The Vancouver Sun (British Columbia)
August 13, 2005 Saturday
Final Edition
They hit the ground running: Destination marathoning is a great way
to see the world while staying in shape
Dianne Rinehart, Special to the Sun
On June 18, Jean Marmoreo and her husband Bob Ramsay found themselves
running in a marathon, one of many half-marathons and marathons they
jump at the chance to do each year.
But this one — held under the midnight sun on the summer solstice
in Tromso, Norway, at latitude 70, 100 kilometres north of the Arctic
Circle — was dramatically different from the rest.
“That was definitely the most exotic one I’ve done,” says Marmoreo,
a 62-year-old physician and veteran of 12 marathons and seven
half-marathons in destinations including New York City, Washington,
D.C., Santa Monica, California, San Antonio, Texas, and Chicago.
“The only place I haven’t run a marathon is in Toronto,” Marmoreo
laughs of her home (though she has run half-marathons here).
For Marmoreo and Ramsay, and hundreds of thousands of others around
the world, the ballooning-in-popularity sport of marathoning is
definitely about the destination.
Marmoreo and Ramsay first started running marathons annually in New
York City in 1994, running three consecutively.
“There was such a social experience there, we thought nowhere else
on earth could be like this,” she says.
But when Marmoreo didn’t make the lottery in the fourth year (the
marathon is so over-subscribed, organizers have to limit entries),
they decided to run in Santa Monica. That’s when they got the “new”
destination bug.
They followed that up with San Antonio. Then in 2001, they ended up
doing their first Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C., at the
end of October, only about six weeks after 9-11. Running with marines
past the rubble of the Pentagon was such a moving experience that
they invited a few of their friends to train with them that winter and
join them the following fall. Eighty-five did, and Jean’s Marines was,
well, up and running!
And they haven’t stopped.
What has grown from a group of friends getting together to train
with Marmoreo and Ramsay in 2002, has now become a pack of more than
500 women training each year under the Jean’s Marines banner, with
alumnae starting up their own mini-pack destination marathon runs,
that have included Venice, Medoc, France, Ottawa, Niagara Falls,
Ont., and the uphill giant of them all, Jungfrau, Switzerland, run
by Jean’s Marine alumnus Arax Acemyan.
Before the 2002 Marine Corps marathon, Acemyan was a 50-plus, cigarette
smoking, self-described couch potato. But when she decided to train
for the Marine Corps marathon, she tossed the cigarettes — for good.
Then after finding out her ex-husband, whom she hadn’t seen in 10
years, was also training in Europe for a marathon in Jungfrau in
September, she decided to squeeze that one in before her Washington
training goal. The running course is gruelling. Bad enough a marathon
is 42 K, but this course additionally climbs a 2,000 metre-finish
line over the route. Despite the fact it took her almost seven hours
to complete — “but I got my medal” — and might have caused lesser
women to give up on the sport, Acemyan followed it up four weeks
later with the Marine Corps in Washington in just over five hours,
and hasn’t looked back.
In 2003 Acemyan, a 55-year-old fashion designer (her label is Arax)
and founder of Tailored Image, a company that teaches disabled people
how to groom themselves, ran the Venice marathon. Last year she ran
Medoc and this year she will do Chicago.
“I love to travel,” says Acemyan, who is of Armenian descent, and
originally from Istanbul. “And [marathons] are a goal for me to keep
in shape. If I didn’t have a goal I wouldn’t train.”
But the vacations aren’t solely about running. Marmoreo and Ramsay,
and two other Jean’s Marines-in-training, combined the Tromso run with
a spectacular vacation of sea kayaking, hiking, and ocean cruising.
And when Acemyan went to Venice, she and four other girlfriend running
mates stayed in the romantic city for nine days in an old palace
that had been converted to a bed and breakfast. “We did five trips,
ran the marathon, and ate and drank,” Acemyan remembers fondly.
When she ran the Medoc Marathon, where all 6,000 entrants dress up in
costumes, then race from chateau to chateau, tasting wine, slurping
oysters, and munching on cheeses en route, she spent two weeks away,
travelling with her group of running pals for a week to St. Emillion
before the marathon, and then on her own to Nice for another five
days after it.
In addition to the marathons, Acemyan has run the More magazine half
marathons — for women over 40 — in New York City twice, combining her
fashion design work with her favourite pastimes — travel and running.
Fellow Jean’s Marine alumnus Darlene Roth, 50, a nurse who has also run
the More half-marathon, says for her the marathon and the running are
the “icing on the cake.” The real goal is the destination travelling
with her girlfriends. She and her fellow travelling companions turned
the More half into a shopping and spa trip. “We’re a bunch of wild
women,” she says of the bonding that takes place during training
for each trip. “We just have a lot of fun.” Even training runs turn
into a bit of travel adventure, she says, with teammates picking a
“really nice restaurant” each week to run to. “Any pound you lose
[training] you gain back!”
