Boston Qualified

A decade later, a dream comes true

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Let’s start at the end since there’s nothing more fun about running a marathon than crossing the finish line. Although The Cheap Marathon was relatively flat, the race organizers threw in a special treat with a brutal little downhill followed by an equally unfair uphill just before the closing stretch. Since the course was a double out-and-back, all the runners knew we’d have to deal with this section one final time before finishing the race. 

Having stayed true to my patient gameplan for the entirety of the event, I figured Mile 25.8 was finally time to make a move. Flying down the hill with reckless abandon – FULL SEND as the ultra runners like to say – I leaned into gravity and cranked with everything I had on the uphill, passing a half-dozen runners before entering the final chute. 

For the first time all day, I allowed myself to go to that special place where limits are merely the byproducts of one’s imagination. In retrospect, it was kind of surprising that it took this long to go to the well. Equally surprising was that I really didn’t need to go there at all to achieve my goal of securing a qualifying time for the Boston Marathon. Still, I’m glad I did because I finally got a half-decent marathon picture to go with my BQ.   

Hammer time.

I ran my first marathon in the fall of 2014 with the singular goal of qualifying for the Boston Marathon and failed by seven minutes. I ran my second marathon in the fall of 2016 with the very same vision and failed again, this time by an even wider margin. After that, I stopped even thinking about BQs until this past winter. 

How do you sum up a 10-year quest in a sentence? Perhaps it’s this: After all those years thinking I couldn’t get it done, finally securing a BQ felt … normal. It wasn’t something that happened by accident or divine intervention. It was the product of hard work, dedication, and an excellent training plan. You know, the boring stuff. 

There’s no secret sauce, no special workout or electrolyte drink that will unlock your potential and fuel your dreams. At the end of the day, there’s just you, doing the best you can with what you got, day after day and run after run. So on race day, all those long winter miles stack up like firewood, keeping your inner flame burning from start to finish. 

It was cold and rainy when the race started, but no colder or rainier than I had experienced during training. The run was oddly harder than I anticipated, but not so hard that it made me want to quit like road marathons have in the past. Certainly, nothing that happened on Saturday was in any way as physically daunting as finishing a long training run after nearly shattering my elbow. 

Except for that little flurry at the end, there was no dramatic denouement, no defining moment when everything seemed to be on the line. Instead, the race proceeded in exceptionally normal fashion. It took a mile or two to find a flow and then it dawned on me that all I had to do was continue running 7:25 splits and my goal would take care of itself.  

Whenever things started getting a little grim (miles 8, 15 and 20, specifically,) I’d simply remind myself to keep executing and those negative thoughts would dissipate. Even the motivational mantra I had saved – Don’t be denied – wasn’t nearly as effective as simply reminding myself to continue executing. 

It helped that I quickly gave up on loftier ambitions (like going under 3:10,) without a fight. The only goal that mattered was getting a BQ, and that’s exactly what I kept doing, step by step and mile by mile. Even when my pace started getting a little sluggish toward the end, I never panicked or deviated from the path I had chosen. 

Steady and consistent, so unlike me 10 years ago.

Let us pause here and offer some praise for Avery Collins, who set me up for success with an incredible training strategy. Avery also laid out a simple race plan that was fueled by two bottles of Skratch hydration mix plus two Awesomesauce gels, along with the extremely clutch suggestion to pack salt caps. 

While the temperature stayed cool, the humidity was off the charts and I was able to avoid the cramping issues that affected a few of the other runners in the field. “Run with your ultra wisdom,” Avery told me during our final pre-race chat, and I have to believe all those lessons from the past few years paid off big time on the road. 

To be sure, it’s not like I was the only one who ran a smart race. There were dozens of other runners, many of them older folks like me, who came to the race prepared to do the exact same thing I did. All of us knew exactly what we needed to do to execute our individual gameplans. 

As a testament to the power of wisdom and experience, I started the race in 14th place in my age group and finished the race in 14th place in my age group. It was also telling that a BQ performance didn’t even rate in the top half of male runners aged 44-49. We may be old, but we’ve got brains as well as heart. 

I don’t know what “Agegraded time” means, but I’ll take it!

Speaking of age groups, it’s quite possible that my finishing time of 3:17:44 won’t actually be fast enough to secure a spot in the Boston Marathon field. In 2024, runners needed to run more than five minutes faster than what the BAA calls the “minimum standard” to be accepted into the race. 

You know what? I don’t really care. The goal wasn't to run Boston. I’ve done that and it was fine. The goal was to make good on a 10-year promise I made to myself. 

Yeah, I did.