As many of you have probably already seen, the Boston Athletic Association has changed it's registration process for the 2012 Boston Marathon to favor faster athletes and has made the qualifying standard faster for both men and women. As someone who is very far from qualifying for Boston- even under the old standard- I think it was a good change. The race sold out almost immediately this year, and that's not fair to people who don't walk around attached to a computer. Boston is about being an "elite" race and the changes are in line with those goals. It pains me to say it, but the 3:40 women's standard was probably always too easy. If you want to read the perspective of someone who would get to register on the first day, Jess wrote a post about this yesterday.
I honestly don't know if I'll ever run Boston. The truth is that I like the idea of marathons a lot more than actually running them. I enjoy training for and running the 10k distance- maybe up to a 1/2 marathon- but I'm just not that into the super long life consuming training you have to do to be good at the marathon. Maybe I'm lazy, but that's just the way I feel about it. I'm sure I'll get sucked back into the "real runners run marathons" mindset again and do another one, but I'm not sure I'll every be good at them. As a side note, just because I don't think the marathon is for me doesn't mean I don't have a ton of respect for people who do love training for the distance and excel at it.
On that note, it's 40 degrees, and I'm about to head out for a 6mi tempo run. It's foggy, so here's hoping that most of the sidewalk glaciers are in their liquid form and that those that aren't will be easily visible.
Have a good Thursday, all. Only two more busy work days until the weekend!
