About Me

Running Changed My Life!

I ran the 2002 Atlanta Thanksgiving Day Half Marathon as my first race when I was about to turn 47 and I literally went from "Couch to Half Marathon" in three months.  I injured my IT Band in the process, but started losing weight and felt so much better that I was determined to get back to running. After I recovered from my injury the following year I started to run regularly, joined a running group, started increasing my long run distance until I was running at least 13 miles every weekend, and lost 50 pounds in 12 months.

I decided that I wanted to try and run Boston in 2006 after I turned 50, so started researching what I needed to do to get into the race. I settled on the 2004 Chicago as my first marathon and where I would make my first attempt to qualify for Boston.  Race day weather in Chicago was perfect and I was able to qualify with roughly 35 seconds to spare, but the last 6 miles were brutal and I was barely hanging on by a thread when I crossed the finish line.

The 2006 Boston Marathon was my second marathon, and as many runners do when they first qualify for Boston, I became obsessed with finding out everything I could about the race before I ran it for the first time.  I scoured the internet for any information I could find so I could figure out a pacing strategy for the mainly downhill but challenging course.  The more I looked, the more frustrated I became because I couldn’t find exactly what I wanted.  So, I decided to create a terrain-adjusted pacing spreadsheet for myself that could easily create custom pace bands based on any goal time and also allow for customized pacing strategies.  I ran the race and the pace band worked like a charm.

Afterwards, I decided to take all the information I had collected about the Boston Marathon, add it to the spreadsheet so it was all in one place, then share it with other runners who might be looking for the same information.  I posted links to it on a few message boards for runners and was happy to see that a lot of other runners found it very useful also.

 Over the years I continued creating similar pacing spreadsheets for other marathons and collecting links to interesting and useful running information on the Web. However, it was getting hard to organize all this information, so I decided to put it all on a single Web site where it would be easy to find.  Also, to offset my web site costs and the large amount of time involved with creating and maintaining each spreadsheet, I started charging a small fee.. 

I use my own pace bands in every marathon I run and I hope they prove to be as useful to you as they have to me and many others!

Feel free to e-mail any feedback or questions you may have to:  gregmaclin@gmail.com