When Jenn Pellegrino starts the Marine Corps Marathon, her mind isn’t going to be on whether she can finish — she’s already done 24, three in the last month.
She also won’t be focusing on time. In fact, she’s making it a point not to rush through the race.
“It’s just such a special race,” she said. “You want to soak it up. I’m just going to run with some friends and have a good time.”
The Arlingtonian will be celebrating her 30th birthday, which is coming a few days after the race.
“I felt like there’s no better way to celebrate than to do what I love,” she said.
And she certainly loves running. Those 24 marathon finishes all came in the last three years, since running Marine Corps in 2011 because she was new to D.C. and “that’s what people do.”
Never mind that she was also signed up for Philadelphia, three weeks later.
“That was what started my training strategy,” she said. “If I keep running marathons, I don’t have to retrain myself to run them the next time. It sticks with me.”
In April, she did her first two-day double — the Garmin Marathon in Olathe, Kan. And the New Jersey Marathon in Long Branch. The first went well. The second…
“I wanted to get through a few miles and see how I felt,” she said. “It got worse and worse.”
She’s joined the Marathon Maniacs running confederacy and dates a follow frequent marathoner, Chuck Engle.
“I love that no matter where you go, in a huge race with thousands of people, you have this community,” she said of the Maniacs. “There are days where I’ll be talking to another Maniac during the week and by the end of the conversation I’m buying a plane ticket and registering for a race that weekend.”
That wasn’t always her.
“When I was younger, I wasn’t athletic at all,” she said. “It started later, after college, and I did the normal progression — 5k, 10k, half marathon.”
Her mom was the runner in the family, with young Jenn tagging along on her bike. But Susan Pellegrino never ran a marathon. Until last year. The two ran Marine Corps together. Mom still talks about the race.
“She called me the other day and she ‘it’s almost the one year anniversary of our marathon,’” Jenn Pellegrino said. “She would go for 15-miles runs and then hop on the bike, so I knew she could do it.”
To pin a label on George Banker, you’d have to get him to slow down first.
He’s a runner, an organizer, a historian, a photographer, a speaker, a joker, a mentor, a problem solver, and whatever else anyone needs him to be.
But as Oct. 26 approaches, Banker is first and foremost a marathoner. The 64-year-old will run his 30th Marine Corps Marathon, and his hundredth marathon, overall.
“Is it a passion? Yes, it is,” he said. “If you want something bad enough, you will do whatever it takes to get it done.”
You’ve seen him: tall, a lean runner’s build, short hair, notepad in hand and camera around his neck.
He grew up on the Quantico Marine Corps, the son of two Marines and the stepson of another. He went on to serve 20 years as a tech sergeant in the U.S. Air Force, eight in active duty from 1969 to 1977, which included service in Vietnam. While spending 12 years in the Air National Guard based in Washington, D.C., he studied accounting at George Washington University, began working for IBM. He worked at IBM for 25 years, while raising children Ronald, Yvette and Dre with his wife, Bernadette. They’ve been married for 43 years.
Banker’s military upbringing and career shaped his outlook. “There is just a bond that the military has that is very difficult to duplicate in civilian life,” he said.
His name is synonymous with the area’s military-sponsored races. His job as operations manager for the Army Ten-Miler “pays the bills,” but he also serves as the MCM historian and in an unofficial capacity on the board of many other local D.C. races, including the Navy-Air Force Half Marathon, the George Washington Parkway Classic and the Lawyers Have Heart 10k.
At other races, he works as an announcer and provides general support and troubleshooting to race directors.
Martha Merz, an elite masters runner and Navy spouse who has lived in the D.C. area on an off for the past 25 years, has known George since she began racing here after college. “He is the professional behind the scenes at so many races, getting things done and ensuring that race organizers understand runners and all the intricate details that go into a quality event,” she said.
Writing race recaps for the Rock Creek Running Club in 1984 gave him his start in running journalism and he was hooked when he saw his byline in Runner’s Gazette. For the next decade, Banker covered about 60 races per year, sometimes running in them, too. He followed the lead of Jim Hage and Steve Nearman, then developed his own style, becoming a race reporter for the masses.
“I would talk to anyone and everyone – front, middle, and back of the pack,” he said. “Every race has a soul. But it takes the right person to write about it.”
Documenting MCM’s history, from its debut back in 1976, was one of his passions.
