Getting back to Boston

Not quite sure what to make of tonight's run, Felt on Saturday I was coming down with one of my usual post-marathon URIs, plus it rained some, so skipped that day's run. Sunday didn't feel any better, maybe worse, and again decided discretion was the better idea at this point, only eight days out from a marathon and with nothing looming on the racing front. Again skipped last night, although I felt better. Tonight, decided to go ahead and run.

Went out about 8:45, after dinner with wife and son and catching up on some mail that long since needed to be sorted and dealt with. With wind chill in the teens, and the Garmin not charged up, decided to run by feel and hammer it because it was too cold out there to dawdle. I really thought during the run that I was roughly at Memphis MP; that's what the effort really felt like. So I got back from roughly 6.5 miles in 55 minutes. That's a nice pace, but not MP. I know that the JBH loop is considerably hillier, up and down, than anything I found in Memphis, but still the effort level on flat terrain felt very similar, and the legs really felt pretty good for 10 days out from a 26.2 PR.

I think, URI or not, three days off was probably a pretty good idea to accelerate the recovery from the race. It may allow me to avoid some of the dead-leg stuff I felt last Memphis '08 and after Newport.

Five nice and easy tonight. I was still quite sore this morning from last night's apparently-not-quite-MP run, so there was no thought of pushing anything hard tonight. Weather was quite a bit more comfortable; ditched the gloves and was quite all right in short sleeves and track pants. Coulda ditched the headband too, probably. Probably just gonna do easy runs for the next couple of weeks, with no race in the immediate future. Just maintain base level of fitness until I pick a target 5K or something. I was reading Hudson's chapter on 5K training last night briefly and will peruse it further as a target race is selected.

Taking the night off in favor of early bedtime after a poor night's sleep last night, but will do some further ruminating here.

Big debate on RWOL about Boston 2010 filling up early and what if anything should be done about it. The marathoning snobs tend to push for tougher standards, which makes no sense to me. If there are 40,000 qualifying times in the US each year, but only 20,000 people get into Boston, that tells me that the standards are not a big issue here; there are plenty of people whose times are well below BQ minimums that aren't running. Others want a bigger field, which makes more sense if the logistics are there. My sense, not having run in Boston yet but having read reports and seen the streets in Hopkinton and Ashland firsthand, is that there's not really any place to put extra runners.

Jim Fortner, known on RWOL as Jim2, has done a lot of research on BQ, using data culled from MarathonGuide.com over a three-year period in more than 200 American marathons run on USATF-certified courses with more than 100 finishers. His figures are that in those races, about 10.7% of all finishing times meet BQ standards. However, he does not include people like me, who are still in one age group but have run a qualifying time for the next age group. He thinks this factor may increase the number of qualifiers by 10-20% in certain age groups. But even at that, you're talking 11-12% of all finishes meeting the BAA standards.

Eleven or 12 percent. Not many, and because some fortunate/talented people run multiple BQ times each year, actually may overstate how many people are fast enough to get in. That's why Boston is such a prize to marathoners -- because it's hard to get there. It may have been SLIGHTLY easier for me as a 49-year-old than it would have been as a 30-year-old, but it's still hard. Jim2's research shows that Memphis from 2006-2008 averaged a 14.5% BQ rate for male finishers -- better than many, but still only one out of seven finishers. This year, only 11.2%. Newport's men averaged 26.5% (but that was with the old, unintentionally short course; with the new, 26.2 mile course in 2009, it was 25.4% -- and I was in the other 74.6%). Also, in 2008, 15% of men's finishes in the 45-49 bracket (mine) were fast enough to get in, the highest percentage of any age group below age 65, which undoubtedly reflects that 10-minute jump from the 40-44 qualifying time to the 45-49 time. The 50-54 group, where I will be running in 2011, has a rate of 13.4%.

So, by various BQ-related measurements, I am now in the top quintile of American male marathoners, perhaps higher. I guess what prompted this topic was an old article from Running Times I came across last night. It followed three decent marathoners as they worked to qualify for Boston in, I think, 2006. All three trained very diligently, but only one of the three qualified for Boston. And, in a pre-publication update, although the other two made further progress, neither one had reached their goal. I trained diligently, also had my missteps as the two nonqualifiers in the RT article did, but I got there.

Am I crazy? Running 11 miles, 13 days after a marathon on very little sleep, in a singlet and shorts? Probably. But that's what I did tonight (any typos can be blamed on frozen fingers). Planned to do 5 or so, but legs felt good, it didn't seem TOO cold (yet) so I just kept going,

Legs were quite stiff this morning after last night's 11, so decided to go out in the snowflakes (sparse, but snowflakes none the less) for an easy 4. Put the tights on for the first time this season. Wished Santa had already brought me a balaclava or whatever those face/head coverings are called; the wind and my cheeks do not get along. Anyway, took about 2.5 miles to get the kinks out, so the run achieved its purpose.