Where to start. At 4.50 pm on a Thursday, I’m going to start by going for a run. Back soon.

Done. Nice, easy 12 km around the streets of Lysterfield. That’s the next suburb over from us.

OK. The what, when, who, how and why. I’m leaving why until last, in fact probably not until we get several blogs down the track. It may take some thinking about.

What are we doing?

Three of the world’s major marathons. Berlin, London and Chicago. It just so happens that this year they occur in consecutive weeks. What an opportunity I hear you say. Not quite so simple when the travel and entry requirements are taken into account but those are stuff for other posts.

How?

By jumping on many aeroplanes and doing a complete circumnavigation of the world. We get a lot of help from Andy at Helloworld travel in North Melbourne. There’re many ways to get around but with the added drama of being ready to run we need to key in picking up numbers, recovery runs and COVID protocols in each destination. Oh, and sleep. Sleep would be good too. We’ve already had to adjust our plans once as flights from Japan are affected by the war in Ukraine. We are now going to transit without a stopover through Singapore. It would have been nice to stop but COVID protocols may have caused entry problems in Singapore or Germany so we’ll stick to the KISS principle. (Keep It Simple Stupid).

Berlin marathon, flight to London. London marathon and then to Chicago. We are flying with Finnair so via Helsinki. We have an overnight in Helsinki as we’ve never seen Finland. Chicago marathon and then flying to Portland, Oregon and train down the west coast and flying home to Melbourne from Los Angeles. Simples!

Who?

You’ll get to know several others along the way but the usual suspects are:

Jeff, that’s me. A mature aged runner with a mature aged red wine habit. I’m currently at 40 completed marathons including the six major marathons of the world. These are the Abbot series and consist of Tokyo, London, New York, Berlin, Chicago and Boston. These were done between 2015 and 2019 so not quite as intense as this series. I’m starting to feel the effects of that much running over the years so we will also be looking at what it takes to keep going.

Anne, the more intelligent part of the partnership. Anne does not run. There is only one full stop at the end of that sentence but if there could have been a couple more there for emphasis there would have been. Anne has the unenviable task of picking up the pieces after marathons and providing positive feedback.

The running group.

Wayno. Every Australian boy needs a shed, they also need a Wayno. Part mentor, part coach and full of stories for those long, long runs. Also a good friend. Wayne has run about 30 marathons using the inimitable Wayno shuffle.

David, A running professional. Give David a session and it will be done. He is also helping me with wordpress so without him this blog might have never taken flight. A relative novice coming up to his fourth marathon in Canberra, David has the fastest P.B. of all of us back in his misspent youth as an umpire.

George, Unbelievable. The guy who suggested this could be done and then thought Oslo the week before and a couple more in the U.S before Chicago sounded reasonable. More than 100 marathons. Now thinking about 200.

I think I’ll stop there as an introduction and see if we can get this up. Welcome to the adventure.