Whitney Tilson Wearing All Black, T-Shirt With “It’s my 49th birthday today!” For Marathon

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Excerpted from an email which Whitney Tilson sent to investors. For context see this post – Whitney Tilson Turning 49 & Greying ‘ going through a full-blown midlife crisis’

Dear friends and family,

 

Less than 24 hours to go until the marathon – and I’m chomping at the bit!

 

First of all, I have a new bib number: 19999. (I learned that it’s not kosher to run with someone else’s bib for a variety of reasons, most importantly safety: if you collapse on the course, they’ll think you’re someone else and call the wrong emergency contact person.) You can track my progress by downloading the NYC Marathon app and entering this number.

 

If you’re going to be on the course as a spectator, I’ll be crossing the starting line ~10:20am and plan to run a steady 9-minute mile throughout (hopefully a little slower in the first half of the race and a little faster in the second). Below is a picture of me in what I’ll be wearing tomorrow (all black). Note that I put my name and “It’s my 49th birthday today!” on my shirt – a friend suggested this so that the crowds will give me extra encouragement, which I think I’m gonna need!

 

I also want to thank the 67 folks who have donated a total of $22,296 to Robin Hood, in amounts ranging from $26.20 to $2,620, to support my run. Heck, if I’d known I could raise so much money for such a good cause, I would have started doing this years ago!

 

In addition, a few generous folks have given me incentive to run fast by pledging:

 

  • Two $10,000 pledges if I run 4:15 or faster
  • $30/minute for every minute under 4:22
  • $780 if I break 4:00
  • $600 if I break 3:45

 

So, all told, if I run 3:45, I’ll raise $44,716 for Robin Hood – now THAT’S motivation! (It’s not too late to make a pledge at: https://www.crowdrise.com/whitneytilson)

 

All I really care about is breaking 4:15 to earn the extra $20,000 for Robin Hood, but it sure would be nice to break 4:00. Do I have a chance at that? Who knows? Working against me is the fact that I’ve never run anything more than a 10k and my entire training consisted of an easy 4.3-mile jog on Thursday (now I’m tapering! ;-) at an 8:50 pace – hey, it’s only six of those, right??? On the other hand, in the last two months I’ve run 15- and 17-mile Tough Mudder and Spartan races up and down mountains on grass, dirt and mud over 3+ hours, so it’ll be very interesting to see how well that translates to a marathon…

 

One thing I know for sure is that my tolerance for pain and suffering is dramatically higher now than it was 14 months ago thanks to some current and former Navy SEALs who kicked my butt over two boot camp weekends. And I’m counting on the crowds to give me energy!

 

Wish me luck!

 

image003 (5) image002 (4)PS—My little niece and nephew live in Brooklyn and are going to come out to cheer me on with a sign they made this morning – see pics below. So cute!

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