Run, Karla, Run!

Emmanuel Mutai won the 2011 London Marathon with a new course record. Photo by EStepnist/FLickr.

The ING New York City Marathon is the world’s biggest marathon. It’s no wonder the race attracts some of the world’s biggest names in running. Emmanuel Mutai, Martin Lel, and Jaouad Gharib will join defending champion Gebre Gebremariam and 2009 champion Meb Keflezighi in the race on November 6.

Kenya’s Lel, 33, won the ING New York City Marathon in 2003 and 2007, and will be returning to the race for the first time since that 2007 victory. He also won the Virgin London Marathon in 2003, 2007 and 2008, and placed fifth at the 2008 Olympics. After battling two years of injuries he came back with a second place finish in the 2011 Virgin London Marathon in April, losing to none other than Emmanuel Mutai. Read the rest of this entry →

Photo by Thomas R. Stegelmann/Flickr

With a record 140,000 applicants for 45,000 spots at the start, most runners who applied for the 2011 ING New York City Marathon lottery didn’t get in.

If you’re one of those runners, take heart. You can still nab one of those coveted spots by running for one of the race’s official charity partners.

Runners pledge to raise a required amount of money—usually $2,500 to $3,000—in exchange for a bib in the world’s largest marathon. Some charities also offer coaching, training programs and other perks for being one of their fundraisers. Read the rest of this entry →

Photo by Billy Alexander/SXC

You’ve got questions. The Running Nerd will find the answers.

Question:

I have a few friends who are not sure about whether or not they want to get involved in the races, but were wondering if they could just come out for some of the walk/runs and do it with the crowd without registering? Is that a possibility to potentially get them interested in signing up for the next one?

~Anonymous

Answer:

Well, running a race without registering for it is called running as a “bandit,” and the Running Nerd, along with race directors all over America, strongly discourages it. Why? Read the rest of this entry →

Photo by Christy Hourihan

The 2010 ING New York City Marathon is now another notch on my hydration belt. After months of agonizing, planning, plotting, scheming and dreaming, I ran the best race I could.

I sang. I ran. I conquered.

Sunday, Nov. 7 was that rare day of days when, Murphy’s law be darned, everything went right. Not only was it my fastest marathon to date, but it was also the most fun. I wasn’t just running; I was singing at the start of the wheelchair and professional women’s races. Read the rest of this entry →

Karla Bruning will sing "American the Beautiful" at the start of the 2010 ING New York City Marathon. Photos by Phil Hospod.

After four months of training, five races, four physical therapy appointments, one x-ray and one MRI, it’s finally here: the ING New York City Marathon. Tomorrow I’ll toe the starting line on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge with 45,000 other runners.

But I’m not only running; I’m singing too. New York Road Runners has asked me to kick off the wheelchair and professional women’s races with “America the Beautiful.”

It’s an honor for a singer to be asked to perform at any major sporting event like the New York City Marathon, but as a singer who also happens to be a marathon runner, it’s like having your cake and eating it too. Singing for athletes who are able to accomplish what most of us only dream is humbling and a privilege. I’m already anticipating getting shivers, and not from the cold. Read the rest of this entry →

If you’re a runner in New York City, there’s plenty for you to do this weekend, including a free party, professional runner appearances, free pasta and more:

FRIDAY NIGHT PARTY

What: Gotham to Golden Gate: The San Francisco Marathon™ and Crowdrise™ Partnership Launch Party.

Edward Norton and Robin Quivers, along with runners, athletes, fitness gurus, celebrities, philanthropists, sponsors and marathon fanatics will gather to promote “Worth the Hurt™,” a global campaign to ‘conquer the hurt’ for charitable causes. The San Francisco Marathon is daring New Yorkers to run on their turf and raise money for a good cause.

Join them for drinks, music and other fun. All attendees 21 or over are welcome. Please mention “The SF Marathon” when you arrive. Read the rest of this entry →

Edison Peña, center, ran every day while trapped in the mine. Photo by Hugo Infante/Government of Chile.

