Marine Corps Marathon Take 2

Back in 2009 David and I ran the Marine Corps Marathon (MCM)  as his first marathon and my 11th. (More on my blog: Marine Corps Marathon 2009) I really enjoyed the race and looking back its made my top three favorite marathons in the company of the San Francisco Marathon and the Chicago Marathon.

I'm pretty high maintenance and I rank races based on these factors:

1. Flatness of course
2. Ease of access to start/finish
3. Course design (course support and route)

The MCM ranks high on all fronts!

1. The course has two moderate hills up front, but nothing major. If you train on hills and know they are coming, you'll be fine.
2. The start and finish line are right near Metro stations, and so is the race expo.
3. The course is beautiful! You get to run through DC and Arlington, run past the monuments, and there is course support almost the entire way
    

I really enjoyed this race and if you asked me about it, I would have said I'd do it again, but had no immediate plans to run this race in the near future. As far as running bucket lists go, I'd checked this off! A few weeks ago my friend Christina emailed me saying that she wanted to run the race and wanted to know if David and I were interested. I have a really heavy race calendar full of half-marathons, full-marathons, and triathlons this year, and I'd already registered for two full marathons. Running three in a year is a lot of work, and its basically a full year of long runs. Bye bye 10 toenails! When I got her email it crossed my mind to run MCM again and work it into one of my visits to MD, but I thought no, I don't want to run a 3rd marathon this year, maybe some other year.
 

Well ... David on the other hand (Who I've been working on to run the SF Marathon 1st half with me) wrote back saying that he'd consider it and that the SFM half would be a good warm-up for a full several months  later. Huh?? Hmm ... okay. 

Registration Day

Registration day arrived this past Wednesday February 23rd Interestingly enough, this was the 65th anniversary of Iwo Jima, whose statue is located right at the finish line where the finishers photos are taken. A few days prior, I had no idea what Iwo Jima was. :oP Anyways, I had seen on facebook and twitter that registration was open and didn't think much of it. Then, my friend Christina emailed me saying she had tried to register and couldn't .. and btw it was only $90 for the race. Hmmm ...  I have a chip on my shoulder regarding overpriced marathons, and $90 for such a huge, historic race was amazing! I then thought well, maybe I'll try to register. If the site is overloaded, I"ll put the fate of this race in God's hands and see what happens. 

Uh oh ... A few minutes later I was registered. ACK!

I immediately emailed and texted David trying to get him to register as well, not thinking he really would. If I had to place a bet I would have put the chance of David registering at 20%. After we ran two half marathons and one full marathon together, I thought that one of my dreams had come true - dating a distance runner! Um, not so much. David actually didn't run for months after MCM in 2009, and had no interest in a distance race at all after that. Boo. Heartbreak.  BUT ... without having emailed or talked at all that morning .. .a few hours later David forward me and his family his registration confirmation email! He was in!

So here we have it! David, Christina, and I will all be running the Marine Corps Marathon this year! I'm so excited! But nervous .. but excited! A testament to how cool this race is is how quickly it sold out. Back in 2009 David and I registered on day #2, and it sold out by day #4. This year the race hit 33% capacity with the first HOUR! AND - it was completely sold out 28 hours and 4 minutes later. Amazing. Race capacity is 30,000 runners. That means about 10,000 runners registered within an HOUR of the race registration opened! I swear, work productivity must have seriously dropped on Wednesday nationwide as the Marine Corps Marathon made the top 10 google trends for the day.

So the race date is Sunday October 30th 2011. This will be my 15th marathon in 6 years. Pretty crazy, but I love it.