Boston 2 Big Sur: Should You Or Shouldn't You?

I don't remember where I first heard about Boston 2 Big Sur; it just seems like one of those things that's sort of been in the water since I started running distance races ten or so years ago. I'm sure I first read about it on someone else's blog back in the day, or one of my very earliest Bay Area running buddies mentioned it in passing. Who knows. But for about as long as I've wanted to try to qualify for & run Boston, I've always known that if I did, I would try to complete the Boston 2 Big Sur Challenge as well.

Part of this has to do with wanting to run Big Sur, but not wanting to devote an entire training cycle to it since it's pretty much guaranteed not to be a fast race. So Boston 2 Big Sur kind of let me do a two-for-one: Train for and run a "for-serious" marathon (Boston), then run another casually while I'm still in shape to finish the distance reasonably well.

There was also the issue of getting in; the race is popular enough that there's a lottery, so you can't just assume you'll be able to run it whenever you want. (See this post for more details about the Big Sur Lottery.) Boston 2 Big Sur was the closest I'd ever come to being guaranteed a spot.

Of course, I'd never tried to run two marathons just 13 days apart, let alone running one of the toughest road marathons around just days after running what is on its own not necessarily the easiest marathon around. When I first started running marathons, I never would have dreamed of attempting such a thing, but October 2017 rolled around and I was feeling a bit nervy, so I figured, "Ehhhhh, what the heck? It's not a challenge if you're sure you can do it!"

(At least 2018 was one of the 13-day gap years; some years the two are only 6 days apart & I'm not 100% sure I'm *quite* that crazy.)

When I was first thinking about doing Boston 2 Big Sur, I had a lot of questions. I'm grateful for everyone on the internet who wrote race reports and shared their experience, so I thought I'd pay it forward & add to the collective bank of information that's out there. Obviously these are all just my personal opinions, and they're extremely colored by my experiences & background, so, as always, YMMV.

Q: Tell me about this Boston 2 Big Sur. What's the deal? Who can do it? How do I sign up?
A: The Boston 2 Big Sur Challenge involves running the Boston Marathon on Patriot's Day, then running the Big Sur Marathon 6 or 13 days later, depending on the year. (This year it was 13. If it had been 6 days I'm not sure I would have been able to do it.)

The first step, obviously, is getting a Boston Marathon bib, either by time qualifying or through a charity. Next, check the BSIM website to find out when registration for Boston 2 Big Sur opens. (This past year, I registered for Boston on September 15 & Boston to Big Sur registration opened on October 1 at 9am Pacific Time.) Once you're registered for Boston, you can sign up for Boston 2 Big Sur. It doesn't sell out immediately, but there are only 400 spots and it's first come first served, so you should try to register as soon as you can as it usually sells out fairly quickly. (A few days or weeks? I don't remember exactly.)

Q: This seems completely insane. Is running two moderately challenging marathons 13 days apart even something a person can feasibly do??
A: Yes! Not only did I do it and live, about 400 people do it every year (and that's just Boston 2 Big Sur, not counting everyone else out there who runs marathons or ultras two weeks apart--or less--for some other reason). It is completely, totally a thing that a person can do, and you don't even have to be particularly special.

Q: But is it really something a person should do? It sort of seems like a questionable life choice.
A: Whether or not a person "should" do many things is a subjective matter. Like, should you climb Mt. Everest? Should you take a nice safe office job? Should you have kids? Should you eat ice cream for dinner? Should you run even one marathon at all? Maybe! It depends!

If you can, and you want to, and you're willing to put in the work and risk the consequences, then you should go for it. If you're kind of worried about it or questioning whether it will be worth it, then maybe hold off & think about it for a bit.

Q: How hard is it to run Boston & then run Big Sur 13 days later?
A: I personally think that running even one marathon under any circumstances is pretty frickin' hard. So imagine running a marathon, feeling crappy for a few days, then starting to feel normal again, and then running another, harder marathon and then feeling crappy again. It's pretty much like that.

