And, wow, your Hartford time is a heart-breaker. That’s even closer to the BQ cutoff than my failed attempt was. I don’t even want to imagine how tough that must have been mentally.

More on this, and a general response to your comment are on their way as a new blog post…

The funny thing is, I had similar thoughts of dropping out of the Boston Marathon and running in general when I suffered my hamstring injury a couple of weeks back. My thought at that time was…geez, now that I’m hurt and won’t be able to pull off a sub 3 like I wanted, I should just not run. And then I was like, if I’m such a wuss that I can’t pull off a 60-70 mile training week like it was suggested without getting injured, and if that disqualifies me as a good marathoner….then I should just stop running completely. The marathon is such a mystical creature, one that eclipses all the other race distances, that if I can’t or shouldn’t run it because my mileage wasn’t at par with the sub-elites…when I might as well stop being a runner.

I know that sounds facetious and ridiculous, but I seriously considered it for a couple of days.

I have always thought that we train at similar mileage for our races and as a result, we run similar paces. We do our usual 30, 40, or 50 mile a week training because that’s what makes sense to us…in the context of our lives and our goals. Yes, I realize we will not race at our potential with such mileage but why does that really matter in the long run? For me, I know I physically break down in excess of 60 miles a week. Mentally, the training takes precedence and it not longer becomes enjoyable for me anymore. So what would I rather do, enjoy my 40-50 miles a week and go into race day fresh and a little undertrained, or feel miserable running 60-70 miles a week because I’m neglecting other parts of my life, risk injury and having the marathon disintegrate into just another goal race where I have to run my potential to justify all the training that went into it. In the end, seriously, like you said, we’re not paid to run to our potential no matter how close we get to it, and I can count on one hand how many people will actually feel differently about me if I ran a 2:47 vs 2:57 or even a 3:07 in a marathon. Also, can people tell how much more training time, effort, and talent etc that it takes to run 2:47 vs 3:07? Maybe those of us who can run around that time and much faster people do, but not too many others…certainly not those people who I’m surrounded with everyday. So, if you find satisfaction in your 3:10 because you enjoyed the marathon experience even though it is not your potential (yet finish feeling like you could do better) vs risking EVERYTHING to run your potential, get there and feeling as if you’re not likely to EVER do better…why should that decision be looked down upon as if it’s not legitimate and demarcated with an asterisk (like Barry Bonds).

I seriously do not know if I’ll break 3 in Boston. There’s so many factors that go into a marathon that trying to be so precise about guessing your goal time is really a crap shoot. The way I look at it, I could run a 2:55 or 3:05…but I still want to be able to enjoy the experience since it’s my first time. I’ll be okay if my time isn’t “good” because I’m willing to accept the unpredictability of marathon running…I’m just not so sure about other people.

I commend you for sharing that story about your Armory experience and explaining things in a articulate fashion. I’m trying not to comment on his blog so as not to continue this debate since it’s gone on for long enough and it’s been affecting my personal outlook for Boston more than it should, so I’m glad someone else who perceive things from a similar vantage point can jump in and make those arguments for me.

Also I think I understand how you feel about your Philly experience. You may or may not have noticed, but I ran Hartford ‘06 in 3:11:33 and waited a whole year to BQ in NY ‘07 with a 3:08:18. So I definitely know where you’re coming from on that front.

Damn you, CH.

I would suggest hooking it into SportTracks and then you can migrate the data to Buckeye Outdoors, the subject of a recent Runners Round Table discussion and the gateway to a nice new running community site (with, I know TK doesn’t want to hear it) “friends” and everything called GoWagon.com.

I got the HRM but I almost never use it. And, yes, nice run today.