Good Morning Party People,
I must apologize for the delay in getting this newsletter out this week. I have been feeling like 💩 the last few days with a fever and have only now reached a place where I feel capable of doing more than lifting sitting on the couch and lifting saltine crackers up to my mouth.
Because of this sickness, I've been cold turkey from coffee, so while this content will not be caffeine-infused, I hope it still brings some joy to your Tuesday morning.
To make this week's email special though, I wanted to center the focus on this past weekend's Melted Marathon. The event was overall a HUGE success, and I'm very excited to tell you all the story of how it all went down!
So without further adieu, welcome to the...
The 2020 Melted Marathon represents the first official event put on by My First Finish. The objective was to come up with a creative way to bring people in the community together, facilitate the creation of new friendships, and add some friendly competition to the normal weekend long runs.
Every participant was put into a team of either 3 or 4 people and had to collectively finish 26.2 miles together. It didn't matter who ran what distance, as long as each team totaled the full amount, they would be declared a finisher.
Each team competed for several awards including:
We saw a total of 30 people sign up for this event across 10 states in the US and 4 different countries (USA, Malaysia, Belgium, and the UK). Prior to the race, each team coordinated a zoom call and strategized their submissions for a team name, and a team photo. I really wasn't sure what everyone was going to come up, considering that everyone lives in different parts of the world, but quite honestly was amazed at just how amazing these came out...
After the photos were submitted, it came time for the actual race. There isn't exactly a handbook on how to organize and execute a virtual running relay race, so we definitely had a bit of nervousness going into the day.
But as the workouts started being logged, we quickly realized that throwing the perfect event didn't really matter. People were really giving it their best, and getting fired up about the competition, and THAT is what mattered. All-day we tracked runners with a custom-built live leaderboard that was honest on the My First Finish Website so that everyone could see hoe the competition was unfolding in real-time.
By the end of Saturday, July 18th, the eve of national ice cream day, this group traveled a total of 213 miles and clocked in over 35 hours of running! If you do the math, that means that each participant averaged over 1 hour of running on the day, which is absolutely redonculous to think about considering that most of these participants started running just a few miles 3 months ago.
And it get's even better...
If you can recall, one of the awards on the line was for most PR's (personal records) per team. This was to encourage people to give it their absolute best effort. Regardless of how fast they could run, progress is what is most important, and at the end of the day we were absolutely flabbergasted at what happened.
66 total personal records were set! That's 66 brand new milestones (time or distance) displaying the hard work and dedication that each and every one of these athletes put in on a daily basis. 41 of those records were brand new, and 25 were either 2nd or 3rd best all time.
A special shoutout goes to David R, Kasthuri S, Poonam S, Miranda D, Keshav S, Roshni S, Amanda Y for running the furthest they ever have before! All of these people went the extra mile (literally) for their teams and accomplished a brand new goal in the process.
Once the final runners logged their workouts, we crunched the numbers and prepared THIS presentation for the official awards ceremony. On National Ice Cream Day, this lovely group of good looking people shared their favorite moments from the race, recognized strong individual efforts, and voted on the best team name / photo.
After serious debate and an intense live voting session, best team photo went to team "Carole Baskin Robbins" and best team name went to "Kickin' Asphalt." The international superstars dubbed the "Euro Yolks" took home the price for the fastest time, and the "Turbo Tubbies" captured the PR award with 46 total points on the day.
We even had SWAG for the event! Our team worked very hard to design some super cool holographic melted marathon stickers, and t-shirts to commemorate this prestigious event. If you're interested in snagging one of these babies yourself, you can do so HERE (Link closes in 2 days so grab it quick)!
In all honesty, I don't think this event could have gone any better. People truly showed up for it and dove head-first into the competition. I couldn't be more proud of everyone who pushed themselves for this, and I can't wait to have more events like this in the future. This community truly is something special, and no matter how big it grows (or doesn't) I am going to remember this special group for the rest of my life.
The biggest of thanks goes out to Aneesh Rastogi, who VOLUNTEERED to spear-head this entire event and put in a ton of work to make it come to life. Thank you so so so much for all that you did my friend, the entire community is incredibly thankful for you!
If you'd like to be a part of events like this in the future, we'd love to have you! You can head to myfirstfinish.com and signup to join our community today!