Some things I've been up to post-Boston/Big Sur:
Karate. I've been treating my class like my red headed step child these last few months & was starting to wonder if our students would even remember who I was. I still can't do any kicks properly but at least I can move around okay.
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.
Location:
This post is about the logistics/nuts & bolts of running the Big Sur Marathon; you can find my race report at this link. :)
Date: Late April (April 29, 2018 this year)
Price: I want to say that the 2018 race cost $175-180 this year. So, not cheap, but not out of line with other high-profile marathons. Boston 2 Big Sur was $300, so $120 more for your medal, jacket, post-race food & beer, & presumably the extra administrative costs.
Field size/deadlines/sellout factor: The marathon is capped at 4,500 & it's popular enough that registration for the stand-alone race is by lottery each year in July. In fact, I learned by reading the race program that it's actually a series of five lotteries:
This makes a lot of sense given what Road Bunner had told me before, that once you get in once, it seems like your odds of getting in again go way up. (Hence her getting in eight times.)
Boston 2 Big Sur registration happens after Boston Marathon registration closes (it opened on October 1 this year) & is first-come, first-served. If you've already gotten into Big Sur via the lottery and then register for Boston 2 Big Sur, your registration is converted & you're refunded your original registration fee.
Staging, Parking, etc.:
So, I can't really talk about the Monterey end of the race at all because we stayed down at Big Sur station. If you want to go that route instead of catching a bus from Monterey at 3:30am, here's how I did it.
I'm planning to write a separate post specifically about the Boston 2 Big Sur Challenge, but I figured I'd give Big Sur its due & write a proper race report just about that race first. :)
Friends, I must say that post-Boston marathon, I was in rough shape. If you've been playing along at home for a while now, you might recall that part of the reason my Boston training cycle sucked so badly was getting injured badly enough to miss a week of training on three separate occasions, not to mention all kinds of little yellow flags & micro injuries that made it difficult to ever really build up much fitness at a stretch.
I'm pretty sure I know most of the reasons for this (which maybe I'll write more about in a future post), but just suffice it to say that I knew going into that race that I was very, very far from top form and was lucky to even make it to the start. The upside of this is that I wasn't able to run hard enough to be sore after, but I definitely did have a number of body parts screaming at me to DAMMIT WILL YOU PLEASE JUST STOP WITH THIS NONSENSE ALREADY! In all honestly, if it wasn't Boston & I didn't have so many sunk costs already, I probably would have said "Eh, screw it" & stayed in bed.
This post is about the logistical issues involved in planning your Boston Marathon trip (at least, from the view of a first-timer from the opposite coast!). To read my Boston Marathon Race Report, click here.
Somehow it didn't occur to me until I was registered & in a training group that like any other race, Boston has "streakers" -- people who run the thing every year. It had kind of always struck me as a bucket list kind of thing, or at most an 'every-few-years-when-I'm-feeling-spendy' type of thing. But no; there were people in the Facebook group with 10, 15, 20, or more Boston Marathons under their belt, many of them even consecutive!
Of course, most of those people live within easy driving distance of Boston, where your participation costs are mostly the registration fee and a night or two of lodging. (And if you have friends or family in the area, perhaps not even lodging.) I know there are even West Coast folks or those from other far-flung areas of the country who still run Boston regularly, and I admire the commitment, but WOW, that's a significant logistical & financial commitment.
When I first signed up, I had a lot of logistical questions--when to travel, where to stay, food options, the expo, transportation issues, etc. While there was a lot of information out there on the internet, it wasn't always easy to find answers to specific questions I was wondering about. So I figured I'd do a post on my experience & hopefully add just a little more info to the pile & maybe someone out there will get a question of theirs answered just a little bit sooner.
Howdy friends!
The Gravity's Rainbow book club is gearing up. When I asked around I was shocked to find that so many people were interested in joining in!
What is Gravity's Rainbow, you ask?
Traversing a wide range of knowledge, Gravity's Rainbow transgresses boundaries between high and low culture, between literary propriety and profanity, and between science and speculative metaphysics. It shared the 1974 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction with A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Although selected by the Pulitzer Prize jury on fiction for the 1974 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the Pulitzer Advisory Board was offended by its content, some of which was described as "'unreadable,' 'turgid,' 'overwritten' and in parts 'obscene'". No Pulitzer Prize was awarded for fiction that year. The novel was nominated for the 1973 Nebula Award for Best Novel.
TIME named Gravity's Rainbow one of its "All-Time 100 Greatest Novels", a list of the best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005, and it is considered by some critics to be one of the greatest American novels ever written.
In short, it will be awesome, & the idea is to read at a non-crazy pace as we all have busy lives & some of us have other reading we have to do as well.
Currently, we're organizing in an open Facebook group here. The goal is to start the week of May 30 to give everyone time to get a book. (I will probably keep it open until then, & then make it a private group.)
So yeah--If you're interested, come on over and say hi!
See also:
What It Was Like to Run the Boston Marathon in a Freezing Deluge (NY Times)
Harsh weather turns Boston Marathon into a punishing slog (Boston Globe)
Is today the worst weather in Boston Marathon history? (Boston.com)
In any case it's been *quite* the experience and I certainly have plenty to say about it! In fact, I have so much to say about different aspects of this race and the entire trip that it makes the most sense to break it up into a few different posts. Otherwise, I'm going to end up with a 40-page treatise that no one's ever going to read.
First things first, though: Race Report! I'll do logistics, etc. later; this one is going to be mostly just about my actual race experience & how it went, other than the lead-up you need to set the stage.
