How is this young running season doing?

Greetings from an extremely chilly, not to say wintry New York on Easter Day 2007. But despite the below freezing temperatures, there seems to be some "stirring" in runners world. Actually, there is much more than "stirring" going on in Europe, where Clem already ran his first marathon of the season last Sunday, April 1st. He finished the Connemara marathon in Ireland and he reported that it was probably the most beautiful course he had ever run. The marathoners were dropped off in the middle of nowhere and apparantly there was no sign of human presence for the 1st half of the race. The first 8 miles he described as pretty flat, but afterwards the course consisted of rolling hills. He finished in 3:36:45 (45 seconds slower than his goal time, I wish I could aim it that precisely). He was the 76th finisher out of 387 marathonfinishers and the 2nd Belgian entrant (out of 16). All these results make it clear that he really is the Supercoach.
So what is happening on the home front. Well, after some initial posturing by a couple of SLG'ers and their plans to run the New Jersey marathon, it seems that they have come down to earth and that everybody is now running the New Jersey Half Marathon on Sunday April April 29th. For the sake of full disclosure, it is only fair to say that Philippe downgraded from the full to the half marathon because of an injury. Hopefully, he will have recovered enough by that time so he can actually run the half. Erik seemed to have realized the importance of hosting a good party afterward and that, together with some knee pain, has made his choice to run the half easy.
So, it seems the following SLG'ers will be at the start in 3 weeks :
1) Erik, the host
2) Philippe , all the way from Chicago
3) Stefan, who has spent the last 3 weeks in Germany (and some of that time in
London for work). He has realized that a combination of home cooked food,German
beers, and hanging out with friends and family is not the best training regimen
for a half marathon.
4) Mark, who has realized that this bunch of runners is always getting more
competitive. So to get an edge in his training, he sent his wife Helena and his
young sons Erik and Hugo off to Sweden so he could focus exclusively on running
for three weeks
5)Gil. The King of SLG. Although the "official" defense of the crown only happens
in the full marathon distance, the psychological pressure will be on him!!!
6)Lief, also known as I, as in "I almost cried yesterday when I did an 11 mile
training run with Mark and Gil, who cheerily ran away from me after these 11
miles to add on a few more"> No, I don't need to know how much more you ended up
running.

Anyway, speaking of half marathons. Remember last year's New York City Half Marathon, the first half marathon in the city that wasn't run exclusively in Central Park, but was run partly in the park and then went down 7th avenue, through Times Square, and then down along the West Side Highway to end in Battery Park. Apparently, it was limited to 10000 entrants and was sold out in 1 DAY. So this year, there is a lottery to get in. Ughh!!! If you are interested in running this fine race, make sure to sign up by May 16th. When I signed up a few days ago, the only way you could get a guaranteed entry was through a tour operator (and pay 2 nights in a hotel) or by running for charity. It seems that either the website was not correct, or the NYRRC has come to its senses because all of a sudden, today, the other way you can qualify is by having finished a full or half marathon in a certain time between January 1st, 2006 and May 1st, 2007. Not that it makes a big diffrence. The only SLG'er to qualify under the guidelines is Gil (of course). I miss the cut off by 2min45 seconds in my age category or by 6 months. This will probably be the only time in my life that I wish I would be 50 six months sooner than my actual birthday. Or, we can all train very hard for the next 3 weeks and try to qualify in the NJ half, 2 days before the qualifying deadline. Anyway, if you want any shot at running this race at all, you need to enter by May 16th. So go to the NYRRC website, click on the New York half marathon held on August 5th and you will get all the info there.

Which brings us to the marathon SLG will be running in 2007. Although it looked for a while as though we would have a strong field to run the Twin City marathon, when I polled members earlier this year it became clear that more people were interested in running NYC again. So, for those of you with guaranteed entry, DO NOT forget to apply by May 1st. For those of you who do not have guaranteed entry, you must apply fot the lottery by June 1st if you are a US resident,you must apply by May 1st if you are not a US resident. For complete rules and regulations, please go to the official website at www.ingnycmarathon.com

And lastly, in this already too long posting, are some thoughts about next year's SLG marathon. In the afterglow of the wonderful weekend in Chicago last year, there were all kinds of crazy ideas about which marathon to run next. Twin Cities came out as a front runner for a while, Philippe suggested the inaugural Eugene, Oregon marathon (on April 29th of this year), Anchorage(June 21st) was whispered, Rome was a favorite with some and often time voices went up to run one of the "BIG 5" : BERLIN!!!!
Although it became obvious for planning reasons that 2007 would be too early to get it organized for SLG, there are some strong indicators that people are very interested in running this one. So here is my idea (not quite the motto yet but just to plant a little seed in everybody's head) : "SLG DOES BERLIN 2008 ,NOT BEJING" (it being the year of the summer olympics next year for those of you who cannot quite figure out where the Bejing part comes from. I think it would be fun.It also may seem way too early to plan this, but remember that we had our hotel rooms for Chicago reserved by the end of February, for an October marathon. So give it some thought. Obviously, the subject of next year's marathon will surface again later on in the blog.

And to close, just a few tidbits about the members;
After waiting for almost 4 years, Anne Zschommler, Stefan's wife, finally obtained her green card and was able to travel outside of the US again. They will be coming back from Germany after a vacation of 3 weeks. Congratulations to Anne.
Grant Beggs and David Garcia have relocated from Minneapolis to the Los Angeles area. A big loss of course for the Minnesota chapter but hopefully the start of a new SLG chapter in California.!!!