Newbie /Fox Cities Marathon

Thanks for the summary jszat.

hi there... I live in the fox cities so maybe i'm biased but i did run the 1/2 last year and walk ran it the year before. Great race! this year i'm doing the 1/2 again...not sure if i am up for the training for a full so kudos to you!
race has lots of local support... pretty flat... and it ends in neenah at a park overlooking the water with kiddie park near by (if you have a family).
bike shop would probably depend on where you live and how far you want to travel...wheel and sprocket in the fox cities hooked me up with my son's bike with excellent customer services. for a used bike, recyclist in kaukauna is an excellent choice. i'm sure others will give you input too.  

I don't have much to add on the fox cities thing but I wanted to just say welcome!

I've done the Fox Cities marathon twice and it is a well organized race.  They also had lots of good race goodies.   

I agree on the course being fairly flat.  When I did it there were a couple hills of note but nothing awful.

The one thing I would say is that the pace group leaders are not always the best.  One time I did the race I had a great pace group leader but the other time the guy had a chip on his shoulder about not being assigned a faster group and ended up dropping most of his pace group by mile 8 (at the time he was about 10 minutes ahead of where he should have been).  I have heard other stories like the second one from others racing this event too.  However, if you're planning on doing the race without joining a pace group everything else was great.

Thanks for the welcomes guys and hello again to all of you.

Great to hear about the Fox Cities Marathon, it makes me that much more excited for the race.

I didn't even know there were pace groups, I would be open to join one I suppose.  I finished the Kenosha Wisconsin Marathon(half marathon) this past weekend with an 8:30 pace.

I'm very new to all this so I'm open to any running/triathlon clubs in SE Wisconsin I could join if you have suggestions and meet up with people for training "runs".   I hope to get my road bike soon.   

It would be awesome to meet new people who are motivated in the triathlon! 

Currently I train in Merton and live in Pewaukee.  

I'm in Dane County now, but grew up in Merton!

May I ask why you train there?

I first started running the bugline trail which started me out in Merton.   It has a nice size hill for running hills.   I shifted to long road runs down the country roads in Merton as it's nice open country with a few hills on long runs and not many cars.

I think it would make for a good biking training area as well.

There is also Lake Five in Merton which I've thought about using for lake swimming.

Edited by legveins 2010-05-03 2:47 PM

A triathlon in that area, if you're interested:

http://www.active.com/triathlon/hartland-wi/camp-whitcomb-mason-triathlon-2010

appreciate it feh!   Looks like I'll have to get certified(?) by USAT.  

Just so you know Veins you can get a day membership to USAT for $10.  So if you do three or more USAT sanctioned events then it is worth it but may not be if you don't.

Thanks for the heads up.