Those Runner’s Gazettes, along with seemingly every other running artifact he has collected, are neatly filed in boxes that basically insulate the basement of his home in Fort Washington, Md.
“I’m an organized pack rat,” he said. “When I die, there’s going to be a U-Haul in the funeral procession, behind the hearse.”
Those records helped Banker assemble The Marine Corps Marathon: A Running Tradition, published in 2008.
“This book was a labor of love, an ego trip,” he said. “I wanted my name on the front cover and my picture on the back. I don’t track sales; I don’t go buy a truckload of books and park out by the Metro.”
But writing the book was important to him, for the simple reason that he is the only one with as much knowledge on the history of the “people’s marathon.”
“He is the people,” said MCM race director Rick Nealis. “I can’t think of another individual in the D.C. area who does what he does for the sport of running. And from a historian’s standpoint, he’s been invaluable.”
Nealis appreciates that Banker has been able to cross “party lines” by being a uniting force among race directors, race organizations and sponsors… even different branches of the military. “He is the definition of ‘joint,’ or purple, as we call it [in the military],” Nealis said.
His ATM duties include the role of community outreach director. He also sees himself as an advocate for runners. “I’m looking out for that runner, because no one else is going to,” he said. “I may be bumping heads with the race director on some of my decisions, but frankly speaking, that’s my job.”
He’s not shy about getting an elite runner into a race to help boost the quality of the fields. “I look at this as a way to validate everything these elite runners have been doing,” he said. “And I’m going to bring in some talent to race with them.”
But Banker also welcomes talent to races for other reasons: the great stories that emerge. He seeks to tell not just the running story, but the personal side, too. He has learned that writing about what makes runners tick, and how they balance the running, the personal, and the family side of things, is what people want to read – not just race results.
Masters ace and Potomac River Running owner Ray Pugsley, who won the masters title at the 2013 ATM, said in September that Banker was urging him to defend his title, despite recent back surgery. Pugsley had recovered, but had not quite fully regained his fitness.
“He’s relentless,” Pugsley said.
Pugsley has known Banker for 20 years. He remembers seeing George at the finish line of every race with a smile on his face, hoping to interview the finishers.
“He knew our names, he knew about us, about races we had run, about who we were,” he said. “And in turn, we started to get to know George — not just as a reporter, but as a friend.”
Throughout his many dedicated years of service to the sport, Banker has managed to keep up his own racing. Running well before dawn has always been routine, given his schedule.
His fastest marathon is a 3:04:37, run in Houston in 1988. Nowadays, Banker is happy just to finish, injury-free.
He has targeted Marine Corps for number 100 for some time, but ice on the George Washington Birthday Marathon course, which forced its cancellation in February, meant he had to improvise and run the Elkton Trail Marathon in Maryland to catch up and stay on pace. It did not go well.
“It was one of those races where I had to tell myself to stop looking at my watch,” he said. “I have some unfinished business there.”
In addition to running his hundredth marathon at MCM, he also plans to run his seventh JFK 50 Mile on November 22. He wants the sweatshirt given to runners who have finished 10 JFKs.
Banker has been “the heart and soul of military-related running in the region for decades,” said Race Director Mike Spinnler.
Banker has long been advised by Joe Lugiano of Cary, N.C. Banker thinks of Lugiano as more than a coach, but someone who embodies what running means to him.
“He has been my coach back to IBM days and I have known him since I have been running,” Banker said. “We all have that person who knows your body and what you can do. He trains [me] by using my confidence in my abilities.”
In his own coaching, Banker takes a demanding yet realistic approach.
“I will get inside your head; I want you to make a commitment. Take a look at your schedule. How much time do you have to devote? That’s how much time you give. You need to get out of it what you want.”
Local runner Elyse Braner met Banker several years ago. “He took me under his wing and quickly became of my most important mentors and role models,” she said. “Many others can say the same of George. His commitment to volunteerism and the community is nearly unequaled. On top of all of this, he finds the time to train for marathons and ultra-marathons. I only hope that one day I can have even a fraction of the impact on the community that George has had.”
Chief Running Officer of Runner’s World Bart Yasso first met Banker at a convention nearly three decades ago.
He described Banker as a “dear friend,” and as someone who does a “bundle of everything for the sport.” Yasso was particularly impressed, though, by Banker’s efforts to promote diversity in running.
