CIM 2019: everything came together. Also, this was still not by any means an easy race. At the halfway point, I honestly would have given myself a 50/50 shot but I just hung in there, hung on the magical pacer men who were literally like angels and mathematical geniuses rolled into 3 excellent human marathon pacers, and thought “just like swimming” over and over for a good 45 min. towards the end of the race (as crazy as that sounds). Around the 2 hour mark, I had a thought that I would either be super depressed or the happiest person alive in 45 min. from then, and I basically used my training and willpower to get myself to the line. I am still slightly in awe of my 12/8/19 self. How did I do that?
2024 and Beyond:
So, we now know the OTQ standards for 2024 are 2:37 for women, which is essentially just under 6:00 pace. I have many thoughts about this, which have taken me a bit of time to adequately digest and process, and here is where I have (sort of) landed.
In one sense, there is something slightly freeing about the time being so fast, in that I will either get way faster or I will not. I will line up for my next marathon just trying to PR, instead of feeling the pressure of running sub-2:45. In that regard, I might actually have less of that 2:45 burden on me which helps me to run faster into the low-2:40s and then who knows? The marathon IS the kind of distance where you CAN chop minutes, not seconds, off your PR.
That said, 2:37 does feel so fast that it feels like it puts qualifying out of reach for many of those on the cusp of making it, or just making it last round. If 2017 Ann had thought that qualifying meant 2:36:xx, I actually really don’t think I would have been running marathons at all. 2:44 did take me two years and 4 good tries. So, where does this leave the 2:40-:50 something women who might end up being really really good? (I‘m absolutely no Keira D’Amato, but she lined up with me at Grandma’s 2018 which is where she ran 2:40-something to qualify!) I know enough women who just squeaked into the 2:45 cut in previous Trials in ‘16 , and who have built upon that, and now feel able to get the 2:36:xx, but if that 2:45 hadn’t been there for them first, who’s to say that they might not have kept at it either? (Case in point: one of my friends ran a 2:50 first marathon in late 2019. She—although I am going to try to talk her out of this—feels like this cycle isn’t for her. Originally, she was going to go for it if the cut was low 2:40s or 2:45 again. One of my other friends has previously qualified for Trials and run in the upper 2:30s, though not below 2:37 yet; her reaction to the standard was that a sub-6:00 pace marathon was always a lifetime goal of hers.) So, how do we address the gap between qualifying for Boston and qualifying for Trials? Realistically, there’s no real stepping stone between the two now that is designed to eek the best performance out of the current 2:40-50 something woman. I have qualified for Boston in every marathon that I have run. What do we do now? I guess the answer could be a lot of things, which I won’t list out here, but I am not sure any of them are motivating enough to keep the really fast women in their post-collegiate careers as invested in the marathon as they were before 2020. Just like for many, Boston has a certain allure, so does qualifying for Olympic Trials. I am also not sure how to generate the intermediate goal between these two races out of thin air: Boston and the Trials have, for lack of a better phrase here, both been around for a while. (I know I’m not the only 2:44er out there who gets asked not about qualifying for the Trials but “whether I have run Boston?” a lot!)
The momentum in American women’s marathoning, with so many of us making it last round, was really so valuable. This wasn’t just about the shoe advancements either. The Vaporflys aren’t going to run the marathon for you. You still have to do it. Really, there was something magical about seeing so many other women qualify—especially through social media, in particular, Instagram—which made YOU believe that YOU could do it TOO. The collective qualifying was empowering on a deep level which made the impossible become possible. I saw the same group of women at Grandma’s and CIM for two years. You would go to a race like Grandma’s and come out of it with a “girl gang” of running friends who were all on the same mission together. So, mostly I hope the 2:37 doesn’t kill that. The upper 2:30s group will almost certainly be smaller than the on-the-cusp of 2:44:xx group.
The point of Olympic Trials is to select the Olympic Team, but I do think it is more than this. (Otherwise, why not make the standard a more totally unreachable 2:30 or something in that ballpark?) We might actually learn something from USA Swimming, which had a Wave A and a Wave B Olympic Trials, which were totally separate but complete meets and both intensely exciting in their own right. Anyone who was there that Leap Day in Atlanta 2020 will know what I mean when I say it was unlike any atmosphere that I have ever experienced at a running race of any kind ever before. It would be smart (and probably lucrative) to harness some of that marathoning energy instead of nipping it in the bud. I also think there are two kinds of “inspiring”: one of those is along the lines of “wow, a human did that” and the other is “wow, my [neighbor/friend/teammate] did that and maybe I can be better too.” I think what everyone has been saying is that the 2:45:00 generated a lot of the latter, and filled a void that we maybe didn’t know we needed filled that was really good for the sport and the communities and people who were around anyone who qualified.
What’s Next?
To end on a more optimistic note: the past fall has been fairly intense work-wise, so much so that I had neglected until yesterday in filling out my training logs like I usually do. I had originally thought that this fall was absolutely inadequate as a marathon buildup. Back in the summer, I had originally thought I’d do CIM, but then the 2024 qualifying window wasn’t open yet, and we didn’t even know what it was or when it would open, so it seemed like not the best move to travel and run CIM all the way across the country. So, I decided on a smaller marathon on this coast, which I downgraded to a half last month because I just felt like my two 17 mile long runs weren’t enough. Well, to my surprise, in reviewing my 2:44 buildup, all I did were a couple 17ish mile long runs and one 3 hour long run, so I actually wasn’t far off at all. In retrospect, I think I had thought my OTQ buildup was some perfectly put together training block, which it was because I met my goal, but in other ways, I can see now a lot of room for improvement.
To all the women reading this: just remember that in 2012 I was a 3:17 marathoner, and in 2015 I was a 2:57 marathoner, and only in 2019 did I become a 2:44 marathoner. We do not have an infinite amount of time to run fast, but…the marathon is long, and you have to play the long game, over not just weeks or seasons, but years, to tap into your marathon potential.
Onward to 2022 and beyond.
