A few years back, I decided I was going to run 52 marathons in a year. The goal was obviously to average one a week but that also meant I could double up on certain weekends and try and take a weekend off here and there. I was seeing a girl at the time up in Boston and this seemed like a great compromise wherein I would still be around on some weekends.
As part of it, and this was long before RunKevinRunDotCom was the official running website for me, I thought it’d be fun to document my trips along the way by sending a postcard from each town I ran through. I sent one to my Mom, to the girl in Beantown, usually one to my brother, and then inconsistently to a few folks when the spirit moved me (and I had an extra post card stamp). I don’t know if Mom still has astack of those cards; I’ll have to ask her over the holidays and if they’re readily located maybe I’ll scan them up as a flashback to the glories of off-line correspondence.
But in the meantime, I discovered a treasure trove of unused post cards from a few races. I would typically try and find one that captured the essence of the place I was running, aiming for a “Greetings from X!” where X marked the spot of the race itself. But sometimes I went for more general states of play or perhaps the ugliest post card I could find at the local five and dime or tourist trap. I would usually buy several here and there and try and find the best to send out… but that meant I’d wind upnow and again with spares.
Here’s one from Idaho.
I don’t know if it was inspired by the Helicoprion discovery of 2011 (I want to say my post card project dates from 2013 but it may have been 2012…). Still, it’s just weird to think about sharks in Idaho. I half expect Ian Ziering and Tara Reid to be on this card.
Whether more of these will pop up as the days pass by is anybody’s guess. But given my running stories at the moment are all of the “I’m injured and depressed and being awful to everybody around me” variety, well, the abandoned post card project seems like a better use fo internet bandwidth, no?
Oh and as an aside — that year I failed. Got hurt and dropped out at marathon 51 before the race even started. It was in Connecticut and a snow and ice storm blizzard thing had made travel treacherous. I made it to the start but wasn’t sure I’d be able to get back to Boston if I tried running the thing… especially as my ankle hurt like the Dickens and I wasn’t sure I *could* finish the damn race.
Speaking of Dickens… have I mentioned Dickens World from my UK days? Not really running related per se but peripherally for sure. One of the reasons I became obsessed with running was it provided a stress relief and break from that job in the Kent Countryside… and one of the last things I did whilst working there was to make a trip out to this indoor Charles Dickens theme park. Here’s one of the post cards I picked up before exiting through their gift shop.