“He had so much insight on the future of the sport … and he’s really had an impact in that way,” he said.
It was time, and Kelly Swain knew it.
“I was always working up to a marathon,” she said just a month before toeing the line at the Marine Corps Marathon.
The 29-year-old Burke native has been running since high school, but wanted to wait for the right moment to commit to 26.2 miles. She started running while at Lake Braddock, encouraged by her older sister’s achievements, but quickly became successful in her own right. That sister, accomplished local runner Erin Taylor, recalls “some middle school race, or high school, [Kelly] either won the mile or got second. I was like, ‘People think I’m fast? She’s gonna be way faster.”
Swain went on to run at the University of Virginia, but injuries and the pressures of collegiate running kept her from the “normal college experience” she wanted, the kind where your peers aren’t working like professional runners to maintain their scholarships. She declared herself retired.
“I just needed a break and didn’t think I really liked running any more,” she said.
She’s not alone.
“A lot of these runners come out of college programs burnt out,” said George Buckheit, Swain’s coach with Capital Area Runners. “They just feel like running isn’t fun, and I think one of the strengths of what we put together at Capital Area Runners is we’ve got a group that is very supportive.” This has been a selling point for Swain’s return; both sisters praise Buckheit and their teammates for the motivational atmosphere that sets them up for their success.
“The Ultimate Progression”
“When I came back to running three years ago, I promised myself I would not let it consume my entire life,” Swain said.
Instead of cutthroat competition, she made the choice to set time goals and encourage runners who might pass her.
“I think when I took the focus off of competing with other runners and placed it on my own ability, I started loving running once again,” she said.
Still, to her, the marathon was “the ultimate progression” in a runner’s career and her unspoken goal was to finish her first in under three hours. To get there, she spent two years rebuilding her base with CAR and the last year racing the Army Ten-Miler, the Richmond Half Marathon, and most recently, the Navy-Air Force Half Marathon. Her times show little hint of having recently come out of retirement. In fact, she won the Marine Corps 17.75k in March and placed fifth at the Navy-Air Force Half-Marathon. But she had to rebuild her confidence alongside her mileage before she considered going farther.
“I didn’t want to just do a marathon to do it,” she said. “I wanted to do a marathon to know that I was going to run well and that I was well prepared.” Doing well, for her, meant being thoroughly prepared to break three hours. “I guess this is the year that I thought I was ready to do that,” she said, with characteristic humility. Because runners love a challenge, she also scheduled her wedding to to fiancee, Brendan Mahoney, for Nov. 1, 2014, just six days after her marathon.
With any luck, the post-race soreness will wear off before it’s time to dance.
“I never make any bold predictions on a race, especially a marathon,” Buckheit said of her upcoming race. “It’s so unpredictable. But she’s running great. This is as well as she’s been running since she’s been with us.”
Swain is also running her highest mileage ever, and without injury, which Buckheit attributes to better recovery practices.
“She’s ready,” Taylor said. “She knows how hard a first marathon can be, especially if you go out too fast like I tend to do and then you’re pretty much crawling in. She’ll run better than I did my first.”
Taylor’s pride in her sister shines through every praising word she said. “That week is going to be amazing for her,” she gushed.
Race Day
On marathon morning, Swain plans to heed the advice of her coach to start slow and finish fast. She attributes her success at the Navy-Air Force race to staying slow through the first 5k, per Buckheit’s advice. “I never believed him at first until I actually started to do it in races,” she said.
Buckheit and Taylor shared their advice for Swain, the thing they’d like to repeat in her ear for 26.2 miles.
Taylor said to have fun. “At the end of the day, there’s gonna be some part of the race I would think [will] hurt worse than anything that’s ever hurt before, and just to remember you’re doing this because it’s fun.”
And Buckheit reiterated the need to be patient. In the first 10k, he said, “If you don’t feel like you’re running too slow, you’re running too fast. […] Wait until everyone else has made their early race mistakes and starts crashing, and that’s when you pick your spot to start moving your way through the field.”
Most of all, they share the unequivocal opinion that she is ready. She has trained hard and run well throughout her training. All that remains is to race.
“We’re rooting for her,” her sister said.
This article originally appeared in the November/December 2014 RunWashington.
Through the throngs of spectators lining the Marine Corps Marathon course, Marine Maj. Anthony Garofano will have his ears open. Underneath the canopy of cheers, he’ll listen for an unmistakable sound.
