The Road to Boston, Part 2 – Roadblocks

A Dream Deferred

Crossing the Oklahoma City Marathon finish line became the immediate start line for Boston 2022 training but it wasn’t the first time I had started training for Boston. I qualified (and got in) at the San Diego Marathon over 2 years earlier, in June of 2019. At that race I was in a new age group (65-69). My new standard as 4:05. I hit 4:00:00 on the dot to qualify by 5 minutes and was under the cut off by about 3.5 minutes.

San Diego Marathon finish line with my sister Jackie

I started training for Boston 2020 in January of that year. But it wasn’t long before Covid hit and everything shut down. Boston was delayed from April until September of 2020, then was turned into a virtual race instead of in-person. At the same time I moved from Tulsa, Oklahoma to Dallas, Texas and had to train by myself. I did the training and then ran the virtual Boston Marathon in Sept. of 2020. I ran it outside my house on a 5 mile loop around a number of nearby neighborhoods. To state the obvious it was not the same as running a real race. The day was warm and my time was mediocre for me, 4:26. It was nothing to write home about even though I did get the medal and it did count and it was fun to have a homemade finish line from my wife and daughter!

Deja Vu not all over again

Of course the ultimate finish line was on Boylston Street in Boston, not in my front yard. To do that I had to qualify all over again, or so I thought. But I was happily surprised when turned out that because of the pandemic Boston decided to let potential qualifiers use their race results going back to before the pandemic hit. That meant I could use the exact same race I had qualified with in 2020, the San Diego Marathon. That was a relief because I had a pretty good buffer time in that race. I reapplied for the 2021 Boston Marathon using the San Diego time and waited to hear the results. Surely I would get in.

Except I didn’t. What was three and a half minutes faster than needed in 2020 turned out to be seven and a half minutes too slow for the 2021 race. Well, ain’t that a bummer. So my record was now 3 attempts, one success and that success resulted in me running around my neighborhood to get the medal.

So I went searching for a new marathon to run that would qualify me for the 2022 race. And that race was the Oklahoma City Marathon in October of 2021.