Pullharder Marathon

A random idea spawned by Roberto during a late night drinking session turned into one of the more amazing things that pullharder has ever done.  Pullharder is nothing if not a nexus of pushing limits while having fun.  We know how to push our limits, seek but it's often difficult to inspire others to push theirs.  Well, prescription it happened during our First Annual Pullharder Marathon! 

We organized a race starting and ending at our house down in the beautiful Penasquitos Canyon. It consisted of 10k, 10 mile, and marathon distances.  Non-runners trained, and participated, in the shorter distances, we had friends and coworkers run their first 10k ever, and Shay trained hard and ran his first marathon!

Roberto, Toby, Shay and I brainstormed, threw e-mails back and forth, and ideas were spawned.  It was a perfect synthesis for planning.  Toby perfected the course, Roberto worked his contacts and designed the kick ass t-shirts, Shay recruited sponsors, and I came up with the slip n slide finish.  We had friends volunteer their time and donate prizes.  Thanks Kam for donating the LG phones and bluetooth headsets, Shayda for donating some passes to the amazing Mesa Rim climbing gym, Amy for bringing us a free keg of Stone IPA, and Roberto for lining up passes to Aqua Adventures.  Ian, Alicia, and Andre helped us prepare the house, Ian also helped race day in various capacities including as our excellent BBQ chef, Andre was our awesome photographer (see more of his work here), Kristi handled our marathon runner's food table, Alicia decorated the house, and Rick ended up taking a photos for us as well.  Thank you so much to everyone who helped make this event such a huge success!

Race day found us up at 6am preparing for the crowds we knew were coming:  The days leading up to the race we had a ballooning of participants to the point that Roberto had to alter the website we used for sign up to fit more people!  At 7am people started trickling in through the garage.  I was there manning check-in with a spreadsheet assigning number to participants, figuring out which distance they were running, and handing them a pen and saying, "Have the most attractive person here write your number somewhere on your body."  Only one person asked me...

As 8am approached, we started funneling people out onto the driveway.  Andre was waiting with his camera and captured one of the most entertaining pictures of the entire event!  We had all 50 race participants in the driveway doing the pullharder pose!!!  AWESOME!

At 8:00:00, the participants spilled out of our driveway onto the beautiful course down in the canyon.  Some ran fast, some ran slow, but everyone pushed their limits.  There was vomiting, success, cramps, fun, and most importantly good memories.  It had all the makings of a Scotty Vacation!

We had many people participate at each distance, including the full marathon.  They ran different distances, but they all had one thing in common.  Everyone finished on the slip n slide in the back yard!

After each participant finished, the partying began.  We tapped the keg around 10 am, we had a roughly 30 minute yoga/stretch session in there somewhere, and Ian heated up the BBQ around 11:45.  We ate, drank, and partied it up.  Sadly, I have to admit, being athletes and not alcoholics we didn't finish the keg.  I think Stone would have been disappointed, but we sure appreciated the free good beer!

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For a list of the finishers and their times go here

We had invested almost $400 in great t-shirts for the event.  We ended up executing perfect marketing.  Everyone finished on the slip n slide in the back yard, then when they were wet and cold we offered to sell them a dry t-shirt for $10.  While this wasn't intentional, it worked out quite nicely.  We still have about 4 medium orange t-shirts if anyone is interested, but luckily I think we only need to sell one more to fully recoup our costs so we pretty much broke even on the event.  This is awesome, because we managed to host it at no charge to the participants!

Early afternoon, after all the marathon runners returned home and had a chance to eat and shower, we had an awards ceremony.  The top male and female competitors at each distance were given an award certificate, and we had prizes and a raffle.  Since it was all friends and acquaintances at the event, we ended up partying til about 9pm that night.

All in all, it was a spectacular day and pullharder is really looking forward to hosting the 2nd annual pullharder marathon next year!  Thanks everyone who came out either to participate, help, or party! Make sure to become a fan on facebook to stay informed of future events!

Courtesy of Alicia Eschwege (www.alivega.com)

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