Many posts/blogs often cite the Boston Marathon as THE mother of all marathon races. What makes it so popular?
To quote the Boston Marathon website, it's simply "the world's oldest annual marathon and ranks as one of the world's most prestigious road racing events." Further, the popularity to it is that the qualifying times to join the full-marathon event is so high. Thus, having to just qualify for the race makes one the creme a la creme of the whole running population. To be more specific, below are the designated qualifying times per age-group:
Thus, at my age now if I want to qualify for the Boston Marathon on April 19, 2010, I should've finished the mandatory 42.195km distance within 3hrs and 15mins!
3:15?!?!?! Are you f*cking kidding me?!?! There's absolutely no way that I'll finish a full-marathon within that time! Well, not right now, at least. Probably as my running improves over time, I'll probably make it (in 10 yrs? hehe).
Secondly, the qualifying race that you should join must be listed in the Boston Athletic Association's (BAA) accredited list of races.
There are also qualifying races outside the US but, unfortunately, I found no Philippine-held race listed. The nearest would be Thailand (3 races), Singapore (1), Hongkong (which has 4 races, 2 of which are half-marathons), China (with 6), Malaysia (2), and Chinese-Taipei (4).
But hey, who needs Boston when the running boom in the Philippines is approaching its peak right now? We have a host of good races coming this year like the Condura, RunRio Trilogy, Adidas KOTR, NB Run, and last but not least, the Milo Marathon which is our very own Boston Marathon. With a 4-hour qualifying time for the Finals, this should be a piece of cake IF I compare it with my 3:15 target time for Boston.
But first, I need to finish one full-marathon which I predict to be somewhere over 5hrs. Probably 5:30. Er.....probably 6hrs? Hmmm...I'll never know until middle of this year (I hope).
Keep on running!
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