First Travel Marathon

As you know, I've signed up for the San Francisco Marathon. On July 25, I will taste 26.2 glory once more. I'm still excited by the decision I made to sign up for it and with all the training it will require. Fun stuff!

This marathon will be different than my first one, mostly for one reason - it ain't nearby.

Now, we got a hotel room in Huntington Beach for the Surf City Marathon, so we had to travel to it I suppose. But that travel time is about 45 minutes on the freeway, not exactly a far-flung locale.

San Francisco isn't local. Sure, it's in the same state but California's the third-largest state in the country. Getting to San Francisco will be a chore.

We're planning this as an kid-free trip. Not that we wouldn't have fun with the girls but we figured we'd go as a childless couple, even though we aren't, to try and enjoy this weekend a little bit more than just for the race. I know it's going to be tough to sightsee but we hope to see some parts of the city at some point. Well, I'm actually going to see a lot of the city on that Sunday morning, but I'd like for Mrs. LB to be able to see some of it too.

We just booked our hotel. We got a sorta decent sorta close. Some of the hotels I was looking at were more than 200 a night and we got ours for under 150, and I don't think we were going to get any cheaper than that for somewhere within walking distance of the start/finish.

I'm actually excited at the prospects of this. While the weekend will be expensive, it could become something of a tradition. Every year, maybe I'll treat myself to a marathon in some far-off place. Who knows? San Francisco might be the closest summer marathon I run.

Now, in the summer months there aren't any marathons being held out here in SoCal. It's hot, so no chance of any races. I searched, and between the San Diego Marathon on June 6 and the Long Beach Marathon on Oct. 17, there was hardly any races at all, and I didn't find any marathons between that time. So if I want to run a summer marathon, it won't be local.

In contention with San Francisco this year was the Deseret News Marathon in Salt Lake City, which is held on July 24. I was intrigued with that one, and since Mrs. LB has lots of friends in Salt Lake City it would have been good to have taken the whole family and maybe spend some time in Salt Lake. I've only flown and driven through there, so I would have liked to have visited. But that will be the frontrunner for a summer marathon in 2011.

We'd also briefly talked about the Seattle Marathon on June 26 but there's a little soccer tournament going on from June 11-July 11, and I'm going to be occupied with that, so that never really had a chance. Would have been nice though.

So if San Francisco goes well, it might be good to start planning more marathons that require traveling. You get the best of both worlds that way.