Marathon detour brings in speakers

When the same people conduct an event year after year for more than a decade, eventually they start to answer the question “What’s new?” with “Same old, same old.”

Not so with the Little Rock Marathon. Besides new security measures and an even larger finishers medal, for its 12th iteration Friday through Sunday, Little Rock Parks and Recreation’s annual running festival includes a trifecta for shorter-distance runners and a speakers’ seminar.

Presented by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, marathon weekend per usual will include:

Health and Fitness Expo: 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Friday and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday at the Statehouse Convention Center; late registration, packet pickup, Little Rock Marathon’s official merchandise and 73 vendors’ sales and information booths

Pasta Party: 5 to 7 p.m. Saturday in the Marriott Little Rock hotel’s grand ballroom, $25 per person (free for children up to age 3)

Perks Pavilion: 5 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday in the Little Rock River Market pavilions, restricted-access spectator site with massages for runners, cheerleaders, private gear check, snacks, $25

Racing:

8 a.m. Saturday, Little Rock Marathon 5K (up to 1,400 people, race-day registration at the expo).

10 a.m. Saturday, Little Rockers Kids Marathon 1-mile event (1,900 children ages 7 to 14, new course starts at the intersection of President Clinton Avenue and Sherman Street; registration has closed)

6 a.m.-2 p.m. Sunday, Little Rock Marathon (3,500 runners and walkers, 26.2 miles, registration has closed); Little Rock Marathon Half Marathon (13.1 miles; registration closes at 5 p.m. Saturday or when registrations hit 6,200 - whichever comes first); and Little Rock Marathon 10K (potentially 2,000 racers, 6.2 miles)

Post-race party: 4 to 8 p.m. Sunday, Statehouse Convention Center’s Wally Allen Ballroom, food, drinks, dance music, free to runners, $25 for guests

But wait, there’s more.

HAT TRICK

In a fundraiser for Little Rock’s Access School, Go! Running and the Capital Hotel are sponsoring the Hat Trick trifecta, with a commemorative visor for the first 40 people who sign up by making a donation (of any amount) and then run or walk the Little Rock Marathon 5K at 8 a.m. Saturday, and then run or walk the Capital Hotel 10K Detour fun run with the hotel’s General Manager Michael Chaffin at 9:30 a.m. Saturday, and then run or walk any of Sunday’s official races.

SPEAKERS SEMINAR

Attendance is limited at each of the six public talks in the Capital Hotel Detour Speaker Series from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, and registration is required using online links at capitalhotel.com or the Health and Fitness Expo section of littlerockmarathon.com. But the talks are free, open to the public.

All will be at the Capital Hotel.

Ari Perez of Dallas speaks at 11 a.m. on behalf of clothing manufacturer 2XU’s compression garments.

Leah Thorvilson of Little Rock, four-time women’s winner of the Little Rock Marathon, will present a question and answer session at noon. She competed in the 2012 Olympic Marathon Trials in Houston, and as an ultrarunner she set the fourth fastest time for an American woman in a 50-mile event.

Dimity McDowell (of Denver) and Sarah Bowen Shea (of Portland, Ore.) will speak at 1 p.m. They are co-authors of Run Like a Mother (Andrews McMeel, 2010) and Train Like a Mother (Andrews McMeel, 2012) and creators of social media support sites and merchandise that appeal to mothers who run and walk, anothermotherrunner.com.

Jeff Glasbrenner of Little Rock speaks at noon. He’s a motivational speaker and author of a self-published memoir, The Gift of a Day (Amazon’s CreateSpace, 2012). A below-the-knee amputee since childhood, this former professional wheelchair basketball player is a three-time Paralympian and two-time World Champion gold medalist who has also, oh, by the way, completed 20 Ironman triathlons.

Andrew Starykowicz of Illinois, a structural design engineer turned professional triathlete, speaks at 3 p.m. He holds the record for the Ironman triathlon series’ fastest bicycle split. In 2012, after surgery to repair a tear in his shoulder, he self-published For Swimmers 365 Main Sets. Within five months he was back to winning triathlons, becoming the 2012 Ironman Florida and Rev3 South Carolina champion.

Bart Yasso of Pennsylvania speaks at 4 p.m. Yasso famously devised a marathon training system that his employer, Runner’s World Magazine, popularized as the Yasso 800s. The author of My Life on the Run (Rodale Books, 2009), Yasso developed the magazine’s race sponsorship program, which provides bib numbers and other amenities to more than 7,000 events every year. He has raced on all seven continents, crossed the nation on self-supported bicycle tours twice, finished five Ironman triathlons and the Badwater 146 in Death Valley - and been inducted into the Running USA Hall of Champions.

Derek Lagemann, co-owner of Physical Therapy Institute (PTI) in Little Rock, speaks at 6 p.m. A physical therapist, he will talk about sports conditioning and how competitive athletes have been using his clinic’s AlterG anti-gravity treadmill.

ActiveStyle, Pages 23 on 02/24/2014

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