Last Saturday, the day prior to the Glass City races, I worked all morning at the race expo.  I’m a big fan of race expos.  I mean, who knew you needed all of the cool race stuff they are selling there!!  Unfortunately I actually had to work, so I didn’t get to shop. 🙁

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But, I did help lots of people make their way to the expo and packet pickup.  The race Ambassadors worked at the info desk and answered questions.  This was in the early morning, but by 11:00 am that place was packed!

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Here are the other race Ambassadors.  (check out our info page here) We had a really big group this year!

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But the big excitement for my day was an interview with Matt Fitzgerald.  Yep, ME getting interviewed!  Matt has written many racing, fitness and nutrition books.  He was also a writer for several publications including Runner’s World and Triathlete magazine.  His books include:  The Endurance Diet, How Bad Do You Want It?, 80/20 Running:  Run Stronger and Race Fast by Training Slower, and Racing Weight… just to name a few.  He’s a smart guy with knowledge on a huge range of topics.  Too bad he didn’t bring all of his books as a welcome gift because they would make a great reference library in our house!! 😉

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I did take the book we owned to get it signed… Technically it’s Alan’s book, but since it’s autographed to me, that means it’s mine now!  (We are going to share the book anyways, right Alan?!?)

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Matt was in Toledo to run the Glass City Marathon.  He reached out to me as a race Ambassador.  The GCM is part of his research for a new book he’s writing.  He’s running 8 marathons in 8 weeks and a chapter will be focused on each race he’s running.  And (squeal!!!!), hopefully he will use some of my interview on the chapter on the Glass City marathon!

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So we went for a run and chatted.  We ran on the last few miles of the race course and I showed him around.  And then we went to Starbucks for more chatting.  I really hope I said something intelligent, motivational, and entertaining!!  The book will be called “Life is a Marathon”, so look for that in the future.

His races have been pretty impressive in the last few weeks.  He ran Boston in 2:57 and then ran Glass City in 3:03, although he told me he was shooting for a 3:15.  Holy Crap!! Guess that goes to show you how great of a race day it was in Toledo last week!!

Fast forward to race day now… just wanted to tell you a few more fun things about race day.  I mentioned that my Moms Run This Town group set up a tent in Rally Row to cheer on the runners… well here’s a shot of some of us pre-race.

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I had contributed two signs to our tent decorations.  Like this artistic one… Luna helped by chasing the marker around while I was trying to write it!

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The tent was so cool because A) we had a relaxing place to sit down after the race B) our tent was stocked with awesome snacks (Oreos!!) C) we had alcohol (Jell-o shots!).  but mostly D) we got to see our friends finish the race!  Here’s an example of a super happy friend finishing her first marathon.  LOVE it!

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Go Trina!!

 

The food after the race was the bomb!  Gino’s pizza is so delicious.  If you ever come to Toledo, you must try our Gino’s pizza!!  There were also the regular foods – cookies, bagels, Twizzlers and best of all… beer!!  They even had root beer for the kids which was soooo yummy.

Cheers to all of the runners!!

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I don’t think it could have been a better race weekend. I’m so glad my whole family got to enjoy it!

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Q:  Have you ever had anything published?

I wrote a technical article for a programming language I use at work, and they used it on the cover of the technical journal.  (and I got paid for it!!)

Q:  Have you read any of Matt’s books?

Q:  If you’re run more than one marathon, what is the shortest amount of time between running two of them?

I ran two marathons 5 weeks apart.  It did not end well 🙁

5 thoughts on “I met Matt Fitzgerald (author!)”
  1. In 2013, I ran 7 marathons and managed to eek out my only BQ. That year, I ran the London Marathon and then, two weeks later, ran the Colorado Marathon. It actually was not bad thanks to a combination of circumstances. I had bronchitis in London so that was more like a long training run than a marathon and Colorado had a nice gentle downhill for the first 17 miles. Wish I could get back into that kind of shape again. I have three of Matt’s books but none that are autographed.

      1. California International. Bus driver was misdirected by a police officer and we almost missed the start. Considered a net downhill but I thought it was more rolling hills than a true downhill.

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