{"id":10781,"date":"2019-03-21T10:00:37","date_gmt":"2019-03-21T15:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/?p=10781"},"modified":"2019-03-21T00:38:28","modified_gmt":"2019-03-21T05:38:28","slug":"marking-the-marathon-to-marathon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/2019\/03\/marking-the-marathon-to-marathon\/","title":{"rendered":"Marking the Marathon to Marathon"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nJuly 23, 2009:<\/strong>\u00a0Welcome sign for Marathon at the south end of\u00a0former IA 390<\/a>. Nearly a decade later, the paint on the church sign had noticeably faded.<\/em><\/p>\n

It’s 16 years to the day since I set foot in Marathon in the first of now four visits. The first time, I wasn’t sure where the exact end of IA 390<\/a> was, two more were pass-throughs while I traveled IA 10 and M54 nearby, and the most recent was last year, after I knew for sure the endpoint and also wanted to photograph the school (now the community center).\u00a0As it turned out, I had the endpoint guessed correctly earlier, but the key shot was out of focus, hence a surprisingly high number of visits to a map dot in northwest Iowa.<\/p>\n

This post is about the giant sign at the junction with IA 10. For years it gave the date of the next Marathon to Marathon, a 26.2-mile run from Storm Lake. But that event has been discontinued<\/a> with a phrase to strike fear into the hearts of small towns everywhere:\u00a0\u201cWe have run out of volunteers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rather than let the date of the last marathon sit at the bottom, falling increasingly in the past, here’s a suggestion to keep the spirit alive: Place the years of the run, “1996-2017”, there instead. It would be a fitting reminder of the event. And then, if it ever starts up again, there will be a sign waiting for it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

July 23, 2009:\u00a0Welcome sign for Marathon at the south end of\u00a0former IA 390. Nearly a decade later, the paint on the church sign had noticeably faded. It’s 16 years to the day since I set foot in Marathon in the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-iowa-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10781"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10788,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10781\/revisions\/10788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}