Originally, our plan was to have a solid 2 year base of training with 4 - 5 half marathons run before focusing on qualifying for the Boston Marathon. Several reasons made sense to hold off until 2018.
For one, before this past April, I had yet to officially race a HM (although I logged multiple training runs of at least this distance). Two, I'm only ~18 months removed from coming out of a 15 year running 'retirement.'
What changed?
The qualifying standard for Boston has been getting increasingly faster. In 2015, you needed to run 1:02 under your BQ standard to earn a slot. For 2016, it was 2:28. 2:28! Boston has always been a prestigious marathon, but after the bombing everything changed. Boston was now THE marathon to run. Many runners were now focusing their training efforts on a BQ time.
Figuring the 2017 standard would get faster even still, it made sense to wait another year and focus on becoming more seasoned at racing longer distances (more so for me, as Christine has completed 5 marathons).
The 2016 Boston Marathon was run with unseasonably warm temperatures. These conditions are tough enough on their own; but throw in a course like Boston and the day gets pretty brutal. In the end, the number of re-qualifiers (BQ'ing during the Boston Marathon) was down significantly. So significantly in fact that the overall deviation from the BQ standard was greatly impacted. I followed along on the forums as the analysis was performed.
As May progressed, it became apparent that a near-scratch BQ time (that is, meeting the gender/age specific qualifying standard) would likely get you in for 2017. Not knowing how competitive 2018 and beyond would be, we decided this presented an opportunity to change our plans and focus on qualifying for 2017.
Next up, choosing the appropriate feeder race...
- J
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