That said, I don't think it was twice as hard as running a marathon. Running 50 miles is probably a lot harder. I was actually surprised at how (relatively) good I felt running Big Sur, particularly given how shitty my training was. It was definitely hard & I could definitely feel that my body was fatigued & far from fully recovered from Boston, but I never hit the wall & ran the second half pretty steadily pace-wise all the way to the end, even with all the hills.

Of course, how you decide to run each of the two races will probably affect how difficult you find it. Running both races casually is probably easier than trying to run both of them as fast as you possibly can. People do the former, latter, & everything in between. Most people I talked to chose one to be their "A" race (usually Boston, but not always) & ran the other more comfortably/casually. (That was my tactic going in, but I ended up having kind of a slow, shitty Boston & then running Big Sur a bit more aggressively than I'd thought I would. Honestly, I just wanted to get through it as quickly as possible, so I didn't dawdle.)

Finally, if you've run even one marathon before, you know that they're inherently unpredictable; regardless of your training, you never really know exactly how hard or easy it's going to be or how bad you're going to feel after, and there's always the chance of a catastrophic injury. Will you risk an injury for a slightly faster Boston time, knowing you may not be able to toe the line at Big Sur? Or would you rather run more conservatively to optimize your chances of finishing Big Sur (and maybe not being miserable the whole time)? It all depends on what you care about and what's most important to you.

Q: What on earth would possess someone to do this?
A: For me, it was two things. First, I wanted to run Big Sur for the experience but I didn't want to spend 3-5 months targeting a marathon that I knew could never be a particularly fast race. Second, I was intrigued by the challenge. I've run enough marathons now that while yes, they're definitely never easy and it's important to respect the distance, I was curious to test myself and see what it felt like to race a marathon, and then run another two weeks later. I was not 100% sure I could do it, which to me is what makes something a challenge to begin with. So, challenge accepted--Let's see what these old legs can do! (There are probably plenty of other good reasons; those were just mine.)

Q: Why on earth would you NOT do this if you had the chance??
A: There are reasons. Soooo many reasons.

First, you should really consider whether the timing is going to work out for you re: your non-running life. For example, I'd thought that December 2017-April 2018 would be a pretty ideal time for me to train for a goal marathon: Our house would be done and we'd be moved back in, so it would be easy for me to do my runs on my usual routes from home, efficiently, I wouldn't be traveling a ton, and I wouldn't be spending every free evening and weekend at the plumbing store or paint store or tile store or what have you, so I'd have plenty of time to get my strength work in regularly too while also sleeping a solid 7-8 hours a night on the regs.

Hahahahaha! Silly Angela.

Alas, the universe had other plans. Instead, our house was (and is) still under construction (shoot me in the face), which meant we weren't living in it and our temporary digs are extremely inconvenient for just heading out the door. Add to that my car getting totaled, so it was that much harder to get to the track or to the gym. Add to that some really crazy work projects involving more travel than I'd planned on and it really, really just did not end up being a great time to get a lot of training in, even before you factor in injuries bad enough to necessitate a week off of running on three separate occasions. If it had been any other set of races, I would have eaten the registration costs & just laid low for a while. Yes, I got through both races, but it was far from ideal and there are definitely some ways in which I'm paying the price for that now.

Second, there is something to be said for where you are in your marathon career. Obviously I can only speak based on my own experience, but back when I ran my first couple of marathons, there is no way in Hades you could have paid me to run a second marathon 13 days later. Preparing for marathons was such a huge physical and mental undertaking that when it was over, it was a solid week before I felt human again and over a month before I had even the slightest interest in getting back to running. For me, in those early years, I don't think Boston 2 Big Sur would have been the smartest idea.

I think before you decide to pull the trigger, you should have run enough marathons in a variety of conditions with a range of different quality of training to have a sense of how your body responds and recovers under different circumstances. Because you *might* have a perfect training cycle and get great weather and feel fantastic, but you also might have a shit training cycle, get injured three different times, have the worst weather in Boston history, and feel like crap in the second half of the race. (It could happen. TRUST ME.) Personally, I don't think Boston 2 Big Sur is the best situation to encounter some of those things for the first time. So, do you have to be super fast or have run 20 or 30 marathons already? Absolutely not. But I do think it is smart to be in a place where you'd consider yourself an experienced marathoner who has dealt with her share of less-than-ideal situations. For me, I think it comes down to having the confidence that you could find yourself confronting shit conditions and feel like you have the strategies & mental fortitude to recalculate & power through.

