missed it by 39 seconds (Read 865 times)

Luke I have a real problem with the timing for this race. As an example--I crossed the finish line at 3:23 and change. My chip time should have been about 30 seconds faster then that yet I ended up with a 3:25--go figure. Not only that but the mile splits were off. Mile 6 in Windsor was a full half mile short. I wore a Garmin 305 and the guy who I was running with at the time had one on also. We just looked at each other in disbelief... You my friend have a real reason to be pissed and grounds to raise if you decide to apply for Boston. Oh yea--here's one more. My boys ran the mini-marathon 5K along with many other runners. They were all disappointed in their time because--you guessed it, the course was long. Read about it on the website. Doug Kurtis said that the lead pace car went one way and the police car went another thereby diverting the runners. This is a minor league marathon that has made much progress in entrants recently, but it's these types of mistakes that will prevent it from becoming much more. We cannot control some things like wind and weather, but timing should be the least of our concerns.

MarathonMan - that's very interesting about the timing. Do you know of others that felt the timing was off? How about the distance for the marathon - did your Garmin agree? My watch-time was about 2 seconds faster than the official time, but I'm not sure I punched it at the right spot. I remember going over the timing mats at the start, but then running a little further to reach the overhead "START" banner. Presumably the mats were the correct starting point, not the banner. And what website were you referring to? Anyhow, enough whining! I should have run a little faster and it wouldn't have been an issue! I was also looking at your training log. I saw that you ran your long runs pretty close to marathon pace, not the conventional wisdom of 1-2 minutes slower. I also ran long runs at pace, training for this marathon, and also tried to run long after a hard workout. Also, I saw you only tapered for two weeks. I did the same thing. Last year for my first marathon, I ran about a minute slower than pace on long runs, took a day off before those, and tapered over three weeks. I didn't feel nearly as strong as this time. Any thoughts?

Runningluke, A friend of mine ran into a gal who had the same issue. I can get her name if you want. The Garmin lost satellite reception in the tunnel, so did not get full distance read. After I posted I realized that the Doug Kurtis quote was from Monday morning's Free Press not the website--sorry. The reason I ran long runs at pace is because it's worked for me in the past. I really needed more fast runs...next time I plan to follow my previous race prep which centered around heart rate training, long hard runs and lots of track work. There are no shortcuts in this game. In fact, I have come to the conclusion that there is a direct relationship between post race pain and race time--i.e. slow time , more pain...in more than one way! Ouch.

Boston will accept an additional 59 seconds over the qualifying time. Like 3:36:39 still qualifies. I looked that up a week or so ago when a friend of ours missed is qualifying goal. Check out their webpage. http://www.bostonmarathon.org/BostonMarathon/Qualifying.asp Awesome job! Teresa

I thought about it some more and decided not to apply, since I don't want to whine/weasel my way in (if they'd even accept my lame begging and pleading). I want to be a "real qualifier" (cue the sappy, inspirational music...)

I hope you do apply anyway. You're a "REAL" qualifier if they tell you you've qualified. Period. It's their call. And if there really was a problem with the time, you may BE a "real" qualifier. They let all kinds of saps run that thing that are nowhere near actually qualified (politicians, celebrities, assorted dorks, etc.). You deserve a spot. Or at least you deserve a chance to let THEM tell you that you don't deserve a spot.