Perks? What perks?

In yesterday's post, I alluded to perks for running the Sydney Marathon in September. What would those be, beyond the standard ones of a race shirt and a finisher's medal?

Well, Sydney has launched a Candidacy Club, as an inducement to get enough people to run the marathon to help its candidacy as the 7th major. The two biggest perks (IMO):

1) Guaranteed Entry into the Sydney Marathon (valid for 3 years) once it becomes the next Major. (Not free entry, but guaranteed -- regardless of what their method is for people registering.)

2) Opportunity to secure a guaranteed entry to selected 2024 AWMM marathons. No specifics provided yet, but it would be FABULOUS if this enabled me to get into at least Tokyo and London, and even Berlin. If I can be guaranteed entry into Tokyo and London, and I have a qualifying time for Boston and Chicago and will likely have one for New York, I would glad run all of those and make sure to get into Berlin so that I could have a calendar-year six star medal. VERY hard to manage that, not many people get the opportunity.

But there are a few other benefits, too:

--Free 16 week training program by leading Aussie marathoner (can provide it to my coach to see whether it might be worth incorporating to some extent)

--Free 1-year subscription to ASICS RunKeeper. (Never heard of it before, but might be interesting)

--Separate free 6 week training program. Kinda bizarre to provide two different training programs. Apparently this is a $900 value. Huh.

There will be even more perks to be provide in the coming weeks and months. Wonder what those will be. Time will tell! Regardless, greatly looking forward to getting Down Under. I signed up without foreknowledge of this Candidacy Club, so it's "gravy." Nice.