In the late 1980's Tandem Computers sponsored the London Marathon. The last year of their sponsorship was 1989 and Tandem decided to sponsor any Tandem employees that wished to run. Runners normally had to qualify or participate in a lottery to gain entrance, but Tandem's sponsorship meant that any Tandem employee could run. I was the only participant from Austin. Approximately 30 to 35 Tandemites ran the race with most of them from California.
Sarah and I paid for our transportation to London and Tandem paid for all the hotel rooms, food, and entertainment. Tandem's president, Jimmy Treybig, ran the marathon.
I'm writing this in 2010 and just finished captioning the photos which were taken 21 years ago, so I don't remember most of the names. If anyone can supply any names, please email me and I'll update the captions. The only names that I remember are Jimmy Treybig, Bob Marshall (a Tandem vice president), and Eric Chow who was the program manager of my project.
There were appoximately 30,000 people who ran the race and we started from three different locations. As the race was progressing, a bus took Sarah to the finish line where she had a ticket to sit in the grandstands. From there she took some good pictures near the finish line, but unfortunately did not see me finish. There are, however, photos of Jimmy and Bob finishing as well as some other Tandem people.
I had run my first marathon six months earlier in Portland, Oregon and this London marathon was my third. It was my best time of five marathons which I eventually ran: 3:39.
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