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.