How I'm Not Preparing for the One City Marathon

 Disclaimer: I received entry to One City Marathon as part of being a BibRave Pro. Learn more about becoming a BibRave Pro (ambassador), and check out BibRave.com to review find and write race reviews!

Months ago when Bibrave asked which pros would want to run One City Marathon in Newport News, VA on March 13th, I was intrigued.  First because VA isn't too far from PA, it will be about a 5 hour drive but not too bad.  Two because it is only the second year for the event but their website looked great, full of fun and lots of info.  It looked like a well organized event.  But of course what really sealed the deal for me was when my #BRF Angie sent me a message saying she wanted to run it.  Angie and I live hundreds, maybe thousands of miles away (I'm really bad with geography) but we talk almost every day.  We are always saying best running friend online but she really has become one of my closest friends.  We talk about EVERYTHING not just running.  It's an amazing thing because we have only met in person one time ever last year at the Blue Ridge Marathon.  So once she said she was going, it was a done deal, I needed to go cause a raucous with Angie for the weekend down in VA.

Cannot wait to stir up trouble with this lady!!!

Other than my first ever couple of marathons, preparing for them has become a bit of an intense, stressful thing.  I once wrote a post about how my marathon had changed from the first couple years I ran them.  Once I started improving my time a lot, I just felt I had to go for the PR every, single race.  Then I started chasing the BQ and things got even more crazy.  Don't get me wrong, I love working hard and chasing those faster times but occasionally, I definitely started to feel a bit burnt out from it all.  So when the opportunity to run One City came up, even though I knew it would be in the middle of my training for C & O Canal 100, I was so happy.   Because completing the 100 is so important to me not to mention my legs will be in no shape to run fast given I just ran a 50 mile race and will not be tapering, there will be no temptation AT ALL for me to try to PR in this race.  And yes this makes me happy.  I will get to just go and have fun for the weekend without worrying about every little thing and how it might affect my performance.  Running 26.2 is never easy but we all know it can be way more hellish when you are trying to run as fast as you can.  I plan to enjoy everything the One City Marathon has to offer for the weekend and take selfies every mile with Angie.  Now that's a perfect race plan.

Look for the Bibrave Orange if you are at One City!

At this point, you are probably wondering what is so great about the One City Marathon?  Well, even though I haven't run it yet, I can tell you that there are many great things going on that weekend.  Not only is the race website a wealth of great info but they send participants emails with reminders, updates and just any info you need to know.  Here's a list of the events:

Friday night kickoff --family friendly activities and live music
Health and Wellness Expo--both Friday and Saturday
Family Fit and Fun Day -- Saturday 12-3
Saturday Night Pasta Dinner--Roger Brown as keynote speaker and an interactive panel discussion with a few elite athletes
Sunday--RACE DAY--Marathon, Marathon Relay, 8K and Nautical Mile--distances for everyone
One Celebration--most of the day Sunday-- Live music, activities for kids, food truck rally and post-race recovery areas

This is how you will recognize me at the finish ;-)

Wow that all sounds very impressive to me!  I've done some big city marathons with way less going on than this.  Some additional details: ALL runners receive one food truck ticket and TWO BEER TICKETS (music to my ears!).  You can see the shirts and medals for the various races below:

 

 
Also, there are 3 hotels that have partnered with the race.  They are all providing early breakfast starting at 4 am on race day, shuttles to/from the race AND late checkout at 2pm on Sunday.

IF I haven't given you enough reasons to run this race yet, check out the One City race site for more info and you can watch videos of the actual marathon course, spoiler, it's beautiful!

Hurry and register before the price increase tomorrow, March 1st.

I'm really looking forward to the most fun, relaxing 26.2 I've had in a long time, come join me!

The Finish Line!!  Fingers crossed it will not be snowy ;-)