Pacing Tokyo? Fingers crossed

While I've run the Tokyo Marathon once, back in 2019, it was a horrible experience for me. Not because of any problem with the city or the race, but specifically because of my body's poor reaction to the weather conditions. Cold, rainy, windy day, and my right leg decided I could only walk as of Mile 22 -- so the last hour or so at a slow, non-heat-generating pace had me miserable and hypothermic. I definitely want "redemption."

Back in April, I became a member of a group (how many hundreds or thousands of people? who knows?) that not only has additional ways of securing a bib for the marathon, but also allows for applying to be a pacer for the marathon. Well, the application period just opened, until July 8. I just applied.

I wonder just how many people will meet all of the requirements. One of the somewhat surprising requirements was the need to have your personal best in the last 18 months to be at least 30-45 minutes faster than the pace you are looking to set. Thankfully, I was still looking for a BQ in that timeframe and not *only* pacing -- so I was able to easily meet that requirement. And it's not simply a first-come-first-served nor lottery process. Not only will some of the simply metric-related information be reviewed, but likely most important is the answer for why you want to be on the pace team. 

They'll make the announcement on July 15 of who got in. 

Fingers crossed my application was good enough.

Better chances for London?

The London Marathon finally made it official: they will be holding a one-time two-day Marathon event. So, both Saturday and Sunday marathons next April. Instead of it only being 40-50,000 people running, now there will be double that number.

Some of the specifics are not yet clear: will one day have just the men's elite and the other having the women's elite? Will they do some semblance of combining the results from the two days, or treat them as two separate events? (Hopefully the latter.) Will both days count as a star for the 6-star medal? (Presumably.) Will the marathon medal be the same, with the only likely difference being the date on it, or will there be differing designs.

With good fortune, there being a 2-day event will make my odds of getting onto the pace team better.

I can only imagine just how difficult the logistics will be for them to pull this together. But it would be great to run it one day and cheer it on the other. Time will tell.

For full details, go to their website.

Congratulations, Cape Town

It's official! Abbott World Marathons Majors has just added the Sanlam Cape Town Marathon as the newest major to the slate -- #8. And from everything that I read, it sounded like it was a great addition.

With this newest addition, the schedule is evened out between spring and fall:

March: Tokyo

April: Boston and London

May: Cape Town

August: Sydney

September: Berlin

October: Chicago

November: New York

The Shanghai Marathon is the last one that is in a candidacy mode. If it successfully meets Abbott's requirements in two consecutive years, it will become the ninth and final (for now) marathon major. While the 6-star medal will always remain Tokyo, Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago, New York, they will also institute some sort of 9-star award -- whether it is a similar sort of medal or something else is yet to be seen.

One more personal goal recently added to the list that had basically run out: be a pacer or an Achilles guide at each of the majors. It'll certainly be a challenge getting onto the teams, but it's certainly worth a shot, especially with all of the non-majors pacing that I do, and contacts that I have from that who might be able to put in a good word with some of these races. Fingers crossed!

Changing things up, maybe?

With summer coming on fast, I have more opportunity to be outdoors: running on the W&OD trail or on the roads by my gym on the weekend, taking in some sun at the swimming pool -- and taking a dip when there's a free lane. But I've also been adding in a modest amount of weight lifting lately -- 1 or 2 days a week. I'm also looking into getting back onto the rock wall periodically (once I find out what the schedule is). And just maybe exploring one of the classes offered at the gym.

As much as I like my running, and will continue with it as long as my legs will carry me, it is certainly a little stale -- more so when running on the treadmill than out on the W&OD. And I don't expect that marathons will ever get stale. Well... except maybe if I ever do another indoor marathon like the one I did years ago -- that got old really fast.

I'm looking forward to figuring out what next year's race schedule will be, but it will probably take some time before I can put some of those puzzle pieces together, given several of them are potential pacing gigs that I'm not a lock for. But getting overseas again, including one or more new countries I've never been to before, will be great.

Got to plan ahead - some tough choices

There are so many races that I would like to do, most of which I'd like to do as a pacer if possible, I need to figure out a possible schedule over a year in advance, especially since some of them conflict with each other. So, what are the ones I'm looking at for 2027?

