2019: Grandma’s Marathon

I have known about this event for many years now (it, in 2011, was my buddy Nils‘ first marathon). Every time I drove to or through Duluth since getting into running, a part of me had fantasized about participating in this event. On my way home from LindaMark I Do festivities in 2016, I had driven most of the course and checked out the starting area in Two Harbors. After some thought and almost putting it off for one more year, I decided to sign up for this year’s edition primarily as a backup for 2019 Whitefish Point Marathon. If, for some reason (e.g., inclement health or weather), things didn’t unfurl as planned in Paradise, MI, then I would have had two weeks to rest, recover, re-group and give it another try again. Though far from achieving any of my time goals, Whitefish Point Marathon was more rewarding than I had anticipated.

Continue reading … “2019: Grandma’s Marathon”

2019: Whitefish Point Marathon

The process of 2018 Chicago Marathon was a memorable experience on many fronts. It was my first time following a well-written training plan, sticking with a nutrition regimen, finding semblance of work-life balance and at the end of about 20 weeks later … running start-to-finish on race day to earn a 26-minute PR. As in most such experiments where the arrow of time flows purely in one direction, there wasn’t an opportunity for do overs. But a post-partum analysis revealed a list of things I should have tried and I could have done better.

Continue reading … “2019: Whitefish Point Marathon”

2019: Journeys Marathon

The half marathon associated with this event should have been my maiden half marathon when I got into running several years ago. Nancy and Josh had tried their best to convince me – to sign up and train. I didn’t even sign up in 2012, let alone train. Though signed up in 2013 and still didn’t train, I had favored the hometown Hancock Canal Run to be my first half marathon. So, instead of Eagle River, WI, being the site of my maiden 13.1 attempt, the town just remained an occasional pit stop during adventures deep into the heart of Wisconsin … until now.

Continue reading … “2019: Journeys Marathon”

2019: Illinois Marathon

I first learned about this event some months ago … not by searching the remote corners of the internet (Running In The USA is one such corner) but from Patricia Gropp during the Women in HPC networking event as part of the SC18 festivities in Dallas, TX. I had put it on the back-burner of bucket list items … things for which I’d eventually make time. But during the Coalition for Academic Scientific Computation (CASC) Spring 2019 meeting in Alexandria, VA, the event re-surfaced again … thanks to a post-dinner conversation with David Moses and John Towns. Once John re-explained the festive small town America atmosphere associated with the big Illinois Marathon event that runs in the shadows of the famed National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), the event moved to the front-burner and I signed up.

Continue reading … “2019: Illinois Marathon”

2018: Chicago Marathon

It has been nearly 3 years since I participated in a timed marathon experiment. It has been much longer than 3 years since I actually trained for any event. I have “trained” for several events before, including the two marathons – Marquette, MI and Madison, WI, but without a formal training plan. Back then and until recently, I was basically hopping from one event to the next using the performance in one as the baseline for the next. Such an approach worked pretty well in the first few years of getting into running because there was a LOT of room for improvement – so much so that anything and everything I tried, small or big, often led to newer personal best times.

Continue reading … “2018: Chicago Marathon”

2015: Madison Half Marathon

Science … often defined as the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the structure and behavior of the natural/physical and social world via a systematic methodology based on documented observation, evidence and experiment. Such a scientific methodology almost always includes the following aspects and almost always is accompanied by an image of a mad scientist who, according to Wikipedia, is an aging male with crooked teeth and messy hair wearing a lab coat, spectacles/goggles, gloves and holding an effervescent test tube:

(1) Objective observation — the measurement and data possibly although not necessarily using mathematics as a tool (2) Evidence (3) Experiment and/or observation as benchmarks for testing hypotheses (4) Induction — reasoning to establish general rules or conclusions drawn from facts or examples (5) Mindful repetition (6) Critical analysis (7) Verification and testing — critical exposure to scrutiny, peer review and assessment.

Continue reading … “2015: Madison Half Marathon”

2015: Marquette Marathon

Haven’t you done enough half marathons? Are you ever going to do a full? If so, when? Seven (one each in Detroit, Marquette, Porcupine Mountains, and two apiece in Green Bay and Madison) of the 17 half marathons I have had the good fortune of participating in so far since 2013 had featured a full marathon as part of their festivities. The course for many of these seven aforementioned half marathons had partly, if not entirely, overlapped with that of the corresponding full marathon. The often interesting and inspiring but always entertaining and hilarious signs that people held along the side for the marathoners, as such, were quite hard to miss. And so were the aforementioned questions that many a friend, in and outside of my community, frequently and caringly put forth over the past many months to put me outside of my comfort zone, and in turn, make me better — a whole lot better.

Continue reading … “2015: Marquette Marathon”