Peering into the Future

As I tend to do, I've been thinking about races far into the future, that being 2013. After my last marathon I decided I was done with trying to run a marathon too early in the year, i.e. February. Through Twitter I learned of the Vermont City Marathon, which takes place in Burlington, Vermont at the end of May. This marathon sounded great so I decided that I'd run it in 2013. The only problem with it is that it's one week before the Covered Bridges Half Marathon, in Quechee, Vermont, which I've run for that last two years and will run again this year. This event was my first race since embracing running and it's that best course I've run to date, so I've had it in the back of my mind to run it every year. I've also run (and will run) this race for charity each time. Now I'm sure there are plenty of people that can run a half marathon a week after running a full, but as of yet, I'm not one of those people, nor do I ever expect to be. So, this year's CBHM will be my last, at least for awhile. The Vermont City Marathon will also like by my most challenging as all previous marathons I've run (and will run - Toronto Waterfront Marathon) have been (is) relatively flat, Burlington, Vermont is one hilly town.

My fall race for next year will likely be the Baystate Marathon that takes place in Lowell, Massachusetts in October. I think I learned about this race early last year and was surprised I never knew about it. I went to college at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell and I live less than an hour from the event and I'd never even heard of it before. When I went to Myrtle Beach to run my first marathon last year, I was shocked at how few of the locals seemed to know about this event, I think it had something like 17,000 runners (marathon and half marathon), I mean it was a lot of people jamming up the streets. The Baystate Marathon is considerably smaller than the Myrtle Beach Marathon, and since I wasn't a runner back in my school days, I guess I really shouldn't be surprised that I never knew about it. It still seems mind boggling that there's not more general knowledge of an event that stops traffic and has several hundred to several thousands of people in the road.

I'm definitely decided on running the Vermont City Marathon next year, and I'm fairly certain about Baystate. The thing about the Baystate Marathon is it's convenient, so there's relatively no coordination required, i.e. travel and hotel arrangements, so it's possible that if another fall event catches my eye between now and then, well, I can always run Baystate in 2014. I've added countdown timers for both events in the left column at the bottom.