15 minutes - in the wrong direction
Posted June 16th, 2010 by wilsonI have always associated breaking the four-hour barrier with qualifying of the Milo Finals. It was a pretty good pair. The Milo Finals is the most prestigious and exclusive of all the local races. Four hours is the time-standard for the full, the very same way 2 hours is for the half, 1 hour is for 10K, and 30 minutes is for 5K.
Four hours is just about the only average standard I haven’t broken, and I couldn’t imagine a better setting for doing it other than the Manila Eliminations - so that I would qualify for the Finals at the same time. Few finishes would be sweeter - in my imagination, anyway.
To my surprise however, I found out last week that Milo is implementing an age-bracketing for its Finals qualifying this year! That changes my required qualifying time from 4:00… to 3:45! From just having to shave off 8 minutes from my PB, To qualify now I’d have to shave off 23 minutes! Whoa.
Don’t get me wrong, I actually agree with the age-bracketing of the Milo Marathon. It is a good sign of Milo keeping its standards. More than that, it is a sign of progress. Before the Boston Marathon became age-bracketed, it also had an across-the-board cutoff. Now both Milo and Boston are age-bracketed, although Boston of course is still way more stringent.
Also, it is more fair to the older runners. Funnily enough, I know a lot of people originally aiming for sub-4 this July, who no longer have to do sub-4 to qualify. In fact, many of them, they discovered, are already very capable of qualifying, based on past performances.
As for me, I must admit that it was a bit shocking at first: “Am I really supposed to be running this fast? Am I really underperforming by that much?”.
But really, it’s okay. I’m taking it as another challenge to do even better and to train even harder. While I’m not totally counting out going to the Finals - I’m prepared for whatever would happen, sub-4 or not, Finals or not. And even more important than that, I’m prepared to give it my absolute, no-holds-barred, best.
Tags: 34th National Milo Marathon, 42.195K, Boston Marathon, full marathon, Manila Eliminations, National Finals
3 Responses to “15 minutes - in the wrong direction”
June 16th, 2010 at 12:12 pm
You can do it! 頑張ってください
June 16th, 2010 at 4:37 pm
nice post. to tell you frankly, i think i am training harder this time just to cope up with the effects of aging than when i was in my 30s. before, it was enough to have my daily runs and LSDs during weekends and can easily finish a sub-4 marathon race but for now, i need to go to the oval track to have my intervals, tempo runs, and speed drills. i also do some pilates and strengthening exercises. but anyway, we’ll see how i will perform on july 4. as dr tim noakes have said, “view each race as a scientific experiment”. good luck!
June 22nd, 2010 at 8:22 pm
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