Relentless Romero Blogs

THE CHALLENGE Spartathlon is an historic 153 mile/246 km foot race from Athens to Sparta.  The genesis of the race was to retrace the footsteps of Pheidippides, a great Athenian messenger.  The story goes that the Persian army was sailing to Greece for war.  The Athenians dispatched their greatest messenger to Sparta to recruit the brave and fierce Spartans to help combat the Persians.  It is said that Pheidippides arrived the very next day.  Hence, the Spartathlon race has been limited to 36 hours - it starts at 7 am on Friday morning (sunrise) and ends at 7 pm on Saturday evening (sunset).  If a Spartathlete can complete the distance in the allotted time, s/he will have completed the distance in the amount of time it took Pheidippides to travel the distance. One must qualify for Spartathlon and meet time standards like a 10 hour 100k or 21.5 hour 100 mile, or other time standard.  Once a runner qualifies, the runner must apply for admission ...

I've learned that people with forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. - Maya Angelou The Amazon Smile with Kevin Burkhart ("Mr. Alexa") Last week I had the great honor to be asked to speak at Amazon Headquarters in Seattle, Washington.    Amazon is the 4th largest company with a market capitalization of $466 Billion, 341,000+ employees and a 25,000+ employees at its HQ in Seattle.  I was excited, humbled, honored and a little nervous to be speaking at this cutting edge company, at their headquarters.  I did learn some very valuable lessons during this experience, however; and, I'd like to share them in this blog post. EVERYBODY CAN USE SOME INSPIRATION Amazon HQ in Seattle, WA Amazon is the quintessential company driving a new type of corporate culture inviting employees to bring their dogs to work, dress is casual, break rooms have corn hole and fooseball games to cult...

Many times I've wondered what it would be like to meet somebody really famous in the running world.  Well, I had the experience of being with a running legend this past week and felt compelled to share a little bit.  I crewed alongside Valmir Nunes at the Badwater Ultramarathon for a second year.  I was also room mates with Valmir for a second year. For those of you who are wondering who Valmir is - please Google him now.  A short running resume of Valmir would note that he is a Badwater 135 champion, former Badwater record holder (22 hrs and change), former 100k world record holder (6 hrs and change), 100k world champion, and international ultra-distance stud. I first met Valmir 2 years ago when I agreed to crew my friend at Badwater.  Somehow, my buddy had gotten the Badwater course record holder to crew him.  I didn't know who Valmir was, and the first time I saw him I wasn't too sure how it world work out for me to share a room with a Brazilian...

Obedience is the road to freedom -C.S. Lewis The dictionary definition of Obedience is "compliance with an order, law or submission to another's authority".  By this definition, Obedience seems to be in direct conflict with self preservation and the American Dream to amass wealth and belongings for one's self.  In our day to day lives, we pass homeless people on street corners, drive-by wounded animals to die on our highways forgetting about them and their agony seconds after we speed past them, and fail to acknowledge other people with a smile, look or response when they speak to us.  We can become so focused on our own microcosm that we think we are being "obedient" to our own goals.  In fact, we can never be "obedient" to ourselves or our own self interest.  We must stretch beyond ourselves in order to exercise true obedience, and be free. True obedience can only occur when we suppress our own wants and needs to the wants and needs of...

As many of you know, I've been writing a book for several months. The story is about my journey to find vision, despite losing my eyesight and culminates with a run across America. This is a very ROUGH DRAFT and has not been edited so please forgive typos, grammar and other opportunities. Enjoy! -Jason Chapter 1 With every ending is a new beginning - Unkown It was 2:00 AM and all I hear is my alarm screaming at me.  The song “Shut up and dance” by Walk the Moon is once again blaring in my ear.  I am in a foreign place.  It is a small hotel room with two beds, and the usual desk, lamps and TV.  But where am I?  I am confused for the first couple minutes of waking.  Am I in California, Texas, Missouri, Illinois, Pennsylvania?  What state am I waking up in?  This question had wracked my mind for the last 2 months.  Not knowing where I was waking up had become “normal” to me, and was not any cause for anxiety or disconte...

RUN!   IF YOU CAN'T RUN, WALK! IF YOU CAN'T WALK, CRAWL! IF YOU CAN'T CRAWL, GET SOMEBODY TO DRAG YOU! JUST DON'T STOP MOVING FORWARD! I have a mantra that I live by when competing in long distance running.  I believe in always making Relentless Forward Progress - no matter how good or bad I am feeling, I need to keep moving forward toward my goal.  You can easily draw the parallels to pursuits in personal and professional life.  A couple weekends ago I had the opportunity to witness another person making Relentless Forward Progress.  This is the story of what happened. It was the day before the Colfax Marathon - Denver's only city marathon - and I still had not decided whether to sign up or not.  I logged onto FaceBook to see what cool stuff people were up to that weekend.  A buddy who is a Marathon Maniac (Othman Doblany) was posting pictures of himself with other Denver runners from the marathon expo.  I got the urge to...