BQ'ed by the skin of my teeth!!

It was a suspenseful, nerve wrecking few minutes at the Albany riverfront after I crossed the finish line  in Mohawk Hudson River marathon on 7th October. The race clock had crossed 3:40 and the scrolling display monitor in the tent behind the finish line showed my 'gun time' as 3:40:11. Having started in the middle of the pack I was hoping and praying that my net time would be at least 12 seconds faster in order to be a sub 3:40 finisher. The printouts of the detailed race results including the splits were being pasted close by and the sheet with my time arrived in about 10 minutes after I completed the race. I was hugely hugely relieved that my 'chip time' was 3:39:57 - I had scraped through to a BQ by just 3 seconds. That is, as per the current Boston qualification standards I will be able to register for Boston 2014 in the 55-59 age group in the 2nd week of registration provided race spots are still left. However, this does not guarantee that I will be able to run Boston 2014 as it depends on the timings of others and if there are enough registrants who have beaten their qualifying time by over 3 seconds then I will not get a place in the race. Anyway it is too far away to worry about right now. While I am thrilled that I met my goal of BQ'ing and shaved 9 minutes off my previous best at SCMM 2012 I am a bit disappointed at not hitting 3:38 - the goal for which I had trained. However, after this training and race experience  I feel reasonably confident that 3:38 is very achievable - I am certainly going to give it a couple of more shots and try and nail it between now and September 2013 when registration for Boston 2014 will open.

There are several details about my experience of the race that I want to put down including an analysis of my mile splits. I hope to write a detailed race report  as well blog my experience of training  for nearly 7 weeks in Southbury,Connecticut within the next  2-3 weeks or so.