Friday, February 22, 2008

More Spirit of the Marathon Observations

A few other observations from the Spirit of the Marathon movie last night:
  • 5 out of the 6 people they followed did their running with a group or running partners - either all the time or at least for the weekend long runs. The one "loner" was one of the first-time marathoners. Since I have done all of my running on my own, I'm wondering if I'm missing something. Should I look into finding a running group or another person to run with? A few of my concerns on running with other people have been on scheduling (I usually run before work during the week or before the kids wake up on the weekend, so most running groups meet later than I need) and pace (I'm not that fast of a runner and I don't want to slow other people down).
  • The movie was focused on the Chicago Marathon. This marathon has a field of close to 40,000 runners. Chicago is a great city and the marathon goes through a lot of different neighborhoods. I'll be running the Frederick Marathon as my first marathon. This will be much smaller - about 1,500 runners - and in a much smaller town. It will most likely not have the same energy as a big city marathon. Should I have chosen a bigger marathon as my first one? Would the energy of a larger marathon help push me to the finish line??
  • I am now pretty psyched to see the 2008 Beijing Olympic Marathon. I may have to stay up to watch this (or wake up in the middle of the night?) if they show it live. I'm hoping that Ryan Hall can keep up with the Kenyans and Ethiopians and give them a run for the gold!

2 comments:

tootie said...

I saw the movie last night and loved it.

I'm training for my first marathon (this fall), and I, too, am a lone runner. I'm hoping to eventually find someone to run with. But, if not, it'll just be me and my MP3 player.

Best of luck!

Anonymous said...

There's something to be said for racing smaller marathons to start with. because, mainly, if you start with a big-city marathon as your first one ever, anything after that could pretty much be a let-down as far as the spectacle of the event goes. Unless you end up a die-hard marathoner who runs for time goals, personal performance, the joy of the distance, etc., anything after races like Chicago, NY, or London are going to be a bit anticlimactic, I'd think.