New Qualifying Times for Boston Marathon

According to an article in The Deseret News, it's going to take a lot more training and timing to get into the world famous Boston Marathon's roster for 2012. Competition is king as we now see the rules change for resgistration on next year's race.

Something had to be done when they noticed Boston 2011 was sold out in a record time of 8 hours, 3 minutes. Some concerts don't even fill up that fast..! This just goes to show the trend the world is heading. People are competitive and the whole world is getting faster. We have a need for speed, and the best runners get to run the best races. There isn't much out there more prestigious than Boston itself-one I plan on running someday soon.

Although, qualifying is just going to get harder from here on out.

The new qualifying times for Boston's 2012 race, from theBoston Athletic Association website look like this:

2012 rolling registration dates

Day 1 (Sept. 12) — Qualifiers who have met their age and gender qualifying standard (3 hours, 10 minutes for men aged 18-34 and 3 hours, 40 minutes for women 18-34) by a margin of 20 minutes or faster may apply for the marathon.

Day 3 (Sept. 14) — Qualifiers who have met the standard set for their age/gender by a margin of 10 minutes or faster may apply.

Day 5 (Sept. 16) — Qualifiers who have met their age/gender qualifying time by a margin of five minutes or faster may apply.

Day 8 (Sept. 19) — Open to all qualifiers to register.

Day 12 (Sept. 23) — Registration closes for qualified applicants. Registered qualifiers will be notified of their acceptance by Sept. 28.

Obviously many deserving runners will not even get the chance to register. It isn't enough to make the qualifying times anymore. You have to want it, crave it, and do what it takes to not only make the qualifying times-but to break the qualifying times.

So for those who are pounding the pavement training for Boston 2012 I wish you luck!

Click here to read the original article from the Deseret News.