Word Marathon Majors: Five Star Finisher!
A little over eight years ago, I wrote a short blog post which somewhat dryly noted that I had completed the five marathons constituting the World Marathon Majors. I had completed Boston, Chicago and New York during 2007, adding London and then Berlin (with a personal best) in 2008. The World Marathon Majors existed then, but I was not aware of a website. The organisation was aiming to raise the profile of the professional and very high-end aspect of the sport. But marathoning is funny as they let somewhat regular folks like you and me into the same race. And I always wondered if someone kept track of regular folks completing the suite...
I have been running a little less the last few years, though I did get around to complete the Illinois Marathon earlier this year (only tweeted about it and still have not added anything to the running section of my blog). But two weeks ago, I was once again handing out water cups at the Chicago Marathon, sending along two tweets when the elite wheelchair and elite male runners flew by. To the first, the World Marathon Majors account replied, which lead me to their website. Which in turn lead me to the Five Star Finisher page, and the newer / larger Six Star Finisher page now that Tokyo has been added.
And in short, one can now request one's record to be added (if they check out). So I did. And now I am on the Five Star Finisher page!
I don't think I'll ever surpass that as a runner. The table header and my row look like this:
If only my fifth / sixth grade physical education teacher could see that---he was one of those early running nuts from the 1970s and made us run towards / around this (by now enlarged) pond and boy did I hate that :) Guess it did have some long lasting effects. And I casually circled the lake a few years ago, starting much further away from my parents place. Once you are in the groove for distance...
But leaving that aside, running has been fun and I with some luck I may have another one or two marathons or Ragnar Relays left. The only really bad part about this is that I may have to get myself to Tokyo after all (for something that is not an ISM workshop) ...
This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. Please report excessive re-aggregation in third-party for-profit settings.
