Marathon season comes twice a year, in the spring and the fall, and we are now finishing up with the 2018 fall season, exciting for me because I added two states to my total (I now have a marathon in 15 states), and for fans of Costa Rica, a Tica (Jenny Méndez) won the Marine Corps Marathon!
Jenny Méndez wins The People’s Marathon
Photo from US Marine Corps. via http://www.ticotimes.net
First, a bit about Jenny Méndez. She is 38 years old, born in Columbia, but has lived in Costa Rica for the last 19 years and raised her family there, and is a naturalized citizen. Most importantly, she only started running within the past 10 years!
Her finishing time was stunning at 2:40:20, more than 6 minutes faster than the 2nd place finisher, and her personal best by 5 minutes! This is not the first time she has won Marine Corps Marathon, also winning in 2015 with a slightly slower time of 2:45:56.
Yes, most elite runners are drawn to the Chicago Marathon and New York City Marathon in the fall with their big award payouts for winners, so Marine Corps will not attract the fastest marathoners, but to put Jenny’s finishing time into perspective, she would have finished 20th in the New York City marathon and 21st in the Chicago marathon, ahead of many of the elite athletes.
Marine Corps Marathon is no small race either, so winning is quite an accomplishment, with almost 10,000 woman finishers. It is known as the People’s Marathon because there is no prize money and no incentive for professionals to run, and is the largest marathon with no prize money attached to it.
Her goal is to qualify for the 2020 Olympic games, which requires a slight improvement in her finishing time, but she is definitely moving in the right trajectory, and she has a good shot of getting it done if she can continue to run strong over the next 18 months.
As she has come to running later in her life than most elites, this quote from her is one we can all learn from: “If you want to do it, you can. It’s never too late to start.”
Completing Maine and Charlotte Marathons
As for myself, my more modest goal is to run a marathon in all 50 states, and this season I managed to add 2 states (3 this year), to get me up to a total of 15. I’m 30% done!
Since I am currently 47 years old, my goal is to add 3 states per year and finish by the time I turn 60.
I ran Maine Marathon at the end of September, and was a bit unhappy with my time and my race execution. That race comes very early in the fall season, and my training simply was not great in the summer with the hot weather and humidity in New York City.
Since I already had a couple of long runs, (and one of 26.2 miles!), I felt better prepared if I could fit in another race in the fall. Charlotte Marathon fit perfectly. It was 5 weeks after Maine, allowing time for another long training run and a 3-week taper.
Charlotte Marathon was on a Saturday, and I was able to drive down on Friday and drive home on Sunday. I was also able to register kind of last minute, a week before the race, which is an advantage of the smaller marathons. Also helpful was that you can pay for race morning pick-up, since the expo was on Friday and I knew I wouldn’t make it in town by the time it closed down at 9pm.
I had a much better run in Charlotte. My legs were better equipped to run the full distance, and I was smart about adding walk breaks every 2 miles for the first 16 miles, and a bit more frequently after that. With incorporating the walk breaks, I never felt like I hit the wall and had a really enjoyable time all the way to the end. The city and local police did a great job of staging the race and making it safe on the streets for all participants. The weather was also outstanding in the 50s.
My finishing time in Charlotte of 5:10:55 (slightly faster than double Jenny’s marathon time!) is still slower than I’d like it to be for the marathon distance, but the reality is that didn’t put all the right training in, and so my result was probably correct, given my level of training. There is still lots of room for improvement, and I look forward to focusing on shorter races over the next few months to increase my speed, before I start ramping up to marathon distance again in 2019 as I look to tackle another 3 states.
We are Scott and Caroline, 50-somethings who spent the first 20+ years of our adult lives in New York City, working traditional careers and raising 2 kids. We left full-time work in our mid-40’s for location-independent, part-time consulting projects and real estate investing, in order to create a more flexible and travel-centric lifestyle. 
Financial independence and early retirement is not something we originally focused on, but over time realized it was possible. Our free report, 
