I’ve always wanted to run the Boston Marathon and the NYC marathon, these are some of the biggest marathons in the world and on many runners’ bucket lists. I had a plan in the back of my head for years to start training “sometime in the future” for the races and finally decided that “sometime” could be now.
The Marathon: A Long Race
The modern marathon has its origins in the legend of Phillippides, an ancient Greek messenger who ran from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens to announce that the Persians had been defeated. Legend has it after he proclaimed the victory he immediately collapsed and died. So of course when the modern Olympics began in 1896 the organizers decided it would be a great idea to have a “marathon race” because it might be popular.
And it became popular, for such a grueling event, there are over 800 marathons are organized world wide each year and approximately 500,000 Americans complete a marathon every year. The origin story and distance enshrine the marathon as a bucket list event for many runners, and even those who don’t aspire to run a marathon have a pretty good idea of the training necessary to complete one, or at least know it is hard.
The race distance is 26.2 miles. Running in general is hard on the body, a high impact activity that is injury prone, piling on miles and trying to do them as fast as you can is not a pleasant experience, in fact most marathon plans don’t ever have the runner complete a 26 mile run before the actual event and many elite athletes only race once or twice per year in order to have time to recover.
I’ve only ever run a marathon once, and it was after a 2.4 mile swim and 112 mile bike ride and did not go so well thanks to blisters. Since then I’ve always thought I’d run one by itself and now about 10 years later I am planning to.
The races
The Boston Marathon
Boston is the worlds oldest marathon, having been run since 1897 (inspired by the modern Olympic marathon race) and is also one of the worlds best known road racing events. It draws about 30-40,000 runners and 500,000 spectators every year. It’s hard to find a runner who doesn’t know about Boston or a marathoner who hasn’t dreamed of running it. BQ is a term in more serious running circles for Boston Qualifier, something that will turn a couple heads.
The NYC Marathon
NYC is the largest marathon in the world, with over 50,000 runners competing and about 2million spectators line the course. The race started in 1970 consisted of repeated racing around Central Park. The race organizers decided to change the course in 1976 for the bicentennial to include all five boroughs of NYC, which was a huge success and what was supposed to be a one time course became the standard route. Held in the fall it is a nice complement to Boston in April.
Qualification
Boston and NYC are notorious among runners for their strict time qualification entry requirements. Not only do you have to run a marathon, you have to run a marathon in a fairly quick time to be able to have the chance to run in Boston or NYC. (There are other entry methods like the lottery and charity slots - but part of my goal is to qualify. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll enter the lottery as well, but I am not counting on it). Below is a table with the time qualifications for the 2020 Boston and NYC marathons (even though I’m aiming for the 2021 races):
| AGE | GENDER | NYC time (pace) | BOSTON time (pace) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18-34 | male | 2:53:00 (6:35/mile) | 3:00:00 (6:51/mile) |
| 35-39 | male | 2:55:00 (6:40/mile) | 3:05:00 (7:03/mile) |
| 40-44 | male | 2:58:00 (6:47/mile) | 3:10:00 (7:14/mile) |
| 45-49 | male | 3:05:00 (7:03/mile) | 3:20:00 (7:37/mile) |
| 50-54 | male | 3:14:00 (7:23/mile) | 3:25:00 (7:49/mile) |
| 55-59 | male | 3:23:00 (7:44/mile) | 3:35:00 (8:12/mile) |
| 60-64 | male | 3:34:00 (8:09/mile) | 3:50:00 (8:46/mile) |
| 65-69 | male | 3:45:00 (8:34/mile) | 4:05:00 (9:20/mile) |
| 70-74 | male | 4:10:00 (9:32/mile) | 4:20:00 (9:54/mile) |
| 75-79 | male | 4:30:00 (10:17/mile) | 4:35:00 (10:29/mile) |
| 80+ | male | 4:55:00 (11:55/mile) | 4:50:00 (11:03/mile) |
| 18-34 | female | 3:13:00 (7:21/mile) | 3:30:00 (8:00/mile) |
| 35-39 | female | 3:15:00 (7:26/mile) | 3:35:00 (8:12/mile) |
