Imminent Catastrophe
"Able to function despite imminent catastrophe"
"To obtain the air that angels breathe you must come to Tahoe"--Mark Twain
"The most common question from potential entrants is 'I do not know if I can do this' to which I usually answer, 'that's the whole point'.--Paul Charteris, Tarawera Ultramarathon RD.
√ Javelina Jundred Jalloween 2015
Cruel Jewel 50 mile May 2016
Western States 100 June 2016
Good Bad & The Monkey
I'm running somewhere tomorrow. It's going to be beautiful. I can't wait.
Poor baby
It seems the Prez has rescinded the proposal to change the criteria but it's still a good discussion, so here's my dribble:
Well, I wasn't aware that there was a problem but I can certainly agree with the need to QA which races will count. However, some of the proposed changes are very troubling and would invalidate some nice small races.
Certification--why? Some very good races are not certified, it's a added hassle that a RD might not want to deal with. Hatfield/McCoy and Flying Monkey come to mind.
Marathonguide?--No. The Maniac Calendar is fine (better than Marathonguide IMO), no reason to get a possibly biased third party involved (same goes for USATF certification).
Fat Ass--why? Our local one (I didn't run it) had 65 finishers, food, medals, and was free for GUTS members (does that count as an entry fee?). I love these types of events and would hate to see them disallowed. If interested you can read a nice RR here:
http://seedadrunrundadrun.blogspot.com/2009/01/atlanta-fa-50k-2009.html
There's no way you can say that's not a "real" race.
Minimum number of runners? Maybe, but 25 seems high. My WA race, the late, great Dog Days Marathon organized by Maniac Cartwheels, for the benefit of the Whatcom County Humane Society, would be disallowed as it had 17 finishers, but was certainly more than a training run. How about 10? That would probably eliminate the "training runs" without impacting legitimate small races. BTW it wasn't certified either.
I know there was some discussion about counting Gary Allen's New Years' Day Boston run, but that was mostly TIC.
Treadmill runs should not count. That's just wrong.
I do feel that one criterion needs to be loosened: What counts as a different state/province in the USA and Canada should count in other countries as well. Traveling across Brazil or India certainly involves more travel than Seattle to Portland. This seems kind of North American-biased for a truly international club. Recife to Sao Paulo: 1300 miles. Delhi to Mumbai: 1400 miles.
MOY--This isn't on my radar so I really don't care.
Looks like they rescinded. I responded, against MG and certification. The others are fine. The dude in Boone with the race a month seems to have taken offense and quit MM.
He not only quit, but he posted stuff in his blog that was sorta over-the-top. Anyway, if he wants back in, he'll be re-activated.
Even if "something" had made it from the list, I'm 99.99% sure that certification and marathonguide would not have been part of the final.
As for MoY, I found some of the responses out there to be, well, interesting. Especially those by a certain someone. Anyway, I came in 2nd in 2007. Wooooo. I'm for abolishing this award, but I think that of our 2100+ members, 2000+ don't care either way.
That's an interesting point here, btw. Whether the number is 5/3, 25/20, or 15/10 (a popular suggestion), I really think that a huge portion of our membership really wouldn't care and it doesn't affect them. More than MoY, of course, but not a whole lot more. People don't like change, especially restrictive change. I thought 25/20 was a teensy bit too high, but I didn't think it was a Death Blow or anything.
Apparently it doesn't, as it was all rescinded.
It's just running.
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San Francisco - 7/29/12
Warrior Dash Ohio II - 8/26/12
Chicago - 10/7/12
I can see their point that it seems a little crazy how fast the numbers have grown, and there are some who are doing whatever they can to rack up stars (treadmill runs? oh please...). I do think a lot of "glorified training runs" have been called "marathons" when they shouldn't have been. But requiring courses to be certified is just not right. The Equinox is not a certified course, but I challenge anyone to say it's not a 'real' marathon. Glad to see the original proposal has been rescinded, but I agree that some standards should be tightened up.
(has someone really counted a treadmill run??)
Marathon Junkie ran a treadmill marathon in his 52/52 year. But he ran it fast.
For those living outside the PNW, it is hard to rack up loads of marathons unless you have lots of time and money for travel. Of course, my solution was to create another full-fledged (although uncertified) marathon in my town.