There are only two people who have run all 39 Marine Corps Marathons, and one of them is an Arlington resident.

Al Richmond, 74, is preparing to run the 40th annual Marine Corps Marathon on Sunday. He’s one of the Groundpounders, the increasingly exclusive group of people who have ran all of the marathons. (The group had four active members as of 2013.)

The original group has dwindled down to two, both of whom are retired Marine Corps colonels.

While Richmond has run multiple marathons, including the Boston Marathon, the Marine Corps Marathon has a special place in his heart. The retired colonel was part of the original team that set up the marathon, then called the Marine Corp Reserve Marathon.

“They were using it as recruitment when the all volunteer team first started,” Richmond said.

Richmond decided to run the race, even though he was not a long distance runner, and he got hooked.

“I ran the three miles for the Marine Corps and that was basically it,” he said. “And after running that first marathon I said that wasn’t bad and kept continuing to do it.”

Richmond started running multiple marathons, up to three or four a year, he said. While he used to run for speed — his top speed was a six minute mile — he now runs a slower mile and aims to finish.

He is lucky he hasn’t sustained an injury that would prevent him from running the race, he said, noting that there was one time he almost didn’t run.

Richmond was shot in a mugging in 1990 and underwent three serious surgeries. As a result, he was having trouble training and was going to throw in the towel, he said. He ultimately decided to run the race after reading an article in a newspaper.

“I was eating breakfast and I opened the paper and there was an article about the other colonel and how he was the only Marine to run all the marathons, and my wife looked across the table and said you’ve run all of them,” he said.

This year, Richmond will be running the course with one of his daughters. After the race he’ll go home to his house in the Maywood neighborhood, sleep and then either laze around or go for a walk.

“I’ll come home and take about a 20 minute hot shower and then I’ll go to bed for a couple hours because I’m exhausted,” Richmond said.

He doesn’t have a particular part of the race that he likes, he said, adding that he prefers the parts that have larger crowds.

“I wouldn’t say I really don’t like any of it except for 26.1 miles,” Richmond said.

The senior marathoner doesn’t have any longevity tricks for other runners, but he advises people to make sure to stay hydrated.

“It helps if you have a goal,” Richmond said. “If you are trying to get ready for a half marathon, a 10K, a 5K, that helps.”

It’s also important to listen to the body for when to push it and when to take a break. Sometimes a person has to push it in order to get past the mental wall, he said.

“Everyone’s different,” Richmond said. “You just have to go with it or play mind games.”

If there’s one lesson to take away from Arlington’s Metro Safety Seminar Wednesday night, it’s don’t evacuate a train until told to do so. Even though a woman died after not being able to evacuate a disabled, smoke-filled train outside of the L’Enfant Plaza Metro station earlier this year.

In the case of smoke in a tunnel, Arlington County Fire Department and Metro will work together to figure out the source of the smoke and decide if evacuation is necessary, officials said Wednesday at the seminar in Ballston.

Self-evacuating early often leads to injuries and more trouble, said Robert Joy of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority during a panel on Metro safety hosted by the county’s Emergency Preparedness Advisory Commission (EPAC).

There’s also the problem of the third rail, which is a major electrocution hazard, running at more than 700 volts, Joy said.

Joy was joined by ACFD Captain David Santini and ART Director Stephen Yaffee to speak about how to be a safe rider on public transit, including Metrobus, Metro or ART bus. The panel spoke to a small audience, mostly consisting of older Arlington residents, many of whom identified themselves as members of EPAC.

For the most part, audience members were concerned about smoke filling Metro cars, noting the L’Enfant Plaza incident in January.

Smoke in Metro tunnels is not an unusual occurrence, Sanitini said.

“We report to smoke on the Metro several times a month,” he said, adding that most are “minor in nature” usually resulting from trash burning on the rails or small insulator fires.

In the case of smoke filling the cars, passengers should listen to the intercoms, Joy said, as the conductors will tell people when to evacuate.

“Just because the trains stop doesn’t mean it’s an emergency,” he said. “And we’ve had some people self-evacuate a perfectly good train.”

If a train needs to be evacuated, firefighters will come to the train to help passengers evacuate, Santini said. Metro also posts instructions for opening the doors in emergencies and how to evacuate.

Evacuation should be the last resort as walking in the tunnels and jumping from the train can result in injuries, such as broken ankles or legs, he said.

Joy acknowledged that there were problems with understanding the intercoms, which can make emergency situations more stressful. Dust often gets in the speakers, which make them hard to hear.

“We understand that the intercom system isn’t always up to snuff,” Joy said. “I sometimes wonder what they are saying.”

Fixing the intercoms by making sure they are cleaned is an easy step that Metro can do to make riding safer, said John Brown, director of Arlington County Office of Emergency Management.

“I don’t think we can wait for a federal report. There’s low hanging fruit that we know we can fix,” Brown said.

Throughout the discussion, audience members offered suggestions that Metro can implement to improve passenger safety, including more information on car walls. These suggestions will be compiled in a letter and brought before the Arlington County Board, said Board member Libby Garvey.

Garvey and Brown also took a couple of minutes to talk about emergency preparedness in general, telling the audience they should know what to do for everyday emergencies, like weather-related events, or in the case of a decidedly not-everyday emergency: a nuclear attack.

“We really all need to be prepared, not just for these events that happen pretty regularly but also when the unimaginable happens,” Brown said.

In the case of a nuclear attack, people should “shelter in place” and put as much concrete between them and outside, Garvey said.

The last thing people should do is go outside and see what happened, she said. Instead, people should “camp inside” until its safe to go outside.

“We all need to be prepared for camping for three days,” Garvey said.

The Right Note is a weekly opinion column. The views and opinions expressed in the column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ARLnow.com.

Much attention has been paid to the big ticket projects the County Board has shuttered over the past year. Those fiscally responsible decisions will save taxpayers millions and millions of dollars.

How the Board treats spending our tax dollars on the smaller projects and how they meet their obligations to ongoing basic services is equally, if not more, important to our long term fiscal health.

The most recent case in point was the reminder that the County Board had authorized $350,000 for an “art installation” on the Four Mile Run Trail side of the wastewater treatment plant. It is a given there is nothing pretty about the facility. But the new art does little to change the view as you are walking, running or biking by on the trail.

Earlier this year, the Board voted to build a $17.6 million ART bus facility that, according to their own press release, “. . . will not be large enough to meet all the County’s projected needs for ART facilities. It can house neither the entire existing ART fleet, nor accommodate all of the buses that will expand the fleet over the next decade.”

With that in mind, why not wait until you could identify a plan to build an adequately-sized facility all at once? The savings to the taxpayer of $57,000 a year, hardly justifies a $17.6 million outlay that will not meet all of our needs. At that rate, the facility will pay for itself in 308 years.

Neither of these items are as attention-getting as a $1 million bus stop or a $500 million trolley. But, they are made by the same elected officials who use the same philosophy of spending our money. That philosophy has not really changed for a majority of the Board, despite the rejection of the vanity projects by the voters one year ago.

The voters have another choice of who they send to the Board on Nov. 3. And the Board itself also has a big decision on who the next permanent County Manager will be.

No doubt there is value in the institutional knowledge of someone who has worked in Arlington for years. However, with three new Board Members being elected in the last 12 months and a new auditing function coming online, a fresh perspective in the Manager’s office is warranted as well. There is real value to be found in taking away any bias toward the way it has been done.

I have long held the position the next Manager should live in Arlington and live with the consequences of their advice and decisions. More importantly, the next Manager’s philosophy should approach every budget line item by asking if we should spend this taxpayer dollar, and if so, will we get the most bang for our buck?

A fresh set of eyes with a comprehensive approach to getting the big and little budget decisions right would serve Arlington well.

A foundation created in honor of Jennifer Lawson, the Arlington mom who was struck and killed by a dump truck in front of Nottingham Elementary School, is holding a race in her memory.

The inaugural Jennifer Bush-Lawson Foundation Memorial 5K and Family Fun Day will be held on Saturday, Nov. 21 at the Knights of Columbus at 5115 Little Falls Road, the same road on which Lawson was hit last year.

The 5K starts at 8 a.m., followed by the kids run at 9:30 a.m. After the races, the foundation will hold a family fun day, with music, food trucks and a beer garden. There will also be kids activities, including face painting, a moon bounce and balloon animals.

Registration for the race is still open. It costs $40 to run the 5K and $10 to participate in the kids run. All proceeds go to the Jennifer Bush-Lawson Foundation, a memorial fund started by Lawson’s husband Neal to help provide pre- and postnatal care for families in need of financial assistance.

Lawson died on February 24, 2014, after being struck by a dump truck while loading her two-year-old daughter into her minivan. Her two sons were in class, across the street at Nottingham Elementary. After her death, a family friend created a memorial fund to help the family. He aimed to raise $5,000 and ended up raising more than $17,000.

A little more than five years after Artisphere opened, the doors are shutting for good on what was once touted to be Arlington’s cultural crown jewel.

Without any discussion, the County Board unanimously voted to end the county’s lease for the Rosslyn space formerly occupied by Artisphere during its meeting last night. Artisphere, which opened on Oct. 10, 2010, shut is doors in June 2015, following financial problems.

It will cost the county $447,436.24 in payments to break the lease, which will end on Oct, 31. The lease on the property was originally written with an expiration date in April 2023.

Negotiations with landlord Monday Properties resulted in about $100,000 in savings on the lease termination, county staff said. Utilities and maintenance for the space cost the county nearly $1 million per year.

At this time, the county has not calculated the final cost for closing the cultural center, county staff said.

The County Board unanimously approved three new residential buildings for the western end of the Clarendon neighborhood last night.

The new buildings, developed by the Arlington-based Shooshan Company, will have up to 580 housing units and 3,477 square feet of retail space. The new development will sit on the site of the current Red Top Cab headquarters and two low-rise commercial buildings, which house a furniture repair shop and childcare center.

“This is an ambitious redevelopment that will transform the western end of Clarendon,” said Arlington County Board Chair Mary Hynes in a statement. “It continues and expands the vision set forth for the Clarendon Revitalization District, and brings a much-needed street realignment and improvements to the transportation network.”

The new buildings may be as tall as 110 feet, but will “taper” from the single-family homes surrounding the buildings. The company is proposing to use three different colors of brick, keeping in mind the general look of the surrounding buildings.

“I think its a series of very striking buildings, architecturally. It’s going to continue the forward momentum of Clarendon,” County Board member John Vihstadt said.

Shooshan is proposing six committed affordable units in the complex, as a community benefit, in addition to meeting the zoning ordinance requirement for a development of its size as it pertains to affordable housing.

The ordinance gives Shooshan the option of a $1.8 million contribution to the county’s affordable housing fund, including 16 affordable units on site, or 23-31 off-site affordable units. That fits in with the county’s plan for more affordable housing, said County Board Vice Chair Walter Tejada.

“We’re looking at what we call the Metro corridor, so it’s not easy. And anything you can get in that site is great, and I’m not surprised that an effort was made by the applicant,” Tejada said.

The site plan also calls for a street realignment. Under the project, a portion of N. Ivy Street south of 13th Street N. will be deleted. 12th Street N. will be shifted to the east, providing a connection between N. Hudson Street and Washington Blvd. Shooshan will help the county with improvements to the streets around the development and with the construction of a new park.

“This is a traffic pinch point that we are going to be able to fix by doing what we’re doing together,” Hynes said.

Shooshan will paying for the changes to the streets and dedicating land for the new park.

“The developer will reimburse the county $3 million for costs associated with the improvements to Washington Blvd, 13th Street N., and N. Johnson Street. In addition, the developer will dedicate parcels to the county which eventually will be used to create the Clarendon Sector Plan’s recommended Washington Blvd/13th Street Park,” the county said in a press release.

Other community benefits include a public art contribution and sustainable building design elements that meet LEED specifications.

The proposed development was met with little public comment — only two members of the public chose to talk, activist Jim Hurysz and the lawyer for the furniture shop being sold to and demolished by the developer. The latter spoke in favor of the development, calling it a “win-win-win.”

“Although we started late, it’s pretty remarkable that something this significant has only two speakers, one of them who is our usual visitor,” Hynes said.

Board members also kept their comments brief, mostly praising the new development plan.

“There’s not much to dislike about it,” County Board member Jay Fisette said. “It’s a very attractive project.”

Construction on the project is slated to take place in two phases.

A new sushi restaurant has opened on Lee Highway in Cherrydale.

Maneki Neko Express opened six weeks ago in the spot of former Thai restaurant Thai 24 (3813 Lee Highway). The new restaurant will serve both Japanese and Thai food as part of a partnership with the former Thai 24’s owners, said Maneki co-owner KanyaThongprasert.

“Maneki Neko Express will be serving Japanese and Thai food in a cafe-like setting,” the restaurant said on its website.

The Cherrydale restaurant is the Maneki Neko’s second location. Maneki Neko first started in Falls Church about 14 years ago, Thongprasert said, adding the original location only serves Japanese food.

Business at the new restaurant has been ok in the first few weeks,Thongprasert said. Customers from the Falls Church location have followed the company to Arlington, she added.

“They love it. They love the taste,” she said.

The most popular dishes include pad thai and the restaurant’s bento box option, which allows customers to pick items from the sushi bar and the kitchen, such as a California roll and teriyaki chicken.Thongprasert has applied for a liquor license and plans to serve beer, wine and sake on and off the premise.

Maneki Neko Express offers special sushi rolls, such as a Three Amigos roll, which is a roll with tuna, salmon, yellowtail, avocado, jalapeño and spicy mayo. Customers can also choose from daily specials.

One of the specials is a Halloween roll, pumpkin tempura, eel and tobiko, and the restaurant is prepared for the upcoming holiday with ghosts, pumpkins and spiderweb decorations on its windows.

The restaurant serves lunch from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and dinner from 4-9 p.m. Monday through Friday. On Saturday the restaurant serves lunch from noon to 2 p.m. and dinner from 4-9 p.m. and on Sunday, it is only open for dinner from 4-9 p.m.

A 14-year-old Arlington resident will be the youngest female runner in this year’s Marine Corps Marathon. As if that wasn’t unique enough, she’ll be one of the few to be running the race with her entire family.

Ella Alliston and her parents will all be running the marathon, the first for any of the Allistons.

The Marine Corps Marathon is open to anyone 14 years old and up, said marathon spokeswoman Tami Faram. Alliston said that she was surprised she was the youngest runner but was happy she could compete in a marathon at her age.

“When my friends found out they had kind of the same reaction, they were like ‘wow you are so young, I can’t believe you are doing it,'” Alliston said.

Alliston and her mom, Martha, and father, Ross, have run multiple races since Ella joined Girls on the Run in third grade. Ella and Martha started running 5K races, and encouraged Ross to join them. The family has since completed multiple races, including a half marathon last year.

“We did a half marathon and we didn’t want to get out of our routine so we decided our next step was a marathon,” Ella said.

The family has been training for the marathon for at least 18 weeks, Martha said. To prepare for the marathon, the family would run three days a week, with long distance runs on the weekends, Ella said.

“For the last month or so we’ve been running a half marathon or more on Saturdays,” Ross said.

The Allistons have run all over Arlington and D.C. in order to find enough miles for their long runs. They’ve run around downtown D.C., up the C&O Canal Trail and through Georgetown.

“I really liked running downtown and around the monuments,” Ella said. “It was another distraction to look at the monuments and everything. It was flat and there weren’t many hills.”

The family takes turns picking out which trail they’ll run. Ross likes the C&O trail, while Martha likes to run the urban environment of the District, they said.

“We run almost everywhere,” Martha said. “We’ve been through all parts of downtown by the Capitol, the monuments, all through Arlington.”

During the week, the family runs up N. Glebe Road and Old Dominion Drive. Ella mapped out the exact routes that would meet the required mileage each week, Martha said.

After each run, the family heads home to shower and eat breakfast, a routine they plan to keep after the Marine Corps Marathon.

“We’ll probably head home. We have two little dogs we have to walk and then we’ll have lunch,” Ross said.

The family is looking forward to the marathon, they said, adding that they have already tested parts of the course, including the famous long first hill in Rosslyn.

“We’ve enjoyed training for it and we can’t wait to do the Marine Corps Marathon,” Martha said.

More nighttime road work is coming to portions of South Arlington, starting Sunday.

The county will be milling and paving part of Columbia Pike, between Washington Blvd and S. Walter Reed Drive, and S. Four Mile Run Drive, between S. George Mason Drive and Columbia Pike. Both roads were on the county’s paving schedule this year.

For the most part, paving on Columbia Pike will take place between 8 p.m. and 5 a.m. in order to minimize traffic disruptions, according to the county’s notice. Road work is expected to start Sunday, Oct. 25 and is planned to last about a week, depending on the weather, said county spokeswoman Jessica Baxter.

The paving on S. Four Mile Run will take place during the day depending on the weather. Milling on the road started yesterday, and work is expected to last a week, Baxter said.

Drivers will not be allowed to park their cars on the street while the roads are being milled and paved, mostly affecting residents living in the apartment complexes on S. Four Mile Run Drive.

Some Crystal City apartment dwellers complained of loud noises from road work in the area earlier this month, saying the ruckus made it hard to sleep.

Hungry people looking for half-priced burgers at Thirsty Bernie (2163 N. Glebe Road) Monday night were met with disappointment and turned away by a sign on the door reading “Closed on short notice. Sorry.”

The sports bar and grill off of Lee Highway was only closed for the night and will be open tomorrow, said an employee. He declined to say why the restaurant was closed because the manager was not there.

There were at least five people milling about inside the restaurant last night, despite it being closed.

The closure comes amid rumors that changes are afoot at Thirsty Bernie. Two tipsers have told ARLnow.com that the neighborhood sports bar is changing management and its format.

“Thirsty Bernie… is abandoning the sports bar concept in favor of a ‘lounge’ theme,” a tipster said. Another tipster described the new format as a “nightclub.”

So far we have been unable to reach the restaurant’s owner for confirmation.

Three firefighters will see if they can handle the heat in the kitchen as they take on three local chefs in an annual cooking competition and fundraiser in Clarendon.

The Chiefs v. Chefs 4: Too Hot to Handle challenges chefs and firefighters to cook three courses using ingredients found in the Arlington Food Assistance Center’s pantry. The competition will be held from 6:30-9:30 p.m. at the Clarendon Ballroom (3185 Wilson Blvd) on Oct. 28.

“Pick your favorite team and watch three of the area’s most scintillating chefs go toe-to-toe with three of Arlington’s hottest firehouse cooks in a three-course throw-down! This infamous on-stage battle is on fire as each team tries to impress our panel of judges and set their taste buds ablaze,” AFAC said in a press release.

This year, Chef Josu Zubikarai of SER Restaurant, Chef Tom Madrecki of Chez le Commis and Chef Jesus Guzman from the U.S. Navy will take on three different firefighters. The competitors will battle to impress judges Chef George Pagonis of Kapnos Taverna, Becky Krystal from the Washington Post and Scott Brodbeck of ARLnow.com to win the “Golden Eggplant.”

“This competition is going to be a challenge, but it’s nothing like the one faced every day by hundreds of Arlington residents. It’s on us to raise awareness and help AFAC continue to deliver positive results in our local community. As a chef, what better way to do that than to show the judges how you can transform commonplace ingredients into something interesting, complex and unique,” Madrecki said in a statement. “It’s going to be an uphill battle against the chiefs, but no matter the results, the real winner will be Arlington families who need greater access to nutritious food.”

Tickets for the competition start at $100, with a package of two tickets selling for $175. Proceeds will go to helping AFAC feed Arlington families.