Getting my sense check - Boston Marathon Qualifying Norms revised

We had this professor for quantitative techniques whose course at the end of the first year was famous for the number of people who flunked. In several cases, that flunking meant that the student would have to leave the college since he would have had multiple poor grades and we had a limit on number of courses you could carry with a poor grade. When people approached him on this, he said that we don't want the college to send out weaklings into the universe!

The BAA seems to have taken a similar approach.

http://www.baa.org/news-and-press/news-listing/2011/february/boston-athletic-association-announces-new-registration-process.aspx

The irritating part is that they are right. Boston is an elite race and now you will want to kill yourself even more. But damn!

3:10 can register on day 8, by when they will pretty much say, "Sorry but we closed 3 days ago"

3:05 can try and register on day 5.

3:00 can register on day 3. I think this will prove to me the magic number.

I was hurting after a hard, speed training session of 400m repeats y'day. 3 hr pace means 6:52 min miles. That is pretty much sprint/time trial pace for me. I have barely held it for a 10K and am pretty much sure today I will die if I try it for a half marathon.

While I rave and rant here, the subtle change is that Boston has now lowered the effective gap between the norms for men and women to 10 min. While the age group norm for 18-34 for men was 3:10, for women it was 3:40. However for day 1 registration, women need 40 min plus on that while the men need 20 min. Royal Rumble is in the offing.

So many things hang in balance now. If I wasn't feeling anxious already, this has acted like one solid kick in the nuts.

The only saving grace amidst all this is my awesome coach, who just laughs it all off and is as encouraging as he was at the start of my program. Oh we will just run faster, eh!