| 40-44 | female | 3:26:00 (7:51/mile) | 3:40:00 (8:23/mile) |
| 45-49 | female | 3:38:00 (8:18/mile) | 3:50:00 (8:46/mile) |
| 50-54 | female | 3:51:00 (8:48/mile) | 3:55:00 (8:57/mile) |
| 55-59 | female | 4:10:00 9:32/mile) | 4:05:00 (9:20/mile) |
| 60-64 | female | 4:27:00 (10:11/mile) | 4:20:00 (9:54/mile) |
| 65-69 | female | 4:50:00 (11:03/mile) | 4:35:00 (10:29/mile) |
| 70-74 | female | 5:30:00 (12:35/mile) | 4:50:00 (11:03/mile) |
| 75-79 | female | 6:00:00 (13:43/mile) | 5:05:00 (11:37/mile) |
| 80+ | female | 6:35:00 (15:03/mile) | 5:20:00 (12:12/mile) |
more details on time qualifications:
For Boston earning the qualifying time doesn’t mean you are guaranteed entry, just that you can apply to enter and they take the fastest people, so making the time by a small margin won’t get you in. In recent years the actual cut-off time for entry has been 2-5mins below the official cut offs. For NYC the time has to be run at specific NYC Road Runner races (and the marathon I am planning to run is not one of them).
Plan
Now that I know where I need to go to qualify, time to figure out where I am and how to get there from here. There are a million marathon training plans to choose from but I settled on the 18 week 80/20 running plan because it incorporates heart rate training which I am used to and also is based on the plans that elite athletes use. The plan peaks at about 70 miles/week with a long run of 22 miles and is focused on training 80% in an easy zone (for endurance) and 20% in a hard zone (for speed).
I plan to run a marathon in May to hopefully qualify for next years Boston and NYC races - Yes, you have to qualify in the year before you race. I am looking to run a 2:55 or better, and based on how my race in May goes I will see what other races to do the rest of the year.
Where I Am:
The past few months I have been gradually running more in anticipation and increased my mileage to about 30miles/week (along with biking 4 or so hrs). My longest run in this training cycle has been just over 14 miles in just under 2hrs so I am in a good starting place for a marathon training plan mileage wise. In the next 18 weeks I’ll be able to build up more mileage and by dropping bike workouts I will build up even more mileage.
Speed wise, it’s harder to tell. The best predictor of marathon pace is a recent marathon race. After that it’s a recent half marathon race. Neither of which I have done in the past few years. So the last step before getting started was to run a threshold test to re-assess my training zones (which the training plan is based on).
The threshold test I did was a 30min all out run. I dread these workouts because they are physically and mentally tough, and for this one I happened to have a cold which makes things that much worse. But the weather was great - especially for late December, 50F and sunny and I did feel pretty good once I started running.
Here are some stats from that workout:
You can see once my HR gets up it stays there, which is good, you want a nice flat HR for something like this. You can tell it’s right on the line between the yellow and red areas and those are my old threshold zone settings, and my threshold HR is pretty much the same as it was.
| Mile | Duration | HR Avg. |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 5:48 | 180 |
| 2 | 6:17 | 190 |
| 3 | 6:33 | 190 |
| 4 | 6:47 | 190 |
| 5 | 9:34 | 171 |
This pace chart shows some areas for improvement. My average pace for the effort was 6:24, which I was happy with, however you can see my first mile was about a minute faster than my 4th mile (I only got about 4.7miles in the 30mins so the 5th mile includes part of my cooldown). I expected a drop in pace by maybe 10-20seconds/mile (which is still pretty significant) but a minute is a huge difference. With a more consistent pace I could probably have averaged 6:15 or faster. This is something I need to work on during my long runs.
Conclusion
There’s a long road ahead between now and running Boston, or NYC, or even the Long Island Marathon in May. Overall I am happy with my position, I am just starting the marathon training but have an achievable goal, a solid plan, and some areas to focus on improving. I’ll be checking in again after a few months for an update on my training and after the race with how it went.