First post of 2023

Jane and Family Update:

Happy 2023 everyone!  I hope you all had restful and healthy holidays.  Our family didn’t make it to Canada this holiday due to canceled flights from the battery of snowstorms in the Northeast and Midwest.  It was only the third time in over 25 years that we didn’t celebrate New Year’s Eve at the Lake of the Woods in Ontario!  (Once before was for my work schedule in 2005, the other for the COVID pandemic in 2020.)  We were very disappointed to miss seeing everyone at Echo Bay, but we did enjoy quiet time at home together.

Running Update:

Week of Jan 1:   18.1 miles          2:57:20

Week of Jan 8:   21.4 miles          3:29:42

Week of Jan 15:  22.1 miles         3:30:46

Week of Jan 22:  21.8 miles         3:28:00

We’ve got our 2023 races are set!  This is our 15th year fund raising for the Children’s Tumor Foundation, and I’m scheduled to run my 20th and 21st marathon.  How did that happen?

Our 2023 events:

·       New York City Half Marathon—Sunday, March 19

·       Cincinnati Flying Pig Marathon—Sunday, May 7

·       New Haven Road Race Half Marathon—Monday, September 4

·       Berlin Marathon—Sunday, September 24

·       Philadelphia Half Marathon—Saturday, November 18

I have some new races this year—I figure I have a limited number of marathons left in me, so I’d better branch out and sign up for the ones that I’ve always wanted to run. 

The FlyingPig Marathon in May is supposed to be one of the most fun marathons in the country.  (Yes, you can put “fun” and “marathon” in the same sentence.)  Think pig-themed everything—from pig mascots to running corrals renamed “pig pens”—and lots of bacon-related humor.  And 2023 is the 25th anniversary of its first running, so it promises to be even more over the top.

I first learned about the Flying Pig Marathon from my friend Janet.  Janet and I met ten years ago in 2013 when we were both running the Boston Marathon for the Children’s Tumor Foundation.  As you’ll recall, that was the year of the Boston Marathon Bombing.  We kept in close touch after that traumatic event, and we were both invited to return to Boston the next year and met up again then.  (You can read about our reunion here.)  Janet lives in northern Kentucky so has been encouraging me to come run the Flying Pig Marathon, which briefly crosses over the Ohio River into Kentucky, for years.  We’ll finally get to race together again!

Why is it called the “Flying Pig” Marathon?  Apparently, in the 1800s, hogs were a major source of revenue for Cincinnati, so much so that it was known as “Porkopolis”.  In 1988, for its bicentennial celebration, the city renovated its waterfront park with a design by artist Andrew Leicester.  To honor the city’s riverboat heritage, the entrance gate included four smokestacks, each with a winged pig on top, supposedly “reflecting the spirits of the pigs who gave their lives so the city could grow”, according to the artist.  The people of Cincinnati, initially with mixed opinions on the statues, have since embraced the Flying Pigs as a symbol of their city.

What better way to celebrate my 20th marathon?

The Berlin Marathon in September will be my first marathon abroad.  Berlin is one of the 6 “World Marathon Majors”, along with Boston, New York, Chicago, London, and Tokyo.  Elite runners, like Eliud Kipchoge, regularly break world records there.  I won’t be breaking any records, but I’ll be running the same race on the same course as those greats.

With my racing always comes fund-raising for the Children’s Tumor Foundation!  If you’d like to get a jump start on your donation for the year, visit our site here!

KRath4Jane.com

 

NF Update:

This year also marks 10 years of this blog!  It started as a condition for running the Boston Marathon in 2013 for CTF.  I never imagined I’d still be writing and recording ten years later.  Of course, as I’ve said before, with NF our work is Never Finished, so I’ll be advocating and fund-raising to end NF for as long as I am able <3