Edison Peña, the rescued Chilean miner known as “The Runner,” will run the ING New York City Marathon on Nov. 7, Universal Sports reports.

New York Road Runners, which organizes the race, invited Peña to New York as their special guest after president and CEO Mary Wittenberg heard about his extraordinary efforts to stay fit and sane while trapped with 32 other men in a gold and copper mine near Copiapo, Chile. Read the rest of this entry →

Runners tend to be goal-oriented people. Whatever the goal may be, we plot, we plan and we train to make it happen—running right, eating right, sleeping right, doing everything “right.” But what happens when something goes wrong?

I found out the hard way in the last two weeks of my training for the 2010 ING New York City Marathon on Nov. 7. Reassessing goals and shifting expectations are among the hardest things a runner can do, especially when the goal is in sight.

Take Ryan Hall. After a hot streak in 2007 and 2008—he broke the North American half-marathon record, won the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials and at the London Marathon logged the fastest time ever by an American-born runner—Hall was officially dubbed the next great American marathoner. In 2009, he placed third in the Boston Marathon and won the Philadelphia Distance Run.

Then he made a goal: to break the U.S. marathon record at the 2010 Chicago Marathon on Oct. 10. Read the rest of this entry →

I’ll be a guest on “The Marathon Show” on Tuesday Oct. 19 at 12 p.m. EST talking about the ING New York City Marathon:

“The NYC Marathon is a monster. We have three NYC 2010 marathoners on the show who have also run it in the past. They’ll talk about the excitement of the start, a personal story about NYC and the spectacular finish, plus the 5K, plus much more. Join Karla Bruning, Magda Cardoso and Kevin Horty as they talk about America’s biggest marathon.”

You can listen live or on demand at BlogTalkRadio or download it free on iTunes. Check it out!

Photo by Phil W. Shirley

12 weeks down, 4 to go.

The ancient Greeks gave us a lot: the Hippocratic oath, democracy, the Olympics, and, of course, marathons. Race organizers around the world are celebrating the 2500th anniversary of the battle of Marathon this year (never mind the fact that it should be 2011).

But the ancient Greeks also gave us something else: the journey to hell and back. Reading Greek mythology, it seems like people were always trekking to the underworld for one reason or another; Odysseus, Hercules and, most famously, Orpheus all made the trip.

The joke that the distance to hell and back is 26.2 miles is apt. And like Orpheus ascending from the underworld, there’s no looking back.

The road to the ING New York City Marathon on Nov. 7 hasn’t been much different, marked by highs, lows, good news and bad news. The agony and the ecstasy are part of the journey. And my last two weeks of training have been filled with agony and ecstasy. Read the rest of this entry →

Photo by fotologic/Flikr

10 weeks down, six to go.

Believe. It’s a loaded word. One that is used and abused in popular culture, in religion, in politics, in all the areas of life where what we want to be true may not always be, and what is true is not always pretty. As humans, we have a unique ability to delude ourselves. And yet, we continue to believe any number of things for any number of reasons, some of which are worth believing.

Running isn’t any different. Every runner has a different set of beliefs: that stretching is good or bad, that running with headphones is helpful or a hindrance, that tackling an ultramarathon is sane or insane, that we’ll actually be able to achieve our running goals.

I began to question my beliefs during my last week of training for the ING New York City Marathon on Nov. 7. Read the rest of this entry →

Photo by Christy Hourihan

Nine weeks down, seven to go.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Training for a marathon is like riding a roller coaster. After the high of scoring a personal record at the OASIS Montreal Half-Marathon, I was due for a little deflation. You can’t sit on top of the roller coaster forever. At some point, it’s going to roll down.

And roll down it did. The last two weeks of training for the ING New York City Marathon on Nov. 7 have been full of shenanigans that forced many a change of plans. In the process, I learned the power of saying yes and no. Read the rest of this entry →