European Marathon Classics: Abbott World Marathon Majors Wannabe?

Feb. 25, the European Marathon Classics challenge series was launched from Vienna, Austria. 

As they state, "the initiative combines sport, tourism and culture, encourages regular physical activity, promotes responsible participation, and supports integration among runners from around the world."

The EMC challenge comprises eight marathons in:

• Rome (March)
• Vienna (April)
• London (April)
• Madrid (April)
• Copenhagen (May)
• Warsaw (September)
• Lisbon (October)
• Frankfurt (October)

As you complete each marathon, you get a coin/e-coin. Once you complete any five cities, you can get a medal into which these five coins can be placed. (The launch announcement made it sound like they were simply virtual coins and possibly just a virtual medal. The website implies physical items.) Based on the graphics, the coins are relatively underwhelming: each has its own specific color and grayscale version of that country's flag with the name of the city across the top rim of the coin.

As I've said for a while, marathoning is a great excuse for travel. Well, for anyone looking to add more countries to their passport (I know, entry/exit stamps aren't given out most times any more), this seems like a great method. It just might encourage me to go to some of these cities that I didn't have floating all that high on my list of places to visit.

For those who have run one or more of these marathons previously, sometime this summer the EMC will add the ability to put that prior result into your profile. (Neat -- I'll have 1 e-coin at that point, to account for London, where I finished my Abbott World Marathon Majors 6-star challenge journey.)

It will be interesting to see, over the next few years, how well (or not) this challenge is received by the running community. Will the fields increase in size? Or, if they are already capped, will the number of people trying to register keep increasing, making it increasingly difficult to get into them? (Certainly London will be even harder to get into, now. After all, this year over 1.1 million people tried to register for the approx. 50,000 spots.) And if registrations increase for these, will they diminish the number of people registering for some of the overlapping Majors races (Boston, Sydney, Berlin, and Chicago being the most likely to be affected at all -- Tokyo precedes Rome in March, and New York is in November)?

As the tagline for Marathon Talk goes: Enjoy the run, wherever it takes you.

R.I.P., Jeff Galloway

After a decades-long career and inspiring a movement that helped millions of people achieve their running goals, Jeff Galloway passed away at age 80.

https://www.runnersworld.com/news/a70444018/jeff-galloway-dies-at-80/

I first started running in 2002 with the goal of finishing the New York City Marathon. During my initial couple of years running, and my first two marathons, I was doing my own thing with trying to increase stamina and, to a small extent, speed. It was enough to enable me to finish, but not without a LONG recovery time.

After the 2003 and 2004 NYC Marathons, I thought I was done running marathons, until I started back up with the 2012 Goofy Challenge and then 2012 Marine Corps Marathon. That was then I heard about run/walk and decided to try it for myself. And, lo and behold, in a relatively short amount of time, I was able to drop the extra time and break the elusive 4-hour barrier. 

I continued to find additional ways to be a stronger runner and drop even more time, but I will always be thankful to Jeff Galloway for providing me the method to achieve my first big marathoning goal after I got hooked on running marathons.

R.I.P.

Another pretty hot race coming up

As of right now, it looks like the forecast for race day is going to be on the warm side once again. Thankfully, though, if this forecast holds up, it won't be as bad as Miami was -- so, that's something.

Common Ground with Benjamin Franklin

So, the area above my left ankle was hurting in the week or so leading up to marathon day, and definitely swollen. I had a minor though obvious limp while walking. And then after the race, it was very painful walking around -- so much so that I thought I might have actually broken my ankle during the race. Making my way to the taxi at the airport coming home, and then getting to and into my apartment was hideously painful.

And during the couple of days afterwards, the foot kept on ballooning. To the point where my ankle bones were no longer visible. (!)

Thankfully I was able to get into urgent care quickly the day after I returned home (and dug myself out). The NSAID that he prescribed for me has done a very good job of bringing down the swelling and alleviating the pain. (Elevating it and applying ice also helps.) Hopefully soon I will be able to run properly again, as not doing so is definitely driving me batty.

Fingers crossed this is the one and only time I have gout. Odd that I got it, given I don't match the profile of someone likely to develop it. Nor was it in a typical location. Look at me, being the oddball. (Hmm... that much isn't so out of the ordinary for me, I suppose. :-) )