AM - 8.5 miles up to work, easy. PM - 8.5 miles home, also easy. I was looking through the historical data for OT standards and # of qualifiers yesterday, and ended up making this chart: 1980-2012 Olympic Trials Marathon History. For the most part the men's standards have remained consistent, getting slightly harder over the years... while the women's standards have jumped around all over the place. I like to visualize how things have changed over the years. A lot of people though that tightening the standards and getting rid of downhill courses after 2008 would cause the # of qualifiers to drop, but the opposite actually happened... it was probably the strongest cycle since the early 1980s and 2012 was the fastest OT marathon ever. Now that the bar has been raised again, it will be interesting to see what happens. I suspect (and hope!) that athletes will rise to the new challenge and it will end up being a very good thing for the sport. Also - Camille Herron just posted some more information about the USATF meeting, trials standards, and future sites of US Championships. She was keeping me in the loop via email during the meeting over the weekend. Good stuff here, worth checking out if you are interested in how this whole process works. It looks like there will be some new additions to the national circuit, including some team championships at 8K/10K. Very cool... I think FRB could field some teams that could compete very well against the top-notch programs/clubs.
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