In October 2003, I ran the St George Marathon with the goal of qualifying for Boston. St George has a pretty substantial drop in elevation starting at 5240 feet and finishing at 2680 feet making it a “fast” course. The gravitational force on your legs from downhill running, however, is a double-edged sword. I lived in Arizona at the time and trained through the summer in 110 ° +. Most of my 18-22 mile runs were done on a treadmill.
“Negative Splits”
At the 13-mile mark, I was just barely on pace to meet the 4-hour qualifying time at right around 2 hours. If I planned to qualify I was going to have to run the second half faster than the first. I knew it was possible because we had trained to run “negative splits” when I was on the CSU Hayward Track team under Coach Bob McGuire.
“Negative splits” are when the second half of a race is run faster than the first half.
That didn’t stop the “censor” inside my head from chattering away “You can always try again next year”. If I came up short it was only going to be by a couple of minutes. In a 10k or half marathon you can power through even if you haven’t trained adequately. The human body is not physiologically designed to run 26.2 miles.
More Tips:
![Rocket graphic](https://susanmhall.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/rocket-1897776-300x204.jpg)
Many inexperienced runners take off like a rocket. If you start out at a modest pace you may find yourself passing other runners. This is a welcome psychological boost. I used to shout out words of encouragement to runners as I passed them. “Let’s ‘reel in’ that runner in front of us.” It turns out, more often than not, it had the unintended effect of demoralizing the runner.
Another habit that I have developed is to count in a metronome-like fashion from one to ten, matching the beat stride for stride. When I’m really tested I’ll substitute the 4/4 military-style cadence “Easy does it. You can do it” (Hup two three four). This is a surprisingly effective way to maintain a consistent pace from start to finish.
I did ultimately run the second half of the St George Marathon faster than the first and qualified for Boston with a time of 3:57:52.
2021 BOSTON MARATHON QUALIFYING STANDARDS
For the 2021 Boston Marathon, qualifying times must be run on or after Saturday, September 15, 2018.
_____Susan M Hall is an American long-distance runner with a goal to run a 10k in all 193 UN recognized countries plus the two permanent non-member observer states of Palestine & the Holy See.
On her radar are the Košice Peace Half Marathon ☮️ Kosice, Slovakia, the Istanbul 15k 🇹🇷, Istanbul, Turkey the Beirut Half Marathon, Beirut, Lebanon, the Pyramids Half Marathon, Giza, Egypt & the Quantum Nicosia Half Marathon, Nicosia, Cyprus.
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