Houston, TX

Celebration, FL; Miami, FL; and Fred Lebow Half Marathon (NYC) (likely all the same day)

Florida (Melbourne, FL)

A1A (Fort Lauderdale, FL)

Seville, Spain

Myrtle Beach, SC

Tokyo or Atlanta, GA

Rome, Italy

Seoul, South Korea

Just a Short Run (half marathon - near Pittsburgh, PA)

Jersey City, NJ or Vienna, Austria

Boston, MA

Kentucky Derby (Louisville, KY)

Madrid, Spain; London, UK; or Oklahoma City, OK

Flying Pig (Cincinnati, OH)

Copenhagen, Denmark

Cape Town, South Africa

Casper, WY or Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Grandma's (Duluth, MN)

Kona, HI

Mad Marathon (Waitsfield, VT)

NYRR 12-Miler

Wausau, WI

Sydney, Australia

Pocatello, ID

North Shore (Auckland, NZ)

Wicked Fast Poconos (near Allentown, PA)

Erie, PA

Bronx 10-Mile

Bueno Aires, Argentina or NYRR 18-Miler

Akron, OH

Berlin, Germany or Warsaw, Poland

Wineglass (Corning, NY)

Steamtown (Scranton, PA) or Army Ten-Miler (DC) or Staten Island Half (NYC)

Lisbon, Portugal

Lake Tahoe, NV

Detroit, MI or Atlantic City, NJ or Toronto, Canada or Classic Greek (Athens, Greece)

Frankfurt, Germany or Niagara Falls (NY & Canada)

Marine Corps (Arlington, VA & DC)

New York City, NY

New Orleans, LA

Harrisburg, PA

D&L (Allentown, PA)

Philadelphia, PA

Space Coast, FL

Palm Beaches, FL

Honolulu, HI

Taipei, Taiwan

No, I won't be doing all of them - obviously. But I will need to start planning things out. Especially if there are pace groups that I would like to join that are different than the companies for which I regularly pace. 

Greatly recommended experience

Are you driving to Burlington, VT for the Vermont City Marathon?  Or Schenectady or Albany, NY for the Mohawk Hudson Marathon? Or (far closer) to Schroon Lake, NY for the Adirondack Marathon? And are you a geek? Well, then, I have the perfect diversion for you to do during your race weekend.

Yes, I know, I'm wearing a TNG uniform on the TOS set. So what? Haven't you heard of time travel? This is totally a Star Trek-plausible scenario.

I was up in Vermont for my friends' (Mike & Stacey) daughter's (River) graduation from Castleton University. (OK, fine, it's now officially Vermont State University (Castleton campus) -- sore subject for the recent grads the last three years.) And in place of making a donation in my name to a Boston-based charity (since I didn't make it onto a Boston Marathon charity team for which they could do that), they bought me a set tour with photo package of the ST:TOS set. Neat! 

Based in the shell of a former Safeway supermarket in Ticonderoga, NY, this set tour is absolutely great! A superfan decided that he wanted to re-create the set to Star Trek (The Original Series), and managed to not only get all of the blueprints with which to build the entire set of the Enterprise, but also LOTS of the original set pieces and/or recreations of them.

Walking through the hallways and the rooms is truly amazing. You definitely feel like you're there.

From teleporting to another planet

to being in an intense meeting in the conference room

to needing to get examined in Sick Bay

to climbing into a Jeffries tube as if to fix some circuitry that was going haywire

you see it all.

Heck, you even get to see something never seen in any of the original series (or subsequent ones, I think) if you... have to go:

Our hour-long tour included plenty of stories from the days of filming to the many famous visitors to their set tour (some of which just might be there if you go on the right day) and, in our case, also included lots of photos. (No videos are permitted, by visitors or the tour guides, per the arrangement with Paramount, so we only get to keep in our memory the "live" sound of the Red Alert klaxon, or the transporter beam being activated -- so cool!)

Ever wanted to work at Kirk's desk?

Or take a look inside his bedroom?

Or visit Engineering?

Yep, you get to do it.

Lots more photos taken, but you get the drift. Use your marathoning as an excuse to drive out of your way to visit the set. Or don't even bother concealing your geek flag (freak flag?) and just make this a central part of your trip. Whatever!

Oh, and, yes... this is THAT Ticonderoga:

Rein in your dog's leash!

I have hated those retractable dog leashes since they first hit the market. Owners just let the dogs run far away from them, not caring for the trip hazard that they are unleashing - and one that is connected to their beloved pet. Those are bad enough when walking, or even driving in the neighborhood. But today it finally became an issue for me while running on the W&OD Trail behind my apartment complex. 

Only a few minutes into my run, there was this man with his small dog further ahead of me, walking up the gravel hill that splits off from the paved trail that I was running on. No issues, although it was clear that the dog was on one of those retractable leashes. But they were on the side path and the dog was simply sniffing about, not terribly far afield from his owner.

Apparently, the dog took notice of me as I was approaching being even with them. And despite the fact that we were at least 15-20 feet apart from each other, and I was basically about to be running away from them at that point, the dog charges at me, barking his head off, and gets right to my leg. My worry wasn't about getting bitten (which I wasn't), but of being tripped, severely hurting myself and even the dog in the process.

The owner was a clueless moron. He just stood there until I screamed at him to reel in his dog. Thankfully, he complied without a word. Once the dog was at least a couple of feet away, I could safely get back on my way. But, boy howdy, this was the first time I was ever sorely tempted to kick a dog, and at the owner's head at that. It didn't come to that, and for that (and for the dog's sake) I am very happy.