The Chicago replacement

With my spot on the Chicago marathon in October being postponed to next year I was saved from having to put myself another marathon – voluntarily, even! But I then also realized that my training for the marathon would go to waste, and that bothered me. All that running for nothing?

Obviously a solution had to be found, and found it was! I looked through lists of current marathons in the immediate neighborhood and found a few that looked interesting, and after a few days I had found the one to go with.

5^th – 11^th of October

The winner of my search ended up being Leiden Marathon, located between Rotterdam and Amsterdam. I'm spending a bit extra time there than I usually do for a normal extended weekend as there are good train connections to Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht so I am hoping that I get some time to see at least some of those, too, while I'm there. The run is on the Sunday the 10^th so I'll have plenty of time to have a look around. It's apparently a small run, the last few years 7-800 people participated, and I suspect the number will likely be lower this year. 

Another run, another marathon, but with the location in mind, no matter how bad the weather is or how bad the run goes, I think I can be fairly sure that the course will be guaranteed flat the entire way. It'll be fun!

The Spanish connection

So as mentioned previously the Superhalfs have all been pushed to 2022. What I didn't mention, and what neither the runs or the Superhalfs have been good at communicating, is that while the Superhalfs did get established in 2020, due to the pandemic the runs wouldn't start counting towards the Superhalfs medal until 2022. It makes sense in the sense that it gives runners the opportunity to get all 5 runs in the first year if they are silly enough to want that (me included), otherwise I can't really see any reason for it.

I found out about this, completely randomly, less than 2 days after I had booked flights and hotel in Valencia as I was planning on running the half marathon there this year. I would be sad seeing those tickets go to waste, so I'll be going to Valencia to run the half marathon, despite it not counting towards the Superhalfs, and return again next year when it does. 

21^th – 25^th of October

Fly out to Valencia via Frankfurt and spend a few days in the city wandering around before running on the Sunday the 24^th and flying back home on the Monday. They've changed the route this year so the start and finish is at the University but the rest is fairly similar where the course takes the runners around the city center.

The pandemic and working from home the last 1½ years has resulted in a weight gain I'm not too happy about, but running the Copenhagen half on the 19^th of September I came to the conclusion that while I might be a bit more squishy I'm still able to run fairly satisfactory when in a large group and with pacers. So I think that things will go fairly well despite it all. 

Update on the Superhalfs

Just like with the Marathon Majors the Superhalfs have been affected by the current pandemic. What I had planned on running and completing in 2020 when the Superhalfs were introduced has now been postponed to 2022. So despite my annoyance to start this means that I still will be able to complete the Superhalfs series in the first year (completely ignoring you have 36 months from the first to the last run to get the Superhalfs medal). So as of now the schedule looks like the following:

Prague – April

Lisbon – May

Copenhagen – September

Cardiff – October

Valencia – October

Here's crossing my fingers that things will go smoothly going forward. Some of next year's dates have not been published yet so those are still pending. In any case, the fall looks like it'll be busy which will be a nice change of pace considering the recent lack of traveling. 

Update on the Abbott World Marathon Majors

For someone who enjoys travelling it has been some frustrating years to get through, and carefully laid plans got moved around, cancelled and postponed. With the pandemic seemingly reaching the end one could hope that the current planning might hold going forward.

I was supposed to run in Boston April last year, and after being postponed multiple times it seems like I now have a spot for the run next year. Similarly with Chicago, and with the US borders not opening until November this year it looks like I'll be running that next year. Also, due to cancellation of Tokyo a marathon and them being careful on the first post-pandemic (halving the capacity), my spot for Tokyo has been pushed back to 2026. So the schedule for the 4 remaining marathons (having already done Berlin and New York) looks something like this:

Boston – April 2022

Chicago – October 2022

London – April 2025

Tokyo – March 2026

It looks like, as things are currently, that this schedule should hold, but I have learnt not to rely on any vacation scheduling more than a couple of weeks in advance. Hopefully things settle down and I can look forward to joining some of the big runs in the world again, it'll feel great getting back out and running.