I was recalling some of the highlights from watching the Boston Marathon a couple of weeks ago. Boston and New York are the largest marathons in the United States and seem to be the most recognized. Boston is different in the fact that you have to run a qualifying time to enter.
When I ran Boston I had to run under 3:10 hours. It is now about 30 minutes slower to make that age group. But, when you still have 40,000 runners run a race, those in the back can’t even get to the starting line for 10 minutes or more. Most are there just so they can say they ran Boston.
Watching the lead runners it is hard to imagine how fast they are running with such ease. And the fact that runners have to run 26 miles-plus at that pace. There are many miles where the pace is under a 5-minute per mile time. It is interesting to watch as in the first portion of the race the lead group is fairly large. It gradually gets fewer and fewer as the miles add up. There is a large group of professional runners that can run close to that 5-minute pace for a few miles. The task is to run those 26 miles at that pace. That group gets smaller each mile and watching them run that fast for that distance is hard to comprehend. And the fact that they make it look so easy to run that fast is amazing.
