No running tonight, just some thoughts on what has happened. I sacrificed a lot to do what I did Saturday. So many hours, so many miles (I estimate nearly 4,800 miles since July 8, 2007, when this process began), so many pairs of shoes and socks and shorts and singlets and bottles of Gatorade and GU and even an extremely unpalatable jar of HEED. So much pasta and oatmeal. Running in the dark and the rain and the snow and the summer heat. Running 16 miles on a treadmill. Running 22 miles in 75-degree weather. All in quest of something that most people don't understand. They can't grasp running a marathon, even if they know it's 26.2 miles. Some of them can't grasp running ONE mile. Not only running that far, but competing, trying to get faster, trying for a goal -- a goal that says I'm not just mediocre, that I'm someone that other runners can respect and even emulate. It is estimated that 450,000 people in the United States finish a marathon each year. No way to accurately estimate how many of those are one and done, and how many do multiples (like my two per year for the past two years). Obviously, there are way more one and dones, people checking an item off their bucket list, than there are people like Larry Macon, the guy who ran 105 marathons in 2008. Let's say just for the sake of argument that 400,000 people complete marathons. If there are enough people like me, not to mention Larry Macon, that's a little high. If it's almost all one and done, it's a little low. Of those, 20,000 can qualify for Boston; 5,000 get in by other means, charity entries, local governments, sponsor bibs, special invites. That means, given my unscientific estimate, that 5% of American marathoners are going to run in Boston in a given year. Jim Fortner, who may have done more research on American marathoning than anyone else, estimates that, taking Boston itself out of the equation because of its size and the fact that 80% of the field has already proven itself capable of BQ times, slightly over 10% of American marathon finishes meet BQ standards. (Jim's numbers do not take into account people who did exactly what I have done -- post a time as a 49-year-old that will qualify me for Boston in a year when I move up to the next age group -- so they may be a little low. He believes that in certain divisions, that factor may increase the number of qualifiers by up to 20% -- which would still only increase the BQ rate to 11-12%). His research showed that in 226 US marathons with at least 100 finishers on USATF certified courses (again excluding Boston) over a three-year period, there were an average of 39,000 BQ times per year. Since some of those are very talented runners who post multiple BQ times, you can extrapolate that probably 10% or less of marathon finishes are BQs. And of those, less than half actually run Boston, because of the foreign runners whose only competition on US soil is on Patriots Day. You start to understand now why Boston sold out so quickly the last two years -- perhaps 40-44,000 BQ times and only 20,000 available spots. High demand, low supply, first come, first serve. My application goes in on the first possible day, I promise you. I am not going to be shut out. Anyway, through hard work (and perhaps a tiny amount of talent from which I managed to scrape the detritus of years of neglect), I have managed to wedge myself into that 10%, and, if I get in early enough for the first come first serve, one of those coveted 20,000 spots. Stealing a line from the Marines, I am now one of the few and the proud. I am not mediocre. And I think other runners who are aware of what I have done, respect it. I may not be as fast as Ryan Hall or Sammy Wanjiru, or even my sub-3 Facebook friends Leah Thorvilson and Chuck Engle, but I'm a competent, competitive marathoner, in the upper quartile of my age group even in relatively big races like Memphis, and in the upper quintile overall. My family has also sacrificed for me. I have spent hundreds of hours on the road and the treadmill that I could not spend with them. I regret that my family is unable to share running with me, but due to physical limitations, they cannot participate. I think that, because of running, I have become easier to live with, and my wife has told me that she agrees. Not that I'm EASY to live with, just easiER. And my single-minded focus on this quest has added some stresses for my family as well. I wish in retrospect that I had approached this in a more well-rounded way, but it's too late now. I did what I did, and I have to live with the consequences -- and make amends for them. And that's where I am, moving on from where I am to where I want to be in ways other than getting my time into BQ territory. | 