Chasing the Boston Marathon Qualifying time - Former Runner

It happens to the best of us – we often get older and a bit more out of shape and then at some point we realize we want to recapture some of the youthfulness from when we were younger. What I am trying to recapture wasn’t really that long ago. In fact, what I want to recapture from my past is from less than 10 years ago.

I was a college cross country and track and field athlete. I certainly was not the greatest but I was good enough to often make the travel teams while attending a division one college. This experience feels like it was only last week. Despite this feeling so recent, I haven’t run more than 3 or 4 times in a month for the past 8 years. However, even in the face of not exercising much, I came up with a bright idea to run a Marathon in less than 5 months, and not just to complete it, but to qualify for the Boston Marathon in April 2018.

Therefore, in less than 5 months (June 3rd, 2017 to be exact) I need to go from not running at all to running a marathon in less than 3 hours and 5 minutes (7:03 per mile). I want to document and hopefully inspire some people to chase a goal of theirs. I’ve always wanted to run the Boston Marathon and I certainly could have qualified 10 years ago. However, it will be much more difficult now and I will have to be much more intelligent and patient with training to insure that I don’t have a huge setback with an injury.

The plan is start off running short distances and start off with lots of cross training in order to allow my body to become accustomed to the pounding of running once again. This will also force me to think more carefully about my health (aka sleep more and not bring so much work back home) and force me to eat much healthier.

I hope others will join me on this journey and I hope that anyone who reads this post will embark on their own journey and chase a goal or dream that they have continued to push aside for one reason or another. I will post at least once a week with a review of how training for the marathon is going.