When I drew up the schedule for running a marathon in every state I hesitated when it came to Victoria. There were two obvious choices – Wangaratta, right at the beginning of the Australian running season, or Melbourne, closer to the end of the season. I couldn’t make up my mind. Wangaratta made sense in some respects because a lot can happen over the course of a year and leaving Victoria for last to run Melbourne, with only one month…
I was excited to organise my year of running 13 marathons in 13 different states and/or countries, and in choosing the Queensland marathon had elected Caboolture to avoid the large scale Gold Coast Airport Marathon. The risk was it was on only two weeks after the big week in Antarctica and Punta Arenas, but I was confident I could do it. I booked flights to Queensland for me and for my two daughters and we flew into Brisbane the day…
This entry should be called Punta Arenas Marathon Mark II as we had already run 28km in Mark I 25/1/16 before the race was cancelled when our flight window into Antarctica to run White Continent Marathon became available. Yes, we’d run 28km in Punta Arenas, and then 42.2km in Antarctica. I’d sort of hoped the race director would just let us finish the last 14km of the original attempt and call it even, however it was not to be! And…
I wasn’t sure whether I would finish 7 marathons on 7 continents as it meant I’d have to run a marathon in Antarctica. I’d sworn off snow and ice after Greenland because I found the extreme cold so hard to tolerate. I’d done some research into the three marathons available to run in Antarctica – one was booked out for the next three years; one was a three-week excursion involving travelling by ship to Antarctica; and one was a fly-in,…
I was very lucky to be able to run in La Rochelle. We had arranged to take our two daughters to Europe for a holiday at the end of 2015, and having already been to Namibia in February 2015 I felt a bit guilty putting any marathon focus into the family trip. I tentatively put the question to Craig about whether it would be OK to run a marathon while we were away, and he immediately encouraged me to enter!…
Finding a marathon to run on the African continent was quite time consuming. Craig and I had originally thought to run the Big Five marathon in South Africa however other commitments on the home front meant this wasn’t to be. I set about looking at the map of Africa, with another tab open to smarttraveller.gov.au – my go-to source of all things safety when traveling as my tolerance for risk is not very high! Once I had established which countries…
I’d been keen to run the Six Foot Track Marathon and had set out to qualify for it by running a marathon in under 4 hours 20 minutes the year before. With this qualifying time in hand I stood by my computer the morning the race entry opened and pounced, scoring myself an entry. The whole thing sold out in minutes! I did some long trail runs in the weeks leading up to the event, bearing in mind I was…
I had in mind to run the Asian continent marathon in a well-developed country where I didn’t have to worry about safety and whether to drink the water. Tokyo was the obvious choice and from the research I did it looked as though foreigners had a pretty good chance at being accepted despite it being a ballot entry. The feedback was the Japanese government was keen to have marathon tourism money coming into the country. The ballot entry was a…
After running in Rotorua and then in Greenland I had in mind to run the 6 foot track marathon. 6 foot track is an iconic trail event and one of those marathons where the entry opens and all spots are taken within five minutes. Not only that, runners had to qualify by running a road marathon in under 4:20. My PB for a marathon was well over five hours however I figured that I could cut a significant amount of…
I was flicking through one of the running magazines I had bought and out of it sprang the photo that started it all! The Polar Circle marathon in Greenland is probably the craziest thing Craig and I have ever done. Greenland! Honestly, you couldn’t get much further from Australia if you tried. We had been in snow only once each prior to arriving in Greenland and had absolutely no idea what gear we would need. We left Australia in mid-Spring…