From the Editor’s Desk Brent Manley The best time to make friends is before you need them.
Friendly strangers
barring some unforeseen problems. It took me a long time to complete the 50-states goal, but considering that I had a full-time job throughout the adventure, I think I did okay. It helped that I didn’t have to cope with injuries I might have sustained had I been focusing on a finish-time goal. I logged state number 50 in the fall of 2014 in the Maui Marathon in Hawaii – 18 years after deciding to go for the 50 states. I survived really bad conditions that day – a Tuesday – notably a record high temperature and a hilly course. It was a long, hard trek over the 1,310 miles – the mileage for 50 marathons – but I enjoyed every bit of it, mostly because of the people I met. In my experience, runners are special people, especially those who undertake daunting challenges. I’m thinking of people like Brian Williams, who has written about his incredible adventures for this publication several times. It’s amazing to think that Brian can finish a 100-mile run and still have the energy to write about it. Few runners, of course, go for the gusto the way Brian does. I would love to know his stamina secret. What I’m getting at here is that it’s great to be around serious runners, especially marathon runners. In most of my marathons, I have managed to catch up with or be caught by runners going at a pace similar to mine. That gives us the chance to talk and share stories. I remember running the Blue Angel Marathon in Pensacola FL for the second time and meeting a man going at my pace. At that point, my mind was on a trip I was taking about a week or two later to Newport RI for a “double.” I was running a marathon in Rhode Island on a Saturday and another in Connecticut the following day. The man I was running with was 72 years old, and somehow the topic
— Ethel Barrymore
When I started running in 1984, I had no idea what I was doing, but it didn’t matter. I was enjoying it. When I learned some things I needed to know, I enjoyed it more. When I decided in 1996 to run a marathon, my goal was to see if I could do it. I followed a training plan I found in a Jeff Galloway book. The regimen was designed for runners whose only goal was finishing. On a cold, rainy day, I made it to the finish line of the First Tennessee Marathon and was pleased that the training had paid off. In 1997, my wife pointed out that the University of Memphis was offering a course on marathon running, so I signed up. I thought I probably would learn some things I needed to know. I was right. The course was taught by Mark Higginbotham, and from my perspective, it was a big success. It went so well that I was able to record an okay time in the 1997 Chicago Marathon before entering the First Tennessee Marathon that year. I did much better in my third marathon than I had done in the two previous marathons, taking 13 minutes off my time in my first 26.2-mile effort. I was enjoying running even more, especially when some of the runners who had taken the Higginbotham course started running together regularly. It wasn’t long before we started talking about the idea of running a marathon in every state. That appealed to me, so I gave it a try for pretty much the same reason I had to run my first – I wanted to see if I could do it. I didn’t expect to run any fast marathons (my PR is 4:27), but I thought I had a chance to get to the finish line in each of the states,
I was enjoying running even more ...
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