How about a "Marathon Forum"?

The suggestion has been made, but I wanted to add some reasons for it, and to petition the other members to show their support for it.

If you look across all of the forums, there is one topic that is common to almost all of them - the marathon.

In Basic Training you have questions about the long run. What's the optimum distance? How many should I do? In R&RR you have the Marathon Training threads. In Mainstream you have questions about how to do marathon pace runs. Even in Just Running you have a few topics related to the marathon. If a person wants to know how to carbo load for a marathon, instead of wading through all of the general topics in Carbo Canteen, they could go to the "Carbo loading" topic in the Marathon forum. Share your carbo loading regimen with others there. Got a question about a particular marathon (Chicago, NYC, ...)? What is the course like, ... etc.? It could even have a "Training Schedules" topic. Why search across the internet for Higdon, Galloway, ... etc. Find the link to theirs and other schedules in one place I see a lot of posts where a person has a question about doing "long runs". To someone just starting to run, 5 miles is a long run. To a person training for a 1/2M a long run might be 12 miles. This way, if it's specifically about training for a marathon, then it can go to the Marathon forum. How do I get through the "wall"? Or, how often should I drink a sport drink, or take a gel during a marathon? Got a first time marathon question? Want a strategy for doing multiple marathons? It could even be a place for talking about great marathoners. I saw a topic about Alberto Salazar in Newbie Cafe. Hey, post it in the Marathon forum where everybody can see it! I noticed that in Multisport someone had a question about making the transition from triathlon to training specifically for a marathon. Need a marathon strategy for the Ironman? The people in Multisport can either post their Ironman questions in the Marathon forum, or get/share advice there.

Boston:

Running the Boston marathon? Or wanting to qualify? There were enough questions about Boston for it to have its own forum! I must have seen a few dozen topics about Boston this year. How do I pace myself? How do I handle the hills? What do I do before the start? Where's a good hotel? Where should my friend drop me off? With a marathon forum there would be one central place for all Boston questions. And you'd probably have fewer topics because they would be easier to find if they're in just one place.

The advantage I see in having this forum is that when a person asks a training question that is specific to the marathon, there is one place they can go - whether they be a novice or a veteran. If they're new to the marathon, they can go there to learn from experienced marathoners. The rest of the forums can continue to handle non-marathon type topics, such as training for other distances, hydration (non-marathon specific), stride mechanics, race strategy ... etc. If a person has completed a marathon though, they would continue to post their report in R&RR.

Again, I think it would be a great idea to have all of this information in one place. It wouldn't canibalize the other forums, but would rather make it a lot easier to wade through all the marathon-related information that's out there.
----

---

Edited to include nominations

Nominations for Moderator: Kemibe, Centipede, Sue, dallison, (co-moderators from the names mentioned), ...

[http://This message has been edited by LeonWC (edited Aug-15-2003).|http://This message has been edited by LeonWC (edited Aug-15-2003).]