Sacramento Running News

The author running at wet Boston Marathon (Photo courtesy of Daniel Weintraub)

By Daniel Weintraub

Three days post-Boston, and my shoes are finally dry. I can walk down stairs without much trouble. I am feeling mostly recovered from the Marathon. But I am still not quite recovered  from the post-Marathon partying. I had not trained for that. I partied hard Monday night (i.e. four or five drinks — that’s hard for me) with Jenny Hitchings, Galen Farris, Abe Weintraub, Stephanie Ward, and Angel and Steve Simpson, friends of mine from Michigan.

Most of what happens in Boston stays in Boston, but I can say I enjoyed watching Galen announcing Jenny’s first place age group triumph to everyone we met in the bars and then seeing the normally modest Jenny take selfies with her new fans and tell her story over and over. She was doing everything but signing autographs on people’s calves. I was proud of her.

I had no such hopes for glory in Boston this year. But I was on a mission of my own. A year ago I ran my first Boston Marathon in 3:01:15, narrowly missing my goal of breaking three hours. I was on track to break three last year until my quads, thrashed by the course’s persistent but underrated down hills, locked up in the final few miles and my pace slowed to a relative crawl.

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Lloyd Levine

By Lloyd Levine

Derek Yorek ran and finished the 2015 Boston Marathon. He is not an elite athlete. Outside of his family and friends it is unlikely anyone had ever heard of him.  But on Monday, April 20th, 2015, shortly after 10:00 a.m. (Eastern Time), he did something amazing, something incredibly improbable, something that makes road running the most democratic of sports.

On Monday, April 20th, 2015, shortly after 10:00 a.m. Derek Yorek LED the Boston Marathon for several minutes. Yorek ran with and in front of Wesley Korir, Lelisa Desisa, and Meb Keflezighi, the winners of the 2012, 2013, and 2014 Boston Marathons.

In what other sport could a “non-elite” line up and compete against the best the sport has to offer?

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While this website is devoted to Sacramento related running stories, it is hard to return to these pages without at least mentioning the bombing at the Boston Marathon.

The alleged perpetrators have been captured or killed, but the road to recovery for those injured in the attacks, and the friends and family of those hurt or killed, will be long.

I watched the news unfold from three thousand miles away and it feels a bit narcissistic for me to be writing about how the attack affected me.

However, last week it seemed that every runner I spoke with talked about how profoundly the attack had impacted them personally and emotionally. This was especially true among friends who had run that marathon in the past. So clearly I was not alone in this feeling of strangely personal grief.

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BAA just announced that registration is closed for 2012. Read the announcement.

I hope you got in.

Regular readers of this website should be aware that the Boston Marathon revised their registration process to make it easier for faster runners to get a bib.

The early registration is already underway for the faster runners.

From the website:

Registration will occur on a “rolling admission” schedule, beginning with the fastest qualifiers. On the first day of registration for the 2012 Boston Marathon, those who are eligible for entry by having met the qualifying standards for their age and gender group by 20 minutes or more will be able to enter on September 12 at 10:00 a.m. (ET).  On September 14 at 10:00 a.m., (if space remains) registration will open for those who have met their qualifying standards by 10 minutes or more. On September 16 at 10:00 a.m., (if space remains) registration will open for those who have met their qualifying standards by five minutes or more.

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The sun will come up tomorrow, and the village of Hopkinton‘s population will swell to triple its usual number, the streets of Boston will ring with the rubber tread of the shoes of tens of thousands of runner, and the women of Wellesley will be screaming their heads off and making even the most mediocre of runners feel like a rock star, if for only about 300 meters.

If you are there, well done. If not, chances are you’d like to be.

In either case, Competitor.com has an entertaining video of a Training Day With Ryan Hall. You can see what Ryan does for his final pre-Boston big workout.

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They are probably already staging porta-potties in Hopkinton for the 2011 Boston Marathon.

Unlike most every other marathon in America, the Boston Marathon is held on a Monday that is not Labor Day. They run it on Patriot’s Day.

Patriot’s Day is a New England holiday celebrating the battles of Lexington and Concord. In Boston, this holiday is generally observed by running from the town of Hopkinton to Boston, or by screaming at people who are running from Hopkinton to Boston.

This year’s Boston Marathon includes one of the deepest women’s fields in event history and two American women with a legitimate shot at a podium finish: Kara Goucher, who was 3rd in 2009, returns this year, and Desiree Davila, of the Hansen-Brooks Distance Project makes her Boston debut.

For some reason, Desiree Davila toils away as a rather unknown runner, but her 2:26:20 at the Chicago Marathon makes her the fourth fastest women in American history.

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If you’ve been isolated from your email and the internet for the past few days, you might not be aware that the Boston Marathon has finally made changes to its registration process.

These changes are an attempt to address complaints about the race filling too rapidly and faster runners getting shut out by the overwhelming number of slower runners.

As written about here, and elsewhere, the 2011 Boston Marathon sold out in eight hours. This led to immediate speculation about whether the qualification standards were too loose.

The BAA chose to leave the qualifications standards intact for the 2012 race, but will open up registration earlier for runners with qualifying times well below the standard.

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Registration for the Boston Marathon opens today. As with last year, it is likely that all the slots will be taken and registration closed long before this year’s CIM takes place, effectively making the Boston qualifying time you expect to earn this December to be moot.

Some of the demand for marathon entries is clearly “industry-wide.”  For example, our own CIM will sell out very soon. (The website says 325 slots remain as of today.)

The Wall Street Journal has an article on this excess demand for the Boston Marathon, which dares to ask the question of whether the qualifying times for women are too soft.

The Boston Athletic Association pegs the women’s qualifying times at 30-minutes slower than the men’s times, something they established in 1977. More that 30-years have passed. Do women still need this kind of advantage?

What do you think?

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