My Journey to My BQ (Boston Qualifier) Marathon.

After I ran my first marathon, I immediately knew my next goal was to qualify for the Boston Marathon. I didn’t know what that meant before I started training for my first marathon. Along the way, I had someone ask if I was trying to “BQ”. I had no idea what that even meant! I googled it and found out that there are certain time requirements that you have to reach, based on your age and gender, in order to run the Boston Marathon. I will say, when I ran my first marathon, the requirements were 5 minutes slower (meaning I needed a 3:35 to qualify) and they changed the requirements right before my 2nd marathon. 

I ran my first marathon in 3 hours and 44 minutes, on a HOT day. I learned the hard way why you are told to not go out too fast, too early in a marathon. I struggled big time the last 8 miles of that race. After the pain had worn off from that race, I immediately started planning my next one. I figured I was only 9 minutes away from qualifying for Boston, so why not?! I felt that if I hadn’t had a hot day and hadn’t started too fast, I could have had a chance at it! So two weeks after my first marathon, I signed up for another one! I ran my first marathon at the end of April 2018, and I signed up for another in early September 2018.  I was a newbie, so I didn’t know any better! I jumped into another training cycle in May. A couple of  months later in July, I got injured, while training for that marathon. I was an idiot, and continued to train 50 plus mile weeks on that injury. (It ended up that I had a sprained tendon in my ankle., I also got shin splints in my opposite leg, from over compensating for the injury! It was a disaster!) I ended up switching from the full marathon to the half, and then could barely walk for weeks after running that half while injured. 

After healing from those injuries, I decided I wanted to try again. So I signed up for the same marathon I had done the year before in my hometown. I started training in January 2019 for that April marathon. I was focused. I wanted that BQ. The training went rather well. I got fit. I was hitting the right paces. However, I noticed I wasn’t enjoying it as much as before. I remember running an 18 mile training run with my best friend, Vira. We had just finished the tempo miles of the run (miles where we ran marathon pace) and I was in a bad mental place. We had hit all our paces, but I just wasn’t into it. It didn’t feel good anymore. It felt like a chore.  I remember telling her,  I didn’t even feel like running the marathon anymore. I had been so focused on hitting this goal, that I had allowed it to suck the fun out of running. 

I ran the DC Half Marathon as a training run leading up to my 2nd marathon. I was fit and ran a PR, but mentally I wasn’t into it anymore.

A week before the marathon...  Boston announced that they were adjusting the qualifying times for the next Boston. I no longer needed a 3:35 to qualify, I now needed a 3:30. I told myself that was okay, I had trained for a 3:30. I was ready. Physically, I was ready, mentally I was not. 

I could spend a whole blog post on the details from the race, but I will sum it up with this. I wasn’t mentally in the right headspace. I held my pace for the first 21 miles. I was doing great until mile 18, when this woman on a bike came up beside me. After a few minutes of chatting, I asked her why she was riding beside me. She proceeded to tell me it was because I was the lead female (obviously a small race), and her job was to follow the lead female. I immediately freaked out. I couldn’t win a race! Who was I to be in the lead?! I held my pace for a few miles more, but at mile 21, I gave up. After the first girl passed me, I totally fell apart mentally. I crossed the finish line in 3 hours and 31 minutes. I missed qualifying for Boston by one minute. I was done. I decided I needed to take a break and walk away from the marathon for a bit. And I did…

To be continued…