I said yesterday that there was going to be a one-day offer with Operation Jack Marathon registrations today, which is the case. But I have to give a quick little bit of history about the race first. Registration is only $45 for the half marathon and $55 for the marathon right now, plus I have somebody who wants to kick in donations on behalf of everybody registering today only. Details about that are at the bottom. If you’re interested, you should read this post first.
Back in 2010, when I ran 61 marathons to raise money and awareness for Train Autism in honor of my severely autistic son Jack, I had a serious problem late in the year. My last race, scheduled for December 26, fell through. There were some issues with the person who was going to put the race on for me and in early October of that year, I realized I had to put on a marathon myself.
Never mind the fact that I was working full time, taking care of my family and still traveling to run a marathon (or even two marathons) every weekend. I now had to put on a marathon, otherwise this whole “at least one marathon a week” thing would go by the wayside. It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to run 60 in 51 weeks and none of my donors would have wanted their money back, but I just had to put a race on. When you spend a year running yourself into the ground the way I did, nothing fazes you, and the only thing you’re interested in doing is taking the hard way out. Operation Jack Marathon, bring it on.
I made a mental list of things that needed to be done. Medals. Shirts. Food. Oh, volunteers. Those would help. And it would be good to have some runners. And probably a registration website. Oh, and I know — bibs! Safety pins! Oh but wait, I have a race coming up on Saturday and I need to book airline travel for three weeks out and also find a place to sleep on Friday night. And I have a blog to write. And 20 emails to reply to. And I have to pick up my son from soccer practice after work. That marathon planning thing wasn’t going to be easy. But like everything else with that crazy year, I took a leap of faith and went after it.
Oh yeah, and there was one other issue that was definitely going to be a challenge roughly 10 weeks out. I needed to find a location and get a permit and insurance and all that kind of fun stuff. I knew it would have to be on an open course, because getting roads blocked off was just not going to happen on my budget and with my timeframe. I looked at various spots near the beach in Orange County, but they crossed into too many different municipalities and there was no way I’d be able to overcome all the red tape and secure permits in time.
I looked into a spot in a city called Cerritos, where a friend of mine had run a 100K on a course that was 5K in each direction (she ran 10 laps of that!). That spot actually dealt with the county, and I was close to securing a permit. All I needed to make the race count was to advertise it for a month, have five starters and have three finishers. I was pretty sure I could get five people out there. Heck, I filled 20 percent of the quota myself! It would have been an incredibly boring, one-time thing, but technically, it would have counted.
Just before I was about to lock down that site, though, a friend of mine, Jake Rome, begged me to consider a spot near his home in Manhattan Beach. Run it along the beach and then along some creek that was nearby, he told me. He said it would be a great event, he’d work with the local community and bring runners. Jake had been a pretty strong Operation Jack supporter all year, and really, at that point, I didn’t care. I had so many other things to worry about. So, I said sure, we’d switch.
What. A. Blessing.
