The World Record Attempt: September 15, 2006

Because I don’t have enough to do, am frequently bored, and have tons of vacation time in my very senior corporate position (hint of sarcasm!), I thought it would be cool (or at the very least efficient) to combine traveling with marathoning…nothing gets a corporate junkie high like a hit of multi-tasking. Most of my friends and colleagues have spent their vacations this year in hotspots like Miami, Paris, and Vegas. I spent my first few vacation days running a few hours at a time in Cincinnati and Dallas, which should be considered hotspots for runners because they are warm and flat! Inspired by my free pig snout and oink-maker from the Flying Pigs Cincinnati Marathon (a really fun race by the way), I wanted to see more. I got the idea in my head (very late into a long run when I do all my best delirious thinking) to try to run a marathon in all 50 states. Lest you think the delirium has permanently set in- there is an actual club with real live members devoted to this. I’m more of a student of history than of math, but I figured there had to be a smaller multiple than 26.2 x 50. And that’s when it hit me like the wall…26.2 x 7.

After further research, I found out that yes there is a marathon on the continent of Antarctica (we’ll get to that later), so 26.2 miles on 7 continents is possible, and the mission also has a small, devoted following (and by following I mean cult). Not only did I realize that being a seven marathons on seven continents groupie is possible, but that I have a shot at becoming the youngest person in the world to potentially achieve this goal. A true lady never reveals her age…but I will reveal that if feels pretty awesome that I have the same hobbies as people twice my age. My other stereotypically geriatric hobbies include scrapbooking, quilting, and thanks to the marathons, probably arthritis research soon. Yes, my chic veneer of young professionalism is really just a cover for being a huge and unapologetic nerd. Perhaps it’s the maturity that comes with being a 40 something year old trapped in a 20 something year old body…but just running through a large block of ice, the tallest mountain in Africa, one of the most famous beaches in the world, Cinderella’s Castle and Tiananmen Square for a world record just weren’t enough…something was missing.