Third, there's the travel element. One way or another, you're going to have to travel for at least one of these races. That's not necessarily an option for everyone all the time. Or, at least, not an attractive one. I think if you're going to travel for one of these races, it's really worth considering staying a few extra days in the area you're traveling to to really see it. Why fly all the way across the country for just two days? I think if you're going to do Boston 2 Big Sur, you should really enjoy it and make the most out of being in both areas if you can possibly swing it.

Fourth, there's the money. There's no getting around the fact that Boston 2 Big Sur is an expensive undertaking. I was fortunate in that I didn't have to pay for all my expenses thanks to having to be on the east coast for work the week after Boston anyway, but here's a rough breakdown of what it would have cost us if we'd paid for everything:

• Boston entry fee: $180
• Flight to Boston: $283 per person (so $566 for the two of us)
• Boston hotel, 4 nights: ~$1300
• Flight home from DC: $138 per person (so $276 for the two of us)
• Boston 2 Big Sur entry fee: $300
• Big Sur lodging, 3 nights: ~$750

That's over $3,300. And these are just the big ticket items; none of this includes gas or local transportation costs (we took a lot of Lyft rides in Boston), or airport parking, or eating out, or that cool Boston Marathon hat I bought.

Can you do it for less? Absolutely. Maybe there's only one of you. Maybe you're fine staying in someone's spare room for $150/night. Maybe you're cool with just one or two nights in each place. But at the most basic level, you've still got to pay for the registration fees and some mode of cross country transportation & somewhere to sleep, and not everyone is at a place in their lives all the time where they have that kind of cash to spend on a hobby. Ten years ago, there is no way I could have swung it. (Like, I was still in a place where I was thinking long and hard about whether $45 for a local half marathon was a responsible use of funds.)

Q: Talk to me about material goods. What do I get out of this besides bragging rights, the intrinsic satisfaction of doing something hard, blah blah blah. That $300's gotta get me *something* good, right?
A: OK, so. Big Sur is $180 right off the bat, so what do you get for your additional $120?

First things first: A sweet super-fragile ceramic Boston 2 Big Sur medal to go with your super-fragile ceramic Big Sur medal.

When they give it to you, they drape it over your back. This is on purpose, so it won't bang into your Big Sur medal & shatter them both. So, y'know. Be careful or you'll have to do it ALL OVER AGAIN!!

Second: A cool long sleeved tech training shirt.

You don't even have to actually *do* anything to get this; all you have to do is pay the money & they ship it right off in the mail to you. I actually really liked the color of this year's shirt & wore it all the time.

Third: An actually really nice, really well-made & high-quality jacket.

So I actually did not realize we got a jacket so DAMN, this was an even better deal than I was expecting

Q: OK fine, I'm in. How do I prepare?
A: My opinion is, set up your training plan as if you're targeting Boston, then add more hill work (both up and down). Both races are pretty rolling so that work will definitely benefit you across the board. Honestly I think people tend to neglect downhill practice training for both of these races so to me how to train for both Boston and Big Sur is less of a question than how to train thoroughly for any hilly race. I don't particularly think you need to, say, run more mileage or adjust the balance of different types of runs just because you're doing Big Sur. Train the way you would for either race, but add more hills, both up and down.

As far as what to do in between the two races, my coach's advice was to rest through the Saturday after Boston, then run three 3 mile runs alternating with rest the following week (ie, Monday, Wednesday, Friday or similar) & maybe 10 x 100m strides somewhere in there to get the legs moving fast again. I ended up not being able to do this because I injured a toe pretty badly at Boston and it really didn't heal until right before Big Sur, but I think it's good advice.

So that's my advice! I'm always happy to answer any other questions if you have them (to the extent that I can), so feel free to leave questions in the comments or tweet me here.