“At certain points, she’ll be out there and, if she’s crying, she’ll be easy to hear,” Garofano said of his newborn daughter, Helen.
While training for his first marathon, Garofano fit in runs around a demanding schedule as an active duty judge advocate general for the Marine Corps, his commitment to organize a running club for Capitol Hill staffers and preparing to be a new dad.
In spite of all that, everything went pretty smoothly, thanks to his understanding wife, Christine, and co-workers.
“My office has been incredibly supportive the whole time and there’s only one run that I went on with my cell phone in my hand just in case I needed to stop early,” he said. “Otherwise it’s been very smooth. My runs are early enough that Chris doesn’t even know I’m going.”
Garofano was commissioned as a Marine Corps officer in 2004 and began serving as an active-duty service member in 2008. Through his job, Garofano ended up in charge of the Capitol Hill Running Club this year. During training season for the Marine Corps Marathon, the Marine Corps liaison office organizes the club, setting up a training plan for the race, water stops and support for the weekly long runs. Since he was coordinating training for a group of 20 to 30 Hill staffers, he figured this would be a good year to tackle the marathon himself.
“It was sort of in the back of my head — I don’t want to, but I (also do) want to run a marathon — so taking on this club was the opportunity,” he said.
The group meets Tuesday and Thursday mornings, with a long run on Saturdays.
“That doesn’t interfere with work schedule, but it ruins your Friday night a little bit,” he said. “(But) when you’re 32 and you have a baby, there’s not much Friday night left to ruin.”
Luckily, his wife understands the demands of both the club and marathon training.
“I’m really lucky to have a wife who’s so understanding about the commitment to the running and the club and who’s healthy enough to not have an issue,” he said. “This could be a lot more difficult without people being supportive.”
In addition to his time working as a fellow for Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), whose district includes Marine base Camp Pendleton, Garofano has also served as a military prosecutor and a battalion judge advocate who deployed with the 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion to southern Helmand Province, Afghanistan in 2010. While overseas, he helped the troops handle legal matters, like rules of engagement or dealing with detainees. Now, he works in the Marine Corps House liaison office, educating and informing members of Congress about the Marine Corps.
He’s had some training interruptions —missing his 18.5-mile long run the day his wife went into labor in late August, and a week to adjust to Helen’s sleeping schedule. He had to miss a few runs when traveling where it was unsafe to run, but wasn’t worried about it affecting his overall training. The weeks he’s had to miss long runs, he said he’s felt just as strong going farther the next week.
“If I missed several weeks in a row, then I’d be concerned, but missing one or two long runs doesn’t fill me with terror,” he said. “Maybe that’s ignorance.”
His travels have given him a few unforgettable runs all around the world. One of his favorites was during a trip to Guam, where he got to run along the beach. And another run in Hanoi, Vietnam, which was so humid that his watch face fogged up as soon as he stepped out of his hotel.
“It was about 6:30 in the morning; it was like the entire city was outside exercising, whether it be Tai Chi or playing badminton, or there was a muscle beach set up, with guys doing bench press and sit ups,” he said. “It was really cool to see so many people outside exercising at the same time, it was a neat community spirit thing.”
Garofano has spent years running, but is tackling long distances for the first time. He was a sprinter at Middlebury College in Vermont. Since then, he’s mostly lifted weights, gone on multi-day hikes and run just enough to pass the annual physical fitness test for the Marines.
“Every year the Marine Corps makes you run three miles to make sure you’re still in shape; that was the standard for me prior to this year,” he said.
As a result, every week’s long run is a new milestone as the farthest he’s ever run in his life.
“A lot of it has been mental,” he said. “I’ve gotten to the point if I can do 17.5 miles, I figure as long as I can keep it up I can suffer through 26.”Although Garofano has managed to fit almost everything into his weeks, one thing that has suffered has been spending time with friends, though he said they’re all understanding of the time spent running and with his new daughter.
“My friends and Chris’ friends may think we’ve abandoned them, but I think we’ve got a pretty good excuse,” he said. “The combination of running and baby has certainly reduced the amount of going out to dinner, but everyone understands.”
This article originally appeared in the November/December 2014 RunWashington.
He could have cashed in at any number of marathons.
