Sports

The Boston Marathon is on Monday and for runners it will be televised. The Boston Marathon has the most unique position. Of all the marathons it is the most famous marathon. If you can say that you have run Boston other runners know you are an established marathon runner. The reason for this status is that you have to run a qualifying time at an established AAU marathon the previous year. Originally in the 1960’s runners had to run the marathon in 4:00 hours. You have to realize during that time there was not the popularity of running that it is today. As the race became more popular the qualifying time dropped to 3:30 hours (8:00 minute pace). Over the years changes have been made to accommodate the increase in runners. And the year Katheryn Switzer ran as the officially registered first female the race had to add women’s qualifying times. Up until that year the Boston Marathon was for male runners only. Today almost half of the runners are female. My first marathon was the Houston Tenneco Marathon and my time was 3:45 hours. One of the first questions I had after the race was, “Are you going to run Boston?” Knowing that I would have to run over a minute faster per mile I never dreamed of running Boston. But after a few more marathons my times were around 3:20 hours. Now a 3:10 qualifying time was not that far off. I ran 10K races on Saturdays for a fast time and a long 20+ run on Sunday for training. A day of intervals on the track to get a faster time in the middle of the week was a regular schedule.