Boston: The Other Zone

In the euphoria following the St. Jude Memphis Marathon, I began wondering how much faster I could get? Kenneth Williams or "Koach" called on Sunday to congratulate AB and I on our times and told me he'd be glad to make me a training plan to help me improve my time. When I mentioned Boston to him, he asked what my qualifying time would need to be. I told him 3:10. There was a long pause on the phone. Finally, Koach said, "That's another zone." I'm pretty sure that was his nice way of saying, "Why don't we come up with a more realistic goal for you." 

In order to qualify for the Boston Marathon, males 18-34 must run a marathon in 3:10. That's three hours, ten minutes. In order to run a 3:10 marathon one must run just over a 7-minute mile for 26.2 miles. That, my friends, is fast.

I'm not sure if too many endorphins are running to my brain or if I don't like being told I can't do something (not that Koach said that, exactly), but I really really want to run a 3:10 marathon. 

My foot hasn't even quit hurting from Saturday's run, and I'm ready to get outside and start hoofing some miles. If I'm going to knock 47 minutes off my time I better get moving. 

Does this mean the Transrockies is out the window? Hardly. The way I see it, the Transrockies will be great training for Boston. It takes alot of miles to get ready to run a 3:10 marathon. I stumbled on John Kearsing's blog trying to learn more about Boston Marathon training plans. He ran 70 miles in one week! The really cool thing about John is that he completely bonked in his qualifying run, the Chicago Marathon due to hot weather. He got leg cramps and finished in 3:59. Undeterred, he ran another marathon 20 days later and got his 3:10. Wow. 

The next challenge is the Country Music Marathon in late April. I'm going to train my butt off for the next four months and see how many minutes I can knock off that suddenly slow 3:57:29. I realize I won't run a 3:10 in April, but I want to see how much faster I can go to see if 3:10 would ever be an ascertainable goal for me.