Brutal, brutal day. The only positive is that I did not DNF. I had visions of going very close to 3 hours all winter, but a cold last week and then the heat laid me out. If it had been any other race I would of tucked my tail and found somewhere to hide. But I was in Boston by myself and figured what else was I going to do for the rest of the afternoon. I got my finishers medal and wore my shirt to work on Tuesday. I am half embarrassed from my time and half proud of walking 9+ miles to finish. Is it determination and guts or stubbornness and stupidity? This will take some time to get over. Very tough mentally.
My company decided to have its sales meeting in Boston, starting the same afternoon as the Boston marathon. I didn’t get to see the race, but got to see a lot of runners before and after the race (our hotel, the Sheraton, was just around the corner from the finish line). AWESOME job, those of you who did it! Was pretty exciting to be in Boston during the event. All the runners looked soooo exhausted post-race. Can’t believe the heat that day!
Wanted to mention that what was also cool is that a lot of the wheel chair racers stayed at our hotel. I had no idea that wheel technology had gotten so advanced on the wheel chairs! Carbon wheels, three spoke wheels - just a lot of neat-looking wheel sets!
Congrats to all who tried to race!
Since I am from the northeast US I would agree Boston is a tough race to try to run a fast time, but that does not mean you shouldn’t run it! I spend most of the winter on skis, so a spring race is even harder for me. But it had been a fantasy for me to run Boston almost as long as I have been running. So when I qualified (at a fall race), there was no turning back. Since my training was limited, I just did slow runs, enough so I could finish comfortably and not worry about my time. I was just a spectator who happened to be wearing a race #. I had a great day and would reccomend this approach to anyone!
My best marathon was in Bermuda in the “heat” of January, coming from sub-zero training in New York. Go figure.
Are Boston qualifying times good for two years? I qualified in my AG last Nov. in New York. Is it good through Boston 2005? I might give it a shot if it is.
Speaking of hot, it was 34 degrees C. here today. That’s 93.2 degrees F. for you Yanks. Pretty hot for April.
Boston has a 15 month qualifying window. Therefore, any race run since October 2003 will qualify for the 2005 race. There are more details at www.bostonmarathon.org (the regular web site will be up in a couple of days).
Martin
This year’s Boston heatfest reports reinforce my awe of fast, and even not so fast, Ironman runs at Kona and other hot IM distance races.
An interesting note: Julie Spencer, the top American woman finisher (16 th) is a phy ed teacher at my son’s former grade school. Her time (2:54) was almost 25 minutes faster than her Boston time last year. Not quite world class but a great performance given the heat.