Three Cheers for Carol

Eric getting a PR and age group win at Pensacola

Carol was born in Boston, grew up in New York, and lived her whole adult life in the Finger Lakes region. As a tribute to her, we're running the marathons in each of those places. While we're at it, we'd like to raise some money for ALS.

The races

The New York Marathon kicks it off on November 1, 2009. This is one of the world's most popular marathons, with 40,000 entrants. It's also one of the world's most popular fund raising events with participants helping to raise millions for various charities. Race report here!
Next is the Boston Marathon the following spring on April 19, 2010. This is the oldest annual marathon in the world and arguably the most prestigious.
Finally, the Wineglass Marathon on October 3, 2010 is a much more intimate affair making it the perfect venue to wrap up our efforts. We will have a reception for our donors and a presentation of the money raised to the ALS Association following the race.

Getting in

While the Wineglass Marathon is open to all, New York holds a lottery to trim down the roughly 100,000 applicants and Boston is by invitation only. To get into the two larger marathons, Eric ran the Illinois Marathon on April 11, 2009 in 3:09:24, thereby gaining an automatic spot in both events. Andrew Karandjeff will also be running Boston for the team.

Preparation

If you're interested in what goes into preparing for running a competitive marathon, you can check out Eric's training log here. The performance goal is to run at least one of the marathons under 3 hours (Eric's current best is 3:00:16 at Pensacola in 2007).

Want to be a part of it?

Here's what you can do:

Sponsor through the Upstate NY Chapter of ALSA. These are the folks who took care of of Carol when she was sick. They are wonderful and they do a lot with very little. If you'd like to help them out, you can contribute via this page. Please use the link provided here so we can keep track of how much we've raised via this effort.
Sponsor Carol's Team directly. Our primary goal with this effort is to raise money for ALSA. However, Carol's Team has expenses as well and we can always use help. See our sponsor's page for details.
Spread the word. Tell your friends what we're up to!
Join us. We'd love to see you at the Wineglass marathon reception. The more people we get, the more likely our story gets picked up in the media, the more people hear about what we're doing, the more... well, you get the idea.
Run with us. If you'd like to represent Carol's Team in any of the marathons, let us know and we'll get you hooked up. If a full marathon is more than you want to bite off, note that the Wineglass Marathon has a relay division where each of three runners covers about nine miles.