In 2008 I pursued and accomplished a long held goal to run a Marathon. It was an exciting goal to achieve, and a surprising thing to choose to do more than once. But I did, next in Baltimore, and then in 2010 my third, in my home town of Huntington Beach, California… the Surf City Marathon. To me there are two primary motivations to signing up for such a race, and the first is obvious, to get myself up off of my lazy ass and run, especially having paid good money to do so! But the second is for the fun of the destination, running a race in a new city, and a new environment, can be an exhilarating undertaking that adds adventure and distracts from the pain, and makes the whole thing especially satisfying. And so, for most events, once is enough.
But the Surf City folks did something very smart. They created a special status for runners who completed their event three years in a row. These runners earned the distinction of being members of the Longboard Legacy Club. You ONLY earn your membership after three consecutive years running the event, AND you have to maintain having run three years in a row to keep your membership. It’s a trap to keep you running the same race. And it works. So what do Legacy Club members get in return? An additional t-shirt (long sleeves, some have been nice, others not so much), a small stick-on extra for your medal (sometimes, not always), and an exclusive separate entrance to the post-race beer line (almost always meaningless). But runners who enter races are by nature competitive, even if they have zero notion of actually WINNING the race, they want their medal and they’ll chase other ways to feel like they’ve distinguished themselves. And for me, since running Surf City provided a nice reason for an annual visit home I returned year after year. Sometimes I ran the full Marathon in Surf City four times (2010, 2011, 2012, 2016), and the Half Marathon five times (2013, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018).
Over the years, a number of traditions have developed around this annual race, along with many special memories. Being a visit home, meant it was also an opportunity to visit with old friends, and for years a collection of my closest would always join me for a carbo-loading meal at The Olde Spaghetti Factory in Newport Beach, a favorite restaurant of mine since childhood. I’ve also enjoyed great fan support, from my folks, but also from one of my closest friends since childhood, who would come out at both the start and finish to cheer me on and run the last couple hundred yards to the finish with me. I love that.
Sadly, this year my streak has ended. I have plans to run Ragnar So Cal in April, another event that has long been on my radar. And it just wasn’t in the books to make back to back trips for two races, and so, regretfully, I did not run Surf City this year, which would have been my 10th in a row. I’ve heard that I picked the right year to miss due to cold and rainy weather. But I know I’ll be back, and I’ll again be a Legacy Club Member, and next I’ll probably pursue that Beach Cities Challenge Medal as well!