Instead, Carl Rundell chased a victory at the Marine Corps Marathon for four years, one that would have been lucrative only if wealth was measured in glory, honor and satisfaction from personal achievement.
It just so happens those rewards were right up his alley.
“Not running for prize money didn’t bother me,” he said, almost 10 years after his first attempt. He still lives in Birmingham, Mich. “If you’re chasing the money, you’re never going to be happy. If you’re doing it for your true passion, that’s what you’ll remember.”
Fifth place finishes in 2004 and 2007 bookended two runner-ups, one by just eight seconds in 2005. Rundell remembers his father, Reid, joking with him while he was still catching his breath after crossing the finish line, “You couldn’t have run eight seconds faster?”
The lack of prize money at Marine Corps never dissuaded Rundell and may have emboldened him when he looked for racing opportunities while training and competing with the Hansons-Brooks Distance Project. His training partners were often focused on domestic marathon majors — New York, Chicago, Boston — but he had his sights set on the People’s Marathon.
“There’s certainly a place for prize money in road racing; it certainly helps professional runners support themselves and makes races competitive and interesting. But that didn’t figure into my plans,” he said. “It just seemed like a great race to run.”
He loves the race for its focus on “everyday runners.”
“There are people who you’d never think, if you knew them casually, that they’d be marathon runners, but those people show up on the starting line and you realize how much the masses mean to this sport,” he said. “Marine Corps does a good job of showing everybody a great experience.”
He never minded, at least in retrospect, waiting in long lines for the bathrooms before running in the low 2:20s.
Reid Rundell spent two years living in Arlington working on federal public school reform policy in the early 1990s. Carl, 10 years away from hitting his stride as a marathoner, would visit his father and hear about the race.
“I saw the course, heard about it from people who lived in Washington and knew the place it held in the community,” he said. “When I started developing as a competitive marathoner, I knew I wanted to race here.”
On top of his own experiences during the races, he appreciated the opportunities for Marine Corps spectators.
“My parents could come and watch the race and see me a few times,” he said. “A lot of races I feel bad that they’ve come and they’re going to be bored for a few hours until I’m done. They’ll see me once and that’s it. You can get around the Marine Corps course a lot easier than others.”
His first try, in 2004, was hindered by heat, which broke him down after 23 miles, which he spent mostly in the lead. In 2005, he challenged eventual champion Ruben Garcia with a 5:10 mile in the middle of the race, and along the way ran his best time for the course — 2:22:26. In 2006, he again lost to Garcia, that time by more than a minute.
In 2007, he skipped the U.S. Olympic Trials to make another attempt.
“Everybody kept telling me that it’s once in a lifetime to run the trials,” Rundell told the Washington Post that year. “I was like, ‘Yeah, well, to win the Marine Corps Marathon would be once in a lifetime.’ . . . I’m not giving up.”
After a fifth place finish in 2007, when he again led early before fading to fifth, he dialed back his running to focus time on developing his relationship with the woman who is now his wife, managing his business and volunteering.
Many bridesmaids complain that they will never want to wear their dress again after the wedding. Not Carl. Despite falling short, he relishes the experience. He helps coach the cross country team at Seaholm High School in Birmingham, Mich., his alma mater, and he has found that when regaling the 53 kids on the team with his racing experiences, they’re most spellbound by stories from Marine Corps.
“Those are the stories that stick with me, running up to Iwo Jima and still thinking I had a chance to win,” he said. “I never want to tell them about some time I ran and won a thousand bucks, and they don’t really want to hear it. That’s not why they’re getting into the sport at that age, anyway.
“The kids who go on to run a marathon someday, I have a feeling half are going to want to make that happen at Marine Corps.”
Dr. Breanna Gawrys, a captain in the United States Air Force, will conquer the 2014 marathon on much more training and sleep than she did during the 2013 Marine Corps Marathon.
“I was working a lot more — like 70-80 hours per week — so I didn’t have a whole lot of time to get the training in so this year is going to be a lot better,” she said.
Gawrys was referring to the long hours she spent as during her internship. But even with a time-demanding career last year, she still ran the race in 3:36:05.
“You’ve got to find the time to have the time,” she said.
Now, a resident in family medicine at Fort Belvoir Community Hospital, she’s getting a little more sleep and said she’s had a few more hours to train.