Mila Luka, 38, a product manager with Bank of Montreal and mother of
two youngsters, was one of Acemyan’s four running mates along for the
Venice marathon. She found the marathon itself — especially because
she had flight problems getting there — not exactly “ideal.”
“But oh, but the food and the drinking!” she remembers of the group’s
routine to meet each night in a little bar for cocktails. “It was a
fabulous trip, fabulous food, fabulous wine and fabulous company.”
Luka combined the beauty of her trip to Venice with a trip to Trieste
to visit an aunt, who then accompanied her and her husband Chris to
Rijeka, Croatia, formerly Fiume, Italy, where her mother grew up.
It was her first trip to Italy.
Running in other countries “is a fabulous way to see a destination,”
she says. The Marine Corps Marathon’s Washington route — which she
ran twice — “was phenomenal. Anything you ever wanted to see in
Washington was on that route.”
And Luka has already set her sites on another destination marathon: Big
Sur in California, known for it’s tough up-and-downhill course along
the cliff-strewn, majestic Pacific coast. That in fact, is where one
of her fellow Jean’s Marines alumnae, Kaz Flinn, 43, vice-president of
government affairs and social responsibility at Scotiabank, completed
in April with fellow Jean’s Marines alumnus, Dr. Nandini Sathi.
“It’s one of the hardest in the world. It’s all hills. It’s very
challenging, but it’s amazing.”
Flinn turned the destination marathon into a chance to have
a California “girlfriends” outing with Sathi, who has run seven
marathons to Flinn’s three (Flinn’s two young children slow down the
pace of marathon commitments slightly!). “We spent two days in San
Francisco after the race. We had such a nice time together. It’s nice
to be away with a friend.”
And when the friends you’re travelling with are the friends
you’re training with, the ties that bind are strong. “It’s a girls’
connection. Think of the topics you cover and the depth of friendship
you build over six months of training together,” she says of the
weekly training runs that, closing in on the marathon date, last five
and more hours at a stretch.
“I will keep doing this,” says Flinn of destination marathoning. “I
absolutely love it. In fact I feel lost because I haven’t figured out
my next [destination] goal,” she says. Among those she is considering:
a marathon in Nova Scotia. “That’s where I’m from.”
To fill in the time between destination marathons, Flinn, like many
of her fellow Jean’s Marines, turns to halves to keep her in shape,
running them in Toronto, and nearby Mississauga, with plans to do
one in Ontario’s Prince Edward County this year.
Jane Somerville, 56, who ran the Marine Corps in 2002, has kept in
shape with half-marathons since, including at the Ottawa marathon on
the last weekend in May, twice. “It’s the capital of Canada and it’s
a perfect time to see the sights,” she says.
“The fact that when you’re running when you’re on a holiday,
compensates for all the wonderful food and drink you may have.”
In fact, even when she’s not planning a destination half-marathon,
Somerville, a book publisher and consultant, builds runs into her
travel plans. When she’s at her weekend country home north of Toronto,
she runs into town. And she has already arranged with tour organizers
for a trip she and her husband are taking from Split to Dubrovnic,
Croatia, this summer to be dropped off at one end of an island en
route, and picked up at the other end after she has run across it.
So adept at fitting runs into their travels are the Jean’s Marines
alumnae, that when Kerry Peacock, 45, a senior vice-president,
Corporate and Public Affairs, with TD Bank Financial Group, landed
in Chicago last year on a supposedly pure-pleasure trip and found out
a marathon was taking place the next day, she registered for the half.
Marmoreo, who was travelling with Peacock, remembers her and Ramsay’s
surprise: “We were just going out for our morning run at 8:30,”
says when we saw Kerry returning from competing the half!”
Peacock, a veteran of five marathons, says: “Destinations are the
only way to go!.”
As for Marmoreo, who will be running both the Chicago and Marine
Corps marathons this year, she says she plans to continue destination
marathoning for “as long as everything continues to let me.”
What’s next?
“Well we’re going to Australia and New Zealand in January and February,
and I’ll see what’s there.”
Dianne Rinehart, a Toronto-based freelance writer and former Vancouver
Sun reporter, ran the first “Jean’s Marine” Marine Corps Marathon in
Washington, D.C., in 2002 and has run three Vancouver Sun 10K runs
and several Toronto 10Ks.
WHERE TO GO:
There are hundreds of destination marathons around the world from
Brisbane to Madrid to Kigali to St. Petersburg.
For a complete inspiring list check out the International Marathons
Races Directory and Schedule at
GRAPHIC:
Colour Photo: Destination marathons have given life a new impetus for
former self-confessed couch potato Arax Acemyan (in black on the right)
with other runners at an event in France.;
Photo: Bob Ramsay, Special to the Vancouver Sun; After finishing the
Midnight Sun Marathon in Tromso, Norway, Jean Marmoreo and Bob Ramsay
could enjoy some sea kayaking.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress