The Boston Marathon hype has been all over social media this past week and especially this week-end as the runners were gearing up for today’s race. Yes, Boston is back on its traditional schedule where it is ran on Patriot’s day each year. Changes in the marathon schedule had been made due to covid over the last couple of years. I woke up really early just to watch the race on TV. Exciting!
The Boston Marathon is unique in that to participate, you have to actually qualify by running another marathon that is certified as a Boston qualifier (BQ). Findmymarathon.com is one of many websites that lists qualifying marathons. This website gives info about the course of each race and also list the percentage of people that have qualified for Boston. Keep in mind that not everybody that is running those marathons are trying to qualify. Also, make sure the race is still a BQ prior to signing up for it. And Boston does include a number of slots for charity runners who raise a specified amount of money for the charity, but those runners still have to prove that they can run a marathon in under 6 hours.
Qualifying times are based on gender and age on the day of the marathon.
However, just because you meet the qualifying standard doesn’t neccesarily mean you will get into Boston. This year is the first year since 2012 that everybody who registered actually got in with their qualifying time (mostly related to covid restrictions, vaccinations, and lack of qualifying races). In 2012, a new registration process began due to the number of runners wanting to get into Boston. This change allowed faster runners to register first and subsequently some runners did not get entry even though they qualified. There is a limit of 30,000 participants. In 2021, you had to beat your cut off time (a time below the qualifying time) by almost 8 minutes (7:47)! That is a lot of time when the qualifying times are already fast!
So if you want to qualify for Boston, you have to run faster than your qualifying time. But having to run faster means increasing your pace per mile obviously. At 62 years old, I would need to run 9 minutes and 55 seconds per mile just to qualify but to have at least a 10 minute buffer, I should run a 9:33 pace to finish in 4 hours and 10 minutes. Even if I jump up to the next age group of 65-69 (it will take that long if not longer), I would need to run a 10:30 pace per mile just to qualify and a 10:07 pace per mile to give myself a 10 minute buffer. Actually, those latter paces are doable for me as long as I can keep running.
Who knows, I may need to run even faster than the 10 minute cut-off time I am allowing for. In today’s Boston Marathon, the top 9 women in my age group ran under 3 hours and 30 minutes! And the top 13 in the 65-69 age group ran under 4 hours. As of this posting, Boston list 450 female runners in my age group who have finished the marathon. And 179 in the 65-69 age group. There are some serious older runners out there to compete for a qualifying spot. But, I am sticking to my plan of gradually increasing my strengthening and running and just hope it leads to Boston one of these days! A dream that I have been working towards ever since I started running marathons.
I am well on my way…. (:
Running and Strengthening
- Monday Strengthening
- Tuesday Run 2 miles
- Wednesday Run 3 miles plus strengthening
- Thursday Run 2 miles
- Friday Strengthening
- Saturday Run 3 miles
- Sunday Rest (hung out with the kids for Easter)
I decided to run on the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail in Anchorage on Saturday. I thought it would be a nice change in scenery plus it doesn’t have all the hills. However, I also thought that most of the snow and ice would be gone. But, that wasn’t the case at all.
And the city looked pretty cool in the background.
Family Fun
We got to spend the day with the grandkids coloring and hiding Easter eggs. So much fun! Tylor was so good with helping Charlie find her eggs without telling her exactly where they were. And Maddy was quick in finding the “hard to find” eggs.
That’s our week. Hope everyone had a good week as well!
Happy Running
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