Qualifying for Boston

Rickshaw · Posted: Sat Jun 04, 2005 8:23 pm

To give myself a little running motivation, I just checked the BAA web site to confirm that I did in fact qualify for next year's Boston Marathon (April 17, 2006), thanks to a generous set of asterisks and footnotes.

* Qualifying time must be no older than September 25, 2004. I ran the Des Moines Marathon October 17, 2004, just squeaking by with 3 weeks to spare.
** Qualifying age group is determined by your age on the date of the Boston Marathon, not the date of the qualifying race. I was 33 when I ran Des Moines, but I'll be just a few months past my 35th birthday for Boston, bumping me into the next age bracket.
*** Qualifying time for men 35-39 is 3:15. I ran 3:15:55 at Des Moines, hmmm...
**** An additional 59 seconds will be accepted for each age group time standard. For example, a net time of 3:50:59 will be accepted for a 42-year old woman. Ah ha! Made it with just 4 seconds to spare!

I was just reviewing the results, and saw that I finished 80th overall at Des Moines, not too bad, if I do say so myself.

The only thing that worries me now is documenting my Des Moines time for Boston's registration. The previous results link at the Des Moines Marathon web site appears to be broken, and I found some news elsewhere that said Des Moines 2005 has been cancelled due to inadequate funding. If the web site is in a permanent state of decay, I'm not sure how I can document my time for Boston's registration, but I can probably think of something. Sworn affidavit maybe? :-)

Only 10 months left to train!