 2016
Location: Kiawah Island, South Carolina, about 40 minutes from the Charleston Airport, at the Kiawah Island Golf Resort
Size: About 1000 marathoners, plus about 2800 half marathoners
Time of Year and Weather: Saturday in early December. Race day was sunny, breezy at times, with temperatures in the 40s. Perfect running weather. This course has the potential to get windy, but I lucked out and it wasn’t bothersome.
athlettuce 