So the Boston Marathon announced changes to their registration process today. The big points are that 1) Registration will be held over 2 weeks and weigh in favor of faster runners & 2) The required qualifying times have all been reduced by 5 minutes. Both these points screw me over big time. I’m not the fastest runner and when I made qualifying for the Boston a life goal, I thought that maybe, JUST MAYBE, I could qualify this year by working my ass off and applying my efforts to speed. My two scheduled marathons in the fall were going to be my attempts.
Well, now there’s a couple of monkey wrenches in my plan. If I did qualify this fall, it was going to be by a slim margin because of the rate at which I’m trying to increase my speed. I’m a bigger guy and I can’t just go all out and qualify. I have to lose weight, lower my body fat percentage and take advantage of my power to weight ratio. It would take a LOT of effort and work to qualify. Now, well, as you can see 5 minutes is a LOT of time when you’re in my position. That’s probably an additional 6 months of training. It’s going from 7:15 min. miles to 7:04 min miles. Ugh.
The second wrench is the delightful registration process that favors faster athletes. Basically, depending on by how much faster you are than your required qualifying time, you get to register before anyone else. It’s a roll-out registration so each day opens up for slower runners until finally the last day is for people who JUST beat the time. That would be me. And I can only hope there are still spots left to register so I can compete with the thousands of other runners trying to register for the few coveted spots. Ugh x 1000.
Finally, the woman’s qualifying times for the Boston are 30 minutes slower than the mens. It’s been this way since 1977 when men didn’t think women could hang with them speed wise. Now women are kicking our asses. I believe the average time separation a woman and man finish a race now is 15-20min. Why can’t Boston change the 30 minute difference to something smaller? If you think about it, it’s now favoring women to qualify over men (not that there’s a problem with runnin ladies, rawr!) but it should be 100% equal across the board for everyone. Ugh x 1010941010923.
I understand what Boston is doing. They are making their already exclusive race even MORE exclusive and important. I dig that. I also dig that they are able to adapt to the running trends, changing some of their traditions and rules. Obviously I’m bummed because I’ve been working towards a BQ time for a long time and now I have to reevaluate. But I’m not giving up. I’ll consider it a speed bump in my running career. It’s just a speed bump that’ll take quite a lot of work to overcome. Can I do it? Stay tuned.
Check out the BAA’s official press release HERE.
Tags: 5k, bean town, boston, boston marathon, changes, elite, ethan newberry, fast runner, ginger runner, half marathon, how fast to qualify for boston, marathon, qualifying time, qualifying times, race, registration changes