“The energy of the spectators and to have the marines there is very inspiring,” Gawrys said, adding that running next to wounded warriors also motivates her. “I keep coming back because it’s one of my favorite races.”
Gawrys was only 19 years old when she completed her first marathon, Marine Corps, and earned a spot in the Boston Marathon. She was second in her age group and came through the finish line in 3:30:04. Gawrys’ first marathon experience was still fresh in her head.
“Some guy spit on my leg during the bridge. He wasn’t intending to but it sort of ended up there.”
But getting spit on didn’t deter Gawrys in the least. Eight marathons later, she’ll be aiming for a 3:25 to 3:30 finishing time in this year’s race.
“I try to maintain a good mental attitude throughout the race so I’ve just trying to get myself in that mindset,” Gawyrs said of her training. “I tried to incorporate Haines Point because that’s usually the point where I find myself unhappy during the race so I’ve been trying to think positives thoughts during it.”
Gawrys channeled her enthusiasm early on in college when she created the Duke Roadrunners.
“We would just sign up for races together and go run them,” Gawrys said.
Even though she caught the marathon bug early on, she plans on sticking with the sport long term.
“I want to stay active with the sport and not get injured and not over do it so when I’m older I can keep going back to Boston — that’s really the goal,” she said.
Tall, sinewy, spectacled and pretty darn fast, Jonathan Ferguson has a direct gaze, matter of fact delivery, and an impressive running resume, but he shrugs off the suggestion that he’s intense. A former Division I swimmer at the University of Maryland who transitioned to running after college, Jonathan may have a “take it easy” button, but he doesn’t seem to have located it yet.
As a swimmer, he focused on freestyle and butterfly, but he’d swim every event. His coaches liked him in distance but he pushed to take over the shorter races. As a runner, his favorite distance is the 5k. A marathon was an absolute no, never. Like most reasonable people, it seemed like too much.
“I guess I was just really intimidated to it and didn’t think my body could hold up to long distance training,” he said.
But then, back in 2011, a co-worker who wasn’t going to be able to run Marine Corps offered him her bib. Already running high mileage and competing frequently in shorter races, he decided to give it a shot. That was 2011, the last time he ran the Marine Corps Marathon. He finished in 3:00:17, and blames trying to do the math in his head on the fly for not breaking the three hour mark.
In 2012 he completed the Baltimore Marathon in, again, seconds over three hours. Then, last year, he was training for Marine Corps last year when a stress fracture sidelined him. Not having had to deal with an injury like that before, he was disappointed and anxious to return to training. After taking time off, getting back to his routine to the point when he finally felt strong and pain free was a major milestone. Coming into this year’s race, he feels more confident than ever, and is looking forward to the race.
“My training has been pretty much ideal I’m really pretty excited. I want to get out there and see what I can do,” he said.
Jonathan’s goal for this year’s Marine Corps Marathon is a 2:50 – hopefully putting him well under the three hour mark, with a cushion to qualify for Boston in 2016. Jonathan is shooting for Boston in 2016, and one of the reasons he wants a cushion is that he doesn’t want to run a marathon next year. He and his wife are expecting their first child in February, which will surely change his training. How will he train for the next one? He isn’t sure.
“I know have to be a little more flexible, I just don’t know I’ll to work it out yet,” he said.
He’ll probably figure out a way – when he was training for his first marathon as a graduate student in Pittsburgh while working full time and going to school full time, he found himself fitting in runs when all his other obligations had been met – frequently starting training runs as late as midnight.
A relatively low-tech runner in the era where you can link your sneakers, watch, and heart rate monitor to your phone, Jonathan runs with a watch that tells you the time of day. He doesn’t train with music or any other distraction, thinking it would make him slow down during training. He uses the combination of that and his own internal clock and exertion meter to pace himself.
His Marine Corps strategy is to hold back until he gets through five mile in Georgetown, and then, basically, go all out from there. Jonathan know the theory behind negative splits, but it doesn’t suit his racing personality. He says that he feels most comfortable when he’s aggressive from the beginning. He thinks this harkens back to his swimming days.
“I never wanted to end up feeling at the end of the race like I had too much left.” He said, though he doesn’t always feel like it’s the best strategy: “I’m not crazy about it, I try to hold a reasonable pace. I’ve gotten into some trouble in the past with the Pittsburgh Half Marathon. It was my first fairly big race and I went out way too fast and the second half was really painful.”
