qualify for the Boston Marathon

I’ve got a ways to go. I ran my first marathon in 4:38, which means that I have an hour to take off of my time. Ha! Baby steps. :) My first goal is sub-4:00, which I think I can manage by the time my next marathon rolls around (Grandma’s Marathon in June). I didn’t really train well for my first marathon, so I think that if I can stick to 50 mile weeks and lose a little bit of weight, I should be golden for Grandma’s. Then it’ll just be fine-tuning. Hoping by 2011, I’ll be able to qualify.

I’ve run 3 marathons so far, improving my time with each race. My PR is 4:01:43. I would love to qualify for the Boston marathon – it would be such an accomplishment. For that, I’d need to run a 3:40:00.

I think this is doable if I stick to a training program, and if I cross-train. I think if I started strengthening my core, doing speed workouts, and eating a healthier diet I could really improve my time.

There’s a marathon here in Korea in March,and I believe it’s a BQ race. I’ll have to check this, and make a decision whether I’m going to work towards this goal or not.

That’s the number that keeps floating in my head, I think I have that time ingrained in my memory. I’ve done two marathons and one Ironman, but still have a lot of time to take off to get in 3:10 range. I figure it will take three or four more marathons with more steady and serious training to finish in the time needed. But this is also one of the goals that I feel confident I will achieve, just with time and determination.

Well, I was training to qualify for Boston but I came down with a pretty bad case of Achilles tendinitis. It pretty much put a stop to my regular weekly mileage about 2 months ago. I was already registered to run a marathon in Huntsville, AL so over the last couple of months I’ve just focused on doing my scheduled long runs every other weekend but haven’t done any speed work/tempo runs over the last 8 weeks because it really aggravates this lingering tendinitis issue. The marathon is this weekend, so I’m just going to start at my BQ pace and try and hang on. I ran my first last year at 3:24, so I need to shave 14 minutes…we’ll see!

The qualifying time for my age group is about 30 minutes faster than my time for the last marathon I ran. I need to shave better than a minute per mile off of my pace…ambitious.

I ran the marathon this past Sunday and I was .48 of a second away from qualifying for Boston. Surprisingly enough, I’m still quite happy with my 3 + minute personal record and the performance that I left out on that pavement in San Antonio. I know that if I can keep this attitude up there will be NO STOPPING ME next time. I just have to keep working harder on getting those sub 8 minute miles. Somebody please give me props for this!!!

Since I began marathon running in 2006, this has always been a goal of mine. It is the big American race. The one that all marathoners aspire to if they are fast enough to race it. I love Boston and I want to see the Kennedy library when I visit Boston next time. Hopefully, the next time I visit I will be running in the Boston Marathon. To qualify, I need to take 4 minutes off my marathon time. I need to run 26.2 miles in 3 hours 40 minutes and 59 seconds.

I ran my first half this year, so I might have the cart before the horse on this one! Doesn’t matter, if I can’t see it then I can’t achieve it. Here I come…

I ran the San Diego marathon on June 1st and somehow managed to PR by almost 6 minutes with a time of 3:38:08. I qualified yay!

Just had a think about this – to see if it’s too hard. I don’t think it is. My intention is to set the time in 2009.

3hr 10mins is current cutoff for my age group (http://www.bostonmarathon.org/BostonMarathon/Qualifying.asp).

McMillan running calculator (http://www.mcmillanrunning.com/cgi-bin/calculations.pl) says this time reverts to a 11:10 for 3km – I’m about 20 – 30 seconds off there. 40:29 for 10km – I’m about 2 minutes off there. And 1:30 for a half marathon – I’m just over 2 minutes off there.

I’m not saying it’s going to be easy, but I can at least see that my PBs are not too far from the mark. I just need to get fit again soon and work hard on marathon training.

Plus, Boston Athletics add 5 minutes to the 35-39 age group qualifying time. So it may get slightly easier for me in four years time if I remain fit and well. ;-)