Marcothon 2022 Advent Challenge

So what is The Marcothon? It all started in 2009, when a guy called Marco challenged himself to run every day in November. His wife then deciding to follow suit and run every day in December, dubbed it the Marcothon and before she it knew it there was a group of runners eager to embrace the winter conditions of December 2009. In 2010, the group was added to Facebook and attracted over 500 runners from across the globe. That number grows each year.

The rules are simple you must run every day in DECEMBER. Minimum of three miles or twenty five minutes – whichever comes first. The challenge starts on December 1 and finishes on December 31 including Christmas Day. It’s not a competition but a personal challenge. If you have friends who are also doing the challenge the added support helps keep you going.

As if running everyday isn’t enough of a challenge, I like to make it harder for myself. One year I tweeted my runs with a new hashtag for each day, then blogged about it here. Last year I wrote a Haiku everyday and the folk in my WhatsApp group joined me. We created quite a collection of Haiku.

How to top that? This year I went cryptic. Each day I took a photo during my run and in that photo would be something containing the number of the day, for example on day twenty I took a photo of twenty steps. I posted the photos on Instagram and often would share on Facebook and Twitter. As far I can tell no one caught on to what I was doing. Of course these numbers didn’t just fall under the lens, although some were easier than others. I often spent the last part of my runs cruising the area, planning possible shots. It helped that most of my runs were around the University of Stirling. If you look hard enough you can find numbers everywhere. One odd photo was the laundromat number 23 which was taken at the filling station on Alloa Road, the start of a favourite run around Blackgrange and Cambus. The last part of my Marcothon was spent on holiday in the pretty fishing village of Crail in Fife. Running on parts of The Fife Coastal Path was a pleasant change from the University runs.

Day 1

#onewomanrunning