His training plan is pretty straightforward. There aren’t a lot of complex algorithms or speed work to distance ratios. He basically runs, a lot, in and around his Greenbelt neighborhood. He averages 65 miles per week, with a tempo run and four twenty-milers. His long runs often consist of repeat loops around his neighborhood.
Since completing his Master’s in Public Policy (on top of a law degree), Jonathan has returned to the D.C. Metro area, which he loves, but he does miss the competition and camaraderie of his old running club in Pittsburgh, the Pharaoh Hounds. Though he’s met up with some of the area running groups, he hasn’t yet found a local club that fits in with his commute and schedule.
After managing to train for a marathon while working and going to school full time, coming back from a difficult injury with a long recovery, and managing the demands of a rigorous training schedule with work, commute, and family, there’s no doubt that Jonathan Ferguson has the tenacity required to meet his goal for this year’s Marine Corps Marathon. After that? He really wants to do the Cherry Blossom Ten Miler in under an hour. He’ll be focusing on shorter races as he takes on his new challenge as “Dad.”
Jon Deitchman was 16 when he fell to the floor in the fourth quarter of his high school basketball game. He was having a heart attack.
“I wasn’t feeling good in the fourth quarter, got dizzy, passed out and woke up in the intensive care unit in a Fairfax hospital,” Deitchman, now 33, recalled. “It was terrible. To make it worse, just three weeks before that my mother passed away from a heart attack.”
The physical impact of the heart attack paired with the emotional stress of his mother’s death kept Deitchman from his main form of stress relief: sports. For eight years, he put dreams of resuming athletics behind him.
Now, 17 years later, Deitchman will be at the starting line of the Marine Corps Marathon to run in honor of his mother.
“I am running for her,” he said. “She wouldn’t give up.”
Heart defects are more common in boys than in girls, according to Brenner Children’s Hospital. “And basketball seems to be the riskiest sport, we think because of the quick sprints,” Dr. Wesley Covitz said on the hospital’s website.
Although they are rare, heart issues in athletes can be deadly.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, for athletes under 35, most sudden cardiac deaths occur in males while playing team sports. It’s rare – about one in 100,000 to one in 300,000 athletes – but shocking.
In athletes 35 years and older, sudden cardiac death occurs more often while running or jogging – about one in 50,000 marathon runners die annually.
It was a long road for Deitchman to get to the start line of his first marathon, the Baltimore Marathon in 2008.
The high school basketball game was to be Deitchman’s first game back since his mother had died. “It meant a lot for me to be playing in it,” he said. “I figured sports would help get my mind off what was happening at home.”
Instead what happened on the court changed his life. Within a few months, doctors regulated Deitchman’s heart with medication and a few years later after two surgeries, they gave him a clean bill of health. But nothing the doctors said changed the way Deitchman was feeling.
“I didn’t believe when the doctors said I was safe to be as active as I wanted so I still didn’t run,” he said. “I stopped playing basketball and running. I stopped doing everything for a long time because I was scared to move – scared to do anything at all. I was scared to even just walk through campus at George Mason.”
Deitchman said he couldn’t pinpoint exactly what was holding him back, but one day in his senior year of college, things changed.
“I looked at myself in the mirror. I decided ‘I am not going to live like this. I am going to let myself go out and run,’” Deitchman said. “I know that my mom would have been enraged if I sat at home and did nothing.”
“I laced up my shoes and went. I felt free. Good again. You do your greatest thinking when you’re running. I was able to get over what I’d been through over 8 years in a matter of three miles. I was addicted.”
The Marine Corps will be Deitchman’s fourth marathon, but he said it’s the most meaningful.
“For me this race means the most,” he said. “My father was in the Army, so supporting the military as a whole is important to me. It truly is the people’s marathon. Seeing Marines out there running in their full gear is so inspirational.”
Using Hal Higdon’s “Novice 2 marathon” training plan, Deitchman, a Fairfax resident, runs four or five times a week and is shooting for a sub-four hour race. But to him, the most important thing is getting out there.
“When I run I think about a lot of the kids who are in the hospital with heart conditions. I take those kids on my back because I was there,” Deitchman said. “If I had listened to all of the people in my life who said ‘don’t run’ or ‘you can’t do that’ I never would have gotten to where I am now. If you believe in yourself you can do it.”
