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Photo by Sarah Finnegan.
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Photo by Sarah Finnegan.
Alex Morrow has set a giant goal to run the Abbott World Marathon Majors, an international series for marathoners.
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Photo courtesy of Alex Morrow.
Alex Morrow after finishing the 2017 Tokyo Marathon.
The drum line in Tokyo. The thunderous crowd in Chicago. The sight of East Berlin in Germany. Every time Alex Morrow has checked off another World Majors marathon, he creates another “rocking chair” memory that outlasts the physical pain of running 26.2 miles.
This month, Morrow will complete the sixth and final run in the Abbott World Marathon Majors, an international series of championship-level runs for marathoners.
“This will be one of those rocking chair memories, where I’m sitting around, hopefully talking to my grandchildren one day … and I want them to go, ‘Oh, that’s really cool,’” Morrow said.
Morrow and his wife Abigail moved to Homewood about a year ago with their son Wyatt, 5, and daughter Audrey, 4. However, Alex Morrow has been part of the city far longer as the owner of Resolute Running Training Center, at 2709 Mamie L Foster, and an eight-year running coach.
“The vast majority of our runners are from Homewood,” Morrow said. “Homewood is the mecca of runners.”
Resolute Running has eight coaches and around 150 regular runners, and Morrow has accomplished about 22 marathons and three ultramarathons. However, it was his wife that first got him into running, and he didn’t initially enjoy it.
“I just thought it was the silliest thing in the world, didn’t understand why you’d want to do it,” Morrow said. “At some point along the way, it went from ‘I have to go run’ to ‘I get to go run.’”
After running became a “get to” rather than a “have to,” Morrow began building up distance to train for a marathon. However, he had to scratch three times from the marathons due to injuries. He decided to take a coaching class to learn more about the source of his injuries, which led not only to the creation of Resolute Running but also to his successful completion of the Mercedes Marathon in 2011.
“I didn’t set the world on fire, I didn’t win anything, but you know I wasn’t hurt and I finished the race,” Morrow said. “It was such a fantastic feeling that snowballed into what we have now.”
Morrow completed the Chicago Marathon in 2011 and the Boston Marathon in 2013. When he realized he had already completed a third of the World Marathon Majors, Morrow set a giant goal to run them all.
The World Marathon Majors include six of the largest marathons in the world: the Tokyo Marathon, the Boston Marathon, the Chicago Marathon, the New York City Marathon, the Berlin Marathon and the London Marathon, which is the last one on Morrow’s to-do list.
The Majors offer a chance to compete for cash prizes and points that go toward determining annual world champion marathoners.
Morrow will run the London Marathon on April 22, and he and his family will spend about a week there to enjoy sightseeing as well as the run. Those who become “Six Star Finishers” are given a special medal, composed of the medals from the six runs.
Very few runners achieve this goal due to cost, travel and qualifying standards to even enter the race.
“It’s always been a thing for the pros, but in recent years it’s become a thing for the less-than-pros,” he said.
Morrow said when he first started running the Majors, he was concentrated on overall time and had tunnel vision during the race, often not remembering most of the experience once he had finished them. Despite setting personal records, Morrow said he decided to refocus on enjoying the experience of these one-of-a-kind races and push his limits in other marathons.
“You’re not paying attention to what’s all around you,” Morrow said of his early experiences.
That has led to more pleasant race-day experiences, including high-fiving kids in the crowd, taking in the drum line in Tokyo, talking to celebrities while in the corral before the New York City Marathon and revisiting Berlin for the first time since he was a child, when the Berlin Wall was still in place. Since the races are so large, they often see large crowds cheering the runners on throughout the course, which Morrow said is so much a part of the experience.
“We just had a good time for 26 miles through New York,” he said.
He plans to soak in all he can while in London, too.
But no amount of laidback attitude, he said, will ever prevent hitting a wall somewhere in the marathon, where the physical pain makes you want to call it quits. Whether in Birmingham or London, that’s when he has to rely on discipline and “gut it out.”
“It’s not ever easy but if you’re having fun and you have good people around you, it makes it a little bit easier,” Morrow said.
Morrow said he’s “so ready” to finish the London race and become a Six Star Finisher, completing a goal seven years in the making. Next after that will be recovery — he ran five marathons in 2017. But Morrow already has his eye on a possible new goal to chase: a weeklong marathon across the Sahara that requires carrying your own supplies through the run.
“Honestly the races are just excuses to travel the world,” Morrow said. “I like the idea of the far-reaching, over-the-top goals that make people go, ‘What?’”
