When Jenn Pellegrino starts the Marine Corps Marathon, her mind isn’t going to be on whether she can finish — she’s already done 24, three in the last month.
She also won’t be focusing on time. In fact, she’s making it a point not to rush through the race.
To pin a label on George Banker, you’d have to get him to slow down first.
He’s a runner, an organizer, a historian, a photographer, a speaker, a joker, a mentor, a problem solver, and whatever else anyone needs him to be.
It was time, and Kelly Swain knew it.
“I was always working up to a marathon,” she said just a month before toeing the line at the Marine Corps Marathon.
Through the throngs of spectators lining the Marine Corps Marathon course, Marine Maj. Anthony Garofano will have his ears open. Underneath the canopy of cheers, he’ll listen for an unmistakable sound.
“At certain points, she’ll be out there and, if she’s crying, she’ll be easy to hear,” Garofano said of his newborn daughter, Helen.
He could have cashed in at any number of marathons.
Instead, Carl Rundell chased a victory at the Marine Corps Marathon for four years, one that would have been lucrative only if wealth was measured in glory, honor and satisfaction from personal achievement.
Dr. Breanna Gawrys, a captain in the United States Air Force, will conquer the 2014 marathon on much more training and sleep than she did during the 2013 Marine Corps Marathon.
“I was working a lot more — like 70-80 hours per week — so I didn’t have a whole lot of time to get the training in so this year is going to be a lot better,” she said.
Tall, sinewy, spectacled and pretty darn fast, Jonathan Ferguson has a direct gaze, matter of fact delivery, and an impressive running resume, but he shrugs off the suggestion that he’s intense. A former Division I swimmer at the University of Maryland who transitioned to running after college, Jonathan may have a “take it easy” button, but he doesn’t seem to have located it yet.
As a swimmer, he focused on freestyle and butterfly, but he’d swim every event. His coaches liked him in distance but he pushed to take over the shorter races. As a runner, his favorite distance is the 5k. A marathon was an absolute no, never. Like most reasonable people, it seemed like too much.
Jon Deitchman was 16 when he fell to the floor in the fourth quarter of his high school basketball game. He was having a heart attack.
Working out the logistics for a 50-state marathon goal is almost just as difficult as completing 50 marathons. The list begins to add up quickly: race registration fees, cost for travel and accommodations, maneuvering time off of work, and the list goes on.
Race series have sprung up to give traveling runners a chance to knock out several states in one trip, often with races five days in a row. One such company, Altis Endurance Sports, based in Annapolis, brought that approach to the Potomac River, with five back-to-back trail marathons, in Meyersdale, Pa.; Keyser, W.V.; Frostburg, Md.; Annandale, Va. and Washington, D.C.
In 2013, runners from the D.C. region traveled more than 37,000 miles to finish marathons as near as Baltimore and as far as Honolulu, and that’s before we count trips to marathons on other continents. This region may play host to the venerable Marine Corps Marathon and the fresh-faced Rock ‘n’ Roll USA Marathon among more than a dozen others, but it’s safe to say that runners here have shoes, will travel.
What’s not to love about a destination race? You can choose a course that plays to your strengths, take a 26.2-mile tour of another city, or visit friends and family. Sure, you might struggle with jet lag, toss and turn all night in an unfamiliar bed, or realize that you left one of your shoes back in Bethesda. But you’re also about to share an experience with hundreds or thousands of fellow marathoners who know all the highs and lows of a training cycle and who want you to succeed only slightly less than they want to beat you across the finish line.