Working out the logistics for a 50-state marathon goal is almost just as difficult as completing 50 marathons. The list begins to add up quickly: race registration fees, cost for travel and accommodations, maneuvering time off of work, and the list goes on.
Race series have sprung up to give traveling runners a chance to knock out several states in one trip, often with races five days in a row. One such company, Altis Endurance Sports, based in Annapolis, brought that approach to the Potomac River, with five back-to-back trail marathons, in Meyersdale, Pa.; Keyser, W.V.; Frostburg, Md.; Annandale, Va. and Washington, D.C.
Thursday’s race, in Annandale’s Wakefield Park, brought out several of these so called “50-staters,” to run Fairfax’s Cross County Trail.
“Right now I’m at 30 states,” said Heather Gallacher who participated in the entire series so she could knock off five marathons in just a week. “And by Friday I’ll complete my 109th marathon.”
The Pennsylvania native said she had no idea D.C. was such a “trail running town”
“If you had never done any of these trails before it’s a great way to discover them,” she said. “I was blown away. That’s been one of the coolest things about this particular series—discovering the unknown. It was one of my most memorable runs and one I’ll never forget.”
Race directors Mike Samuelson and Frank Dembia head the endurance company and said last week’s series was hopefully one of several more events to come.
“I’ve been a long-time Rails-to-Trails Conservancy member,” Samuelson said. He earned fame in the ultrarunning community after completing a 3,302-mile run across the country in 80 consecutive days. “I’ve always loved rail trails and towpaths. They’re just so fantastic to run.”
According to Samuelson, Dembia had the idea to direct races more than 20 years ago. The two met in the Navy in California and completed several marathons and ultra marathons together. Once Samuelson finished his trans-America run, Dembia confronted him again with the idea to create the endurance company.
Their event on Thursday attracted a wide range of participants from all kinds of backgrounds, including 11-year-old Nikolas Toocheck of Chester County, Pa. Toocheck, who had the day off of school and came to Annadale with his father Dan, completed his seventh marathon on seven continents earlier this month and raised more than $40,000 for charity, providing coats to children through “Operation Warm.”
Toocheck snuck the marathon in between his wrestling and baseball practice.
“If you train really hard and put your heart to something you can accomplish it,” the 11-year old said.
The endurance series also included a half marathon. Former Washington, D.C.-area resident Julie Crespi won the women’s half for Thursday’s event. Crespi came down for the series from Rhode Island.
“I was going to come visit a friend in the area and saw a Thursday race,” Crespi said. “And then I saw there was an entire series. So I figured I could drive down and hit them all along the way.”
The cross country course was changed just moments prior to the race due to flooding of the trail system in Wakefield Park. The area received several inches of rain the night before and the sky continued to pour during the morning hours of the race as well. But even with a course change, runners still dealt with slick terrain and even waded through a deep gully that went past most runners’ knees.
“What I love is having something to stick in my mind for one of these,” said Marvin Solberg, who had just completed his seventh marathon of the year and has a long-term goal to eventually complete all 50 states. “The start was classic. We all went astray. We all went past the gully and went the wrong way.”
Runners completed more than 10 loops along the course to reach 26.2 miles, which meant they had to wade through the same gully several times.
But Solberg said he didn’t hear a single complaint from any of the runners.
“It’s part of the excitement of hanging out with people like this,” he said. “It’s very positive energy and everyone that was here just did it. Running marathons is all about overcoming adversity. So when little things like that arise, it’s just part of the fun.”
For 2015, race directors Samuelson and Dembia are planning a nine-state marathon series in Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Pennsylvania.
In 2013, runners from the D.C. region traveled more than 37,000 miles to finish marathons as near as Baltimore and as far as Honolulu, and that’s before we count trips to marathons on other continents. This region may play host to the venerable Marine Corps Marathon and the fresh-faced Rock ‘n’ Roll USA Marathon among more than a dozen others, but it’s safe to say that runners here have shoes, will travel.
What’s not to love about a destination race? You can choose a course that plays to your strengths, take a 26.2-mile tour of another city, or visit friends and family. Sure, you might struggle with jet lag, toss and turn all night in an unfamiliar bed, or realize that you left one of your shoes back in Bethesda. But you’re also about to share an experience with hundreds or thousands of fellow marathoners who know all the highs and lows of a training cycle and who want you to succeed only slightly less than they want to beat you across the finish line.
