Yesterday I was surfing around and found this article about Boston Marathon registration, indicating that the registration process would start later, in October rather than September.
What I failed to notice is that this article was referring to 2010 registration for the 2011 marathon. You know, the one that they just ran on Monday? Next year's registration is going to be in September, not October.
In the meantime I had spun all sorts of ideas about running a fall marathon to try to qualify for Boston. On this morning's run with Mark, Marc, and Chad, I had convinced myself that I should not bother running the Steamboat Marathon and instead focus my training on an October race.
Then I got home and started looking around for confirmation of the date and couldn't find any additional information about next year's registration, and finally realized my error. Oops.
So that means I'll be running the Big Sur Marathon in a week and a half, and Steamboat five weeks after that. It's not ideal, but I think that gives me the best shot at putting up a good time for Boston. Any later in the summer and it's almost certainly going to be too hot to run a Boston qualifier.
As of right now I'd rate my chances of actually qualifying somewhere around 20 percent. I'd either need to run a spectacular race at Big Sur in my first-ever marathon on a very difficult course, or recover amazingly quickly and do it at Steamboat just five weeks later rather than the recommended six-month marathon recovery time!
If I don't qualify at either of those races, I'll take some time to reassess whether I want to train seriously for Boston. In 2013 the qualifying time will be 5 minutes faster, so it will be that much harder to qualify. On the other hand, I could pick a marathon on a faster course and give myself a better shot at qualifying. And I'd have more time to train for it. Fortunately, I don't have to make that decision right now.
Details of today's run are below.
Today was the shortest run I've done in months -- four miles at a 10-minute pace. Mark and Marc were both recovering from injuries, so they joined me for a very pleasant run. Chad and Rodney did the usual 6.3 mile loop and Chad met us for coffee afterwards. Tomorrow I'll be doing a 4-mile tempo run; I feel pretty good today so I think that will go well too.
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