So they opened a new, fancy aquatic center by my house, which apparenly is free for DC residents and just fabulously quiet eaaaarly in the mornings. 
above: the C&O Towpath at Great Falls National Park, where I've done a lot of self discovery mile after mile. It's one of my all-time favorite places. 
A lot of running lessons ring true for life, too ... particularly with an event like the marathon. I'm subscribed to Runner's World's "Daily Kick in the Butt" emails, a sort-of quote-of-the-day mailing every weekday. I save the good ones for later, when I might need 'em.
A lot of non-runners (read: non-crazies) look at these times and think, shit, RUN for more than THREE hours? They can't believe how long that is ... but anyone who's run more than a mile knows how FAST these times really are for mortals ... and that most of us who attempt 26.2 miles are out there a hell of a lot longer that 3.5 hours. I know of a guy who had been trying to qualify for years ... every year he'd try to get faster, and it never happened for him. Finally he was able to qualify when he broke into an older age bracket, allowing for a slower time! Yipes!
My qualifying time (at the age of 29 ... unless I have to wait till I'm 60) is 3:40, which amounts to running 26.2 miles at a pace of a little more than 8.5 minutes a mile. I think my fastest *mile* was 8.5 minutes ... maybe a little faster. But do 25.2 more of those? That's different.
So Boston's the gold standard -- you might say it separates serious runners from casual joggers. There are few other marathons that are merit-based like this one ... most of the races in the U.S., you just pay for, and if you can keep a pace of a 16-min-mile for the whole 26.2, you're in.
And yet Boston hasn't always been this exclusive.
There's a little irony to this story, one that Runner's World articulated succinctly in this year's pre-Boston coverage. I'm including an excerpt below (punctuated by images of the elite female runners at this year's race, including my FAVORITE marathonner, Kara Goucher, who took 3rd at Boston. These elite women ran the race in about 2.5 hours, translating into slightly more than 5.5 minute-mile paces. Incredible.).
Read the full Runner's World article here.
Through much of its 113-year history, the Boston Marathon amounted to a small annual spectacle attracting few runners beyond the eastern United States and Canada. Every Patriots' Day (a holiday little recognized outside the Boston area), runners would assemble in bucolic Hopkinton to begin the rolling trek to downtown Boston. Dressed in cotton singlets, shorts, and floppy sneakers, many with handkerchiefs tied around their neck or head, the ragtag gaggle of runners looked like Depression- era hobos. Local sportswriters adored the marathon; it let them unleash their most colorful phrases. "It must be spring," they wrote nearly every year. "The saps are running again." 
During the World War II years, Boston attracted as few as 67 runners; by 1965, the field had climbed to only 447. "It was still a number that a handful of race officials could deal with, even in the days of no computers and no office staff," says Boston historian Tom Derderian, author of the classic Boston Marathon: The History of the World's Premier Running Event. There was no crush to get into the marathon, no cutoff date or field limit, and no entry fee. You ponied up a dollar to join the Amateur Athletic Union, and sent your entry to de facto race director Jock Semple, athletic trainer to the Boston Celtics and Boston Bruins.
Semple, a lovable if hotheaded Scotsman, veteran marathoner, and coach of the Boston Athletic Association (BAA) running club, maintained his cool for several more years. In 1967, the Boston field grew to a barely manageable 741. Then in 1969, Semple was flooded with 1,342 entries. In an early, pre-Frank Shorter running boomlet, more Americans were beginning to run and to focus on Boston, one of the country's only marathons, and certainly its best known. The mail, the logistics, and especially the phone calls proved too much. "What? You want to know if you can run the marathon in your track spikes?" Crrrash! The sound of Semple slamming down the phone.
To enter the 1970 Boston Marathon, Semple and BAA president Will Cloney decided runners would have to provide a written declaration, signed by a coach, that they could break four hours. Didn't work. The wave of entries and phone calls continued. "What? You say you can run a mile, and you want to do the marathon, only you don't know how long it is?" Crrrash!
Already registered. It'll be fun.
5. And the last marker is THE marker: the 2010 Philly Marathon, November 2010. To "qualify" for the Boston Marathon, you have to submit a race time from a recognized course, and Philly's one of those. It's also apparently one of the "fastest" marathon courses for qualifying for Boston. Not all marathon courses are created equally ... though they're all 26.2 miles, some of them are hillier than others (read: harder), some courses are more crowded (read: harder and more obnoxious), and so on. Runner's World rated the Philly Marathon as the BEST race to use to qualify for Boston in 2007. And I'm hoping it'll work just as well in 2010.
If I run that thing in 3 hours and 40 minutes, then I'll end up here 5 months later. And you can stop reading this blog. :)
and this:
