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Archive for September, 2014

Who Moved My Cookie?

Posted in Marathon, Race goals, Running, tagged , , , , on September 24, 2014| 22 Comments »

Trust me when I say that I’m not sitting here feeling sorry for myself, but you better believe I feel tremendously disappointed that my Boston qualifying time of 3:44:26 did not gain me entry into the 2015 Boston Marathon. That honor belongs to people who qualified by the qualifying standard minus 1:02 or faster, not people like me who qualified by -0:34. I had an inkling this would happen, but I had no idea how disappointed I would feel when I didn’t gain entry. Let’s just say I’ve shed a few tears and leave it at that. I had hopes that the BAA would be generous in light of the success of the race last year with such a large field, and it would expand the field to let all qualifiers in this year. No such luck. I am one of the 1,947 time qualifiers who won’t gain entry based on marathon performance.

That leaves me thinking about what to do next. I feel lost without a race on the calendar. I’m not that excited about racing again but I know it does me good to have a goal on the horizon. I might run the half at Canyon City in November and/or the full at Surf City in February or LA in March. But this idea of chasing a Boston qualifying time has lost most of its luster. I’ve worked a full two years toward that goal. To qualify and then not get in feels like someone told me I could have a cookie if I ate my peas, and I ate my peas but I didn’t get the cookie.

Have you run Surf City or LA? Any recommendations?

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Toes Crossed

Posted in Marathon, Racing, Running, tagged , , , , , , on September 18, 2014| 6 Comments »

Have you been following the news? I don’t mean the ISIS crisis or whether Scotland will vote for independence. I mean The Boston Marathon registration news.

The latest from the Boston Athletic Association (BAA):

Registration for qualifiers has closed…. Due to the amount of submissions received during this period from all time qualifiers, registration will remain closed and will not reopen on a later date. All of these individuals who submitted an application for entry will receive notification by the middle of next week.

That means that the BAA received at least 8,000 applications in this final week of registration and it is possible that some qualifiers will not get in. Last year the cutoff was qualifying time minus one minute 38 seconds. It is hard to make predictions for this year because of the exceptionally high interest last year and the larger overall field that year, but it is clear that my -0:34 is cutting it extremely close either way. I have a slight bit of hope that the BAA will be generous and end up letting everyone in (in light of the success of the race last year with an even larger field). Really there is no use in speculating. I just need to keep my fingers and toes crossed and I’ll know for sure by Wednesday, September 24!

In the meantime I’m distracting myself with a little 200-mile relay race this weekend with the Ragnaritas!

Design by teammate Sara Aroz and photo stolen from teammate Renee Christensen!

Design by teammate Sara Aroz and photo stolen from teammate Renee Christensen!

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Fingers Crossed

Posted in Marathon, Running, tagged , , , , , , , , on September 15, 2014| 11 Comments »

This morning I submitted my application for acceptance into the 2015 Boston Marathon.

Boston Marathon application

As you might know, priority is given to the runners who qualified with the most time to spare: those who met the qualifying standard by age and gender by 20 minutes or more, then 10 minutes or more, then 5 minutes or more. The Boston Athletic Association posted an update this morning after registration closed for those fastest qualifiers last week:

Approximately 16,000 application submissions from the fastest among all qualifiers were submitted during the first week of registration (September 8-13). At the conclusion of the next phase of registration, the B.A.A. will accept up to 8,000 additional qualifiers.

So today the field opened up for 8,000 additional qualifiers from the group of runners like me who met the qualifying standard by age and gender by less than five minutes. However, these entries are not accepted on a first-come, first-served basis; priority is given among these entries for those who qualified by the largest margin (meaning that someone who qualified with 35 seconds to spare gets priority over me and my 34 precious seconds). Registration remains open for this group through Wednesday September 17 at 5 p.m. ET. (and then re-opens later to all qualifiers if spots still remain.)

Now the waiting begins. The email confirmation of my application stated that acceptances for this latest group of entries will be sent out in October, although I suspect we might hear sooner than that. I think chances are good that all of us “squeakers” will get accepted, but I’m not considering it a done deal by any means.

