It started on Facebook.
On May 6 this year, Reggae Marathoners Larry Savitch, Dan Cumming and I are competing in an event we call the Reggae Runners Half Marathon Challenge. While there's nothing particularly unique about that, there are a couple of things make this event different and interesting. First, we live in different cities across the US and Canada and are running in 3 different Half Marathons on the same day: Vancouver, Toronto and New Jersey! Second, there's a 20 year spread in our ages so competing head-to-head on time will be done with age-adjusted timing. More on that later.
So how did we get here. Permit me to take you back to early 2011.
In the early part of the year, Larry Savitch of LS Running fame started to comment regularly on the Reggae Marathon Facebook page. This led to him writing some guest blog posts for Reggae Marathon including a great one about Running with the Dirty Girls. Through it all we planned meeting up with his group, Easy Skankin in Negril for Reggae Marathon 2011. We met in person for the first time at the Pasta Party Friday night and while we didn't run together on Saturday, we connected after the race over coconuts and Red
Stripe and swapped the usual running stories. We had a blast.
Dan Cumming, also known as Reggae Marathon's 'Ask Dan' connected on Facebook as well. He did it with a picture. Yes, that's Dan and his wife st
anding in the surf on the beach in Negril way back in 1969. It brought back very pleasant memories for me of picnics on the beach with my family as a kid. I'm convinced we had our picnics along the same stretch of Negril beach. As a 'seasoned runner', Dan shared some good tips and insights for those of us who don't 'medal' at races. And that experience saved Dan's life at Reggae Marathon 2011 when he showed up over 2 hours late for the start of the race. Talk about making a silk purse out of a sow's ear: Running out of time at Reggae Marathon.
Larry, Dan and I have became true friends though our mutual love of running and Reggae Marathon even though we've only met once in person at last December's race.
But a funny thing happened once we got back to our respective homes and got over the inevitable post-Reggae Marathon let-down. While we kept up our online friendship on Facebook and through emails, we seemed itching to do something together before Reggae Marathon 2012. Through a number of exchanges we learned that on May 6 we were each running a half marathon in our respective cities. And competitors that we are…yes, boys will be boys…we decided to see who was the fastest.
As the seasoned runner with the most expertise in these matters, we've left it up to Dan to figure out this age-adjusted thing but our individual times will be 'adjusted' based on our ages on race day. That way we can each run our own race and have our finishing times converted into a 'age-adjusted' time that will show who's the fastest. Dan explains it in more detail in this blog post. It sure has put the spring into my step as I've had to ramp up my training this spring. And as you might expect, the trash talk has begun and will likely increase right up until race day, May 6.
I know other running events bring people together but running in Reggae Marathon seems to forge the strongest bonds. I know Larry, Dan and I feel that way. If you have a similar story I'd love to hear from you.
Until next time…
++++++
For more information check the Reggae Marathon Web Site. To register now for some great prizes, click here for the Reggae Marathon Registration Page.