Hip Redux
Or maybe planning races around vacations!
DH and I were talking this weekend - we want to go to California next year and the Hawai'i the year after. Of course, the first thing he did was rattle off all the races we would be able to do while in town!
If you plan for a race that's out of your home town, do you like to make a vacation out of it? Or just go to run and return home? And when on vacation, do you try to find a race while you're there?
It looks like we're shooting for the San Francisco marathon in July 2004 and then possibly Honolulu marathon Dec 2005! (he'll do the fulls, I'll do the half or spectate) And this year we'll be at Lake George for the half-IM (his race, I will spectate) but that'll just be a long weekend trip.
I made a vacation out of my 12 marathons. Sometimes it's 3 days, just a long weekend, sometimes it's 5 to 10 days. It depends on the destination. I try to arrive on Friday night, for a Sunday race. I love planning vacations around my races! California and Hawaii sound like dream destinations to me!
PRs: Boston Marathon, 3:27, April 15th 2013
Cornwall Half-Marathon, 1:35, April 27th 2013
18 marathons, 18 BQs since 2010
I made a vacation out of my trip to Israel for the Jerusalem Marathon.
California and Hawaii sound like dream destinations to me!
Hubby has a conference in HI that's typically the week before the Honolulu marathon, soooo I will be supportive and tag along. I'm a good wife like that. (**this supportive wife rule doesn't hold for the Cleveland marathon he has this month, he can go to that solo lol)
haha!
Ball of Fury
We like to make vacations out of ours as well. We have done Disney races 3 times as part of a vacation and plan to run the Shamrock HM in March as part of our adults only vacation for the year. The one mistake we did make last year was do run the race at the end of the vacation....I cannot recommend that!! Especially if you like to eat and drink on vacation, as we usually do.
PRs: 5K 22:59, 10K 46:54,HM: 1:51:15
We do a vacation around races if we travel far to them - which means that we never travel far for a race unless it's a place we want to visit.
Part of that comes from the fact that there are quite a few marathons around here that we could do a quick drive to if we wanted - Twin Cities and Grandma's being the big two, but then there are a plethora of other smaller races within a couple of hours - off the top of my head right now I can think of Lake Wobegon, Minneapolis, Women Rock (though I have zero desire to run this one, but that's beside the point), Mankato, Med-City, Madison, Eau Claire....lots and lots of marathons that we could drive to with little fanfare.
So, if I just want to run a marathon, I have options. If I'm going to drive a long way or fly, it's going to be somewhere good and I'm going to enjoy the location.
My wildly inconsistent PRs:
5k: 24:36 (10/20/12)
10k: 52:01 (4/28/12)
HM: 1:50:09 (10/27/12)
Marathon: 4:19:11 (10/2/2011)
Almost always, unless it is somewhere we can drive within a few hours then we often return the
same day or just make a weekend of it.
Since hubby runs marathons as well as that is a passion for both of us and our boys are no longer
living at home our vacations are planned with two things in mind...........is there a marathon
we can do and is it somewhere we would want to go regardless of the race? We probably wouldn't go
somewhere (haven't yet) just for a race, it has to have both factors.
In the last few years marathon race vacations have been planned around:
Boston Marathon, Ottawa, Portland Maine, Bermuda (for my 50th), Orlando and coming up in September
for hubby 50th is Ireland. I'm already thinking about what our trips will be for 2014.
I'm running either a half or full in New Brunswick in 3 months and making it a long weekend. 1 time up there I was able to find a 10k and was their first American to finish it which was cool.
I do long weekends in NH each September around a relay. Otherwise I am happy just to run on vacation and keep tracks of states I have run in.
RSX, hubby, myself and the RD Patrick are looking forward to seeing you.
YAYpril - B-Plus
I haven't run a destination race yet. I keep trying to plan vacations around races (half marathons in Myrtle Beach, for instance) but the time of year that the races are held aren't exactly "great weather" times, and my husband is a hard sell to plan a trip to Myrtle Beach in February. But of course, the time of year we'd normally go is when I wouldn't want to race, even if races were held then.
Beer-and-waffle Powered
So far all of my marathons have been "destinations" and I've worked some sightseeing into each race. It's been good so far.
In the words of my late-coach : Just hang in there, relax... and at the end of a race anyone you see.....just pass them
Having a non-running spouse, I can tell you if we planned a vacation & I told her I was going to run a marathon while we were there, you would not want to be around for the response. As it was, last time we went out of town for the weekend & I expressed concern with finding the time & route for a LR, she was in disbelief that I was even thinking about it.
So to this point, vacations & races remain separate. There are enough local options to keep me happy for a while, although I am pretty new at this & will have to see if I get bored by that after a while. And maybe if I can prove to her (and to myself) that I am able to run a marathon & not be crippled for days afterwards (the one data point so far), that will open up the discussion a bit.
Dave
You might need a time machine for that.
And yes, I try to find races wherever we travel and make a vacation around races far away from our home.
Slow and steady never wins anything.
Having a non-running spouse, I can tell you if we planned a vacation & I told her I was going to run a marathon while we were there, you would not want to be around for the response. As it was, last time we went out of town for the weekend & I expressed concern with finding the time & route for a LR, she was in disbelief that I was even thinking about it. So to this point, vacations & races remain separate. There are enough local options to keep me happy for a while, although I am pretty new at this & will have to see if I get bored by that after a while. And maybe if I can prove to her (and to myself) that I am able to run a marathon & not be crippled for days afterwards (the one data point so far), that will open up the discussion a bit.
This is exactly my problem, too. He doesn't run and while he doesn't mind if I run while we're on vacation, right now he doesn't understand why on earth I'd want to run a race.
Our favorite NJ shore town has a half marathon this year on our anniversary (September 29) so making it an anniversary trip might not be bad, but that's probably not the ideal way to spend our day together.