In the meantime I am taking time to celebrate my marathon finish time, 3:44:26, whether or not it is fast enough to get me accepted into the 2015 Boston Marathon. I realized that in my stupor in the days after the race I didn’t even acknowledge the fact that 3:44:26 is a personal record for me by 8 minutes and 16 seconds! That is pretty significant, even if it only boils down to 18-19 seconds faster per mile over the 26.2 miles. For someone like me who did not start running until she was staring down 40 years of age, and was 4 days shy of 43 years of age on race day, it’s a big deal to run 26.2 miles at 7 miles per hour. Even now, after having gone the distance at that pace, I can hardly even imagine setting the treadmill for 7.0 and running for 3 hours and 44 minutes and change. You know, the other day I was talking to a friend who is training for his first full marathon coming up this October in Long Beach. He said he finally understood the appeal of marathon running: the amazing sense of satisfaction you can achieve by challenging yourself to do something you couldn’t have done a year ago or even a month ago. It’s definitely worth celebrating.

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Runners to the Rescue

Posted in Inspiration, tagged , , , , on September 11, 2014| 2 Comments »

On September 11, 2001, I was in the second month of pregnancy with my first child. I remember wondering what kind of world I was bringing a child into. Thirteen years later, I think it is fitting to tell a story that reminds us that there are good people in the world.

Yesterday I dropped off one of my children at her gymnastics lesson and headed out for a run. If I’m a very good girl, I can squeeze in 4.5 hilly miles in 50 minutes. It’s not easy to do, especially since I much prefer running in the early morning rather than in the late afternoon. But I like to get in hill work at least once per week, and I like to take advantage of the time that my daughter is in her lesson, rather than wasting it by driving home and back to pick her up. So I set off on foot and huffed and puffed through the 93 degree weather. Yes, 93 degrees.

I only made it eight minutes into the run though, when I happened upon an elderly woman who called to me for help. She was on the sidewalk, clinging to a wall, clearly struggling to walk in the heat. Her car had run out of gas a little way down the road, and when she could not tell AAA her exact location, she set off on foot for help (without her cell phone, purse, or any water). Thank goodness another runner, Carlos, soon came up behind me, and together we were able to support the woman enough to assist her back to her car. Another driver saw us all on the side of the road, and when she stopped we asked her if she had any water. She set off to the nearest store to buy some for each of us.

I called AAA again and gave the representative our location, and then Carlos and I stayed with the woman until the service van arrived with a couple of gallons of gas. During that time, we tried to assess the woman’s physical and mental condition. At first we believed she just needed some cold water and a little rest and then she would be fine to drive again. However, the more we talked with her, the more concerned we became. (I didn’t think she showed signs of heat exhaustion or heat stroke, but perhaps I should have been more concerned about that. If I thought she was in immediate physical danger I would have called 911, but she kept insisting she was fine, and just needed to rest a bit). Carlos and I decided that we would have the AAA driver fill up her tank with the two gallons of gas and then lead her to the gas station down the road just to be safe.

After waiting for half an hour, I had to run (literally) back to pick up my daughter, so Carlos stayed with the woman until the AAA guy arrived a few minutes later. I drove back 10 minutes after that to make sure everything was okay, and saw that the AAA guy was there with the woman. Carlos told me that unfortunately the woman was not in any better condition to drive, and the AAA driver made the assessment that she required a tow truck to pick up the car and take her home. In retrospect I wonder whether we should have called the police to have an officer assess the situation, because the longer it went on the less clear it was that she had all her mental faculties, and the less clear it was whether that was due to the heat alone or due to a more serious decline in her mental health prior to getting lost and running out of gas. I was reassured by the fact that she recited her address correctly (based on her driver’s license) and she insisted she knew the way home, and at this point I just have to trust that the AAA man and the tow truck driver did what they needed to do to make sure that she got there safely (and got her additional help if she truly needed it).

When I finally got home at 5:30 p.m., I hopped on the treadmill to finish off the remaining 2.3 miles of my run. It wasn’t easy, and it took me a long time to wind down from the day’s adventures. In the end, I am grateful that within the space of half an hour, four people had taken time out of their day to assist an elderly woman in a crisis. And I’m happy to have met Carlos, who will be running the LA Marathon as his first full marathon in March. I’m sure our paths will cross again, and I can rest assured knowing that good people like him are out running, patrolling the streets, ready to help anyone in need.

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