The  Abbott World Marathon Majors is a series of six of the of the largest and most prestigious marathons in the world:  the Tokyo Marathon, the Boston Marathon, the Virgin Money London Marathon, the BMW Berlin Marathon, the Bank of America Chicago Marathon and the TCS New York City Marathon. Global health care company Abbott became the official sponsor in 2015. The Six Star Medal, the MOST coveted of all marathon medals, made its debut at the Tokyo Marathon in 2016. It has since become the object of affection of most marathon runners, including myself.  

My Abbott World Marathons Major journey began the day I ran my 15th marathon in Big Sur California. On that fateful day, I sat besides an older lady name Esther on the bus driving us to the starting line. Esther was an experienced marathoner and triathlete, with several Bostons and Ironmans under her belt. We started chatting and when the subject of my training (or rather my ”lack of training”) was brought up, Esther basically gave me SH** for ”wasting my potential”.  You see friends, up to that point in my running journey,  being a ”speedy” runner let alone ”qualifying for Boston” was not on my radar. I loved travelling and racing marathons but I DID NOT LIKE training for them. I never had the patience to follow a proper training program. Was not interested in doing long runs, intervals, tempo runs. Did the bare minimum to get by an not get injured. 

So when Esther gave me SH**, I knew that she was right. Right then and there, I decided that enough was enough and that I owed it to myself to train properly from now on. BUT to do so, I needed an EPIC goal. A big enough goal that would light my competitive fire. While climbing up the Big Sur hills (Hurricane Point anyone ??!!), I made the decision to complete the six Abbott World Marathon Majors (Berlin, New York, London, Tokyo, Chicago and Boston) in less than 3 years. This would force me to get my act together and train my butt off to qualify for Boston if I wanted to finish all six and get the medal of all medals –  the Six Star Medal.

After Big Sur, I came back to Montréal, excited and energized and with a new found appreciation for the marathon distance. I needed to find my first Abbott World Marathon Major to run in 2016. All lotteries were closed, except for New York City. I had applied for the NYC lottery but  I didn’t believe I would get in, so I went for Berlin instead with and agency. A few weeks later, I found out that I had gotten into NYC as well !! So I would end up running Berlin in September 2016 and NYC in early November – 2 Majors in less than six weeks. I was ecstatic ! 

The 2016 BMW Berlin Marathon would be the beginning of my journey to Boston and to the Six Star Medal. I contacted a coach who explained how his program worked and what I needed to do to get faster. And here is the thing, eventough I was motivated to train properly and bring my running to the next level,  I did not have the confidence in myself nor the belief that I could pull off such training. It took me a full two months before I contacted the coach again and decided to fully commit to his training program. I began training for Berlin in the middle of July 2016. The marathon would be held on September 25, 2016.  I slowly began to incorporate interval training sessions, tempo runs and long runs into my weekly routine – something that I was not used to up to that point.

So friends, come along for the journey !!!  My following posts on this category  will be all be about the five Majors that I have completed, including lots of pics of the cities I’ve visited and fallen in love with. I will begin with my BMW Berlin Marathon trip and will proceed with Chicago. My marathon trips for London, Tokyo and New York will come next.