Why do you want to qualify for the Olympic Marathon Trials? You do not even sound like you are interested in running a marathon. Just curious, seems like an odd goal.
Why do you want to qualify for the Olympic Marathon Trials? You do not even sound like you are interested in running a marathon. Just curious, seems like an odd goal.
The posts from Runn3rGirl and missy are really interesting and inspiring. Thanks for reminding me that there really are other serious adult woman runners on these boards.
Total Clown wrote:
Why do you want to qualify for the Olympic Marathon Trials? You do not even sound like you are interested in running a marathon. Just curious, seems like an odd goal.
There's a reason why it's Runningart2004...
We all have dreams. Ran 1:09:40 and 2:32:45.
Actually got a few comped entries and a few hotels, won a $100 race and a few hundred dollars in lotto tickets over the years.
Alan
For the women responding did any of you make the trials while raising little ones? I guess first I have to see if I can manage getting runs in with two rugrats, but if that can somehow be managed I'd like to see how fast I can get with uninterrupted training. I have yet to do a marathon though which is kind of putting the cart before the horse. I'm a bit worried that I flop my first but it seems like many of the female posters were able to shed off time with more experience at the distance? After my first baby I ran HMs in 1:21/1:22. I guess my goal is to see how fast I can get with over a year of uninterrupted running (which I have not done yet), but were any of you able to juggle this goal after little ones?
Zee wrote:
For the women responding did any of you make the trials while raising little ones? I guess first I have to see if I can manage getting runs in with two rugrats, but if that can somehow be managed I'd like to see how fast I can get with uninterrupted training. I have yet to do a marathon though which is kind of putting the cart before the horse. I'm a bit worried that I flop my first but it seems like many of the female posters were able to shed off time with more experience at the distance? After my first baby I ran HMs in 1:21/1:22. I guess my goal is to see how fast I can get with over a year of uninterrupted running (which I have not done yet), but were any of you able to juggle this goal after little ones?
I was only 24, and right out of college when I qualified. I was bored and didn't have a lot of commitments so that's why I went for it. I will probably move on the next chapter of my life and think about having children in the next year or 2, so depending on where life takes me I may or may not go for it in 2020. I would like to keep training hard after I have children to keep fit and healthy. A lot of the ladies at the 2016 trials were older and had children and balanced it very well.
I took my shot back in 2007, but never quite made it. My PRs from college were right around 14:45 and 30:30 on the track. However, I was consistently stronger in XC, and 9 times out of 10 I'd beat the guys from my conference who were running 29:XX on the track. I figured that made me a strength runner, and probably well suited to the marathon. However it was not to be.
I took a couple years off of serious running after college to get my career started, then got transferred by my employer to their Bay Area office. The post-collegiate running scene there was really good back then, so I fell into training with a good group of guys all shooting for the the 2:22 standard. Over two years of serious training (70-100 mpw when "in-season") I managed to get myself down to 1:09 in the 1/2 then decided to take my first shot at a full. During my build-up I was running 15 flat / 30 high for 5K and 10K on the roads pretty consistently while still doing heavy miles, so figured I had an outside shot. On the day I hit 1:11 dead at the half, and maintained the pace until 22 miles. Blew up bad - like had to sit down and stretch multiple times in order to continue running - and ended up finishing in 2:54. I spent another year and a half trying to run 2:22. Found that I could run low 2:30s pretty easily - even doing so once during a training run - , but that if I went out any faster than 1:13 for the half then I would blow up in spectacular fashion.
Long story short, never made it. Ran he 2007 NYC marathon as a consolation prize and recorded my lifetime PR of 2:28.
NERunner053 wrote:
Would love to see the men's standard back at 2:22.
No way. I say, why? What is a 2:22 going to accomplish at the trials?
The goal of the OT's is not to throw a bone to some runners who have absolutely no chance of making the team.
If I was in charge, I'd say "Top 25 American marathon runners times within 16 months of the OT's."
This would produce an exciting race. Not one with some guys just showing up and jogging a 2:45. Who wants to see that?
Or, I would say "If you are behind the top 10 by more than 2 minutes by 16 miles, you are pulled"
For the 1972 Olympic Trials Marathon I believe the standard was 2:28 and 10k around 29:00. I was a good not great college runner with 3 mile and 6 mile PRs of 14:04 and 29:33. The summer of 1971 I had run 49:46 10 mile and finished second to a great California marathoner Bill Scobey. I seemed to do well on the long runs I typically did during cross country season. Usually running 16 miles well under 6:00 a mile. Around that time I bought and read the "Dave Bedford Story."
I was inspired in the fall of 1971 to experiment with high mileage. I was a full-time student running typically 120-140 miles a week. I believe one week I ran in the neighborhood of 150 miles. I raced a 25k and 30k that fall with respectable times. Shortly thereafter I became the only student at Oklahoma State with Chicken Pox and quarantined in the Infirmary. I had a horrible Big Eight Cross Country Meet finishing 28th after 11th the previous year.
I went home at Christmas, regrouped and made plans to race the Mission Bay Marathon in San Diego prior to returning to school. The plan was to see how close I could get to the standard. I really had little clue as to what the time entailed. I got some advice from friends that had run the distance. Bought some wafer thin Tiger Marathon shoes. Set to go.
The race was competitive with a pack of about ten runners passing 10 miles in 52:00. The winner Doug Smenck (2:17) pulled away some where around 15 miles. I ran with a Navy runner Fred Kulver (I think that is correct) until he dropped me at about 22 miles. Blistered, beat but elated I crossed the line in 2:22:20 in my first marathon. Not bad for a 21 year old rookie.
Igy
No
Zee wrote:
For the women responding did any of you make the trials while raising little ones? I guess first I have to see if I can manage getting runs in with two rugrats, but if that can somehow be managed I'd like to see how fast I can get with uninterrupted training. I have yet to do a marathon though which is kind of putting the cart before the horse. I'm a bit worried that I flop my first but it seems like many of the female posters were able to shed off time with more experience at the distance? After my first baby I ran HMs in 1:21/1:22. I guess my goal is to see how fast I can get with over a year of uninterrupted running (which I have not done yet), but were any of you able to juggle this goal after little ones?
I greatly admire women who are able to train and perform at a high level while raising children. This is something I never tried. When I was training for and running my OT qualifier I was single, living alone without even any pets, no family in the area, living in a condo with minimal maintenance, and a 10-15 minute commute from work. I was also earning tenure as a chemistry professor at a research university and working probably 60 hours per week, but I did essentially nothing other than work and run.
One of the beauties of running as a sport, compared with most sports, is that you can do it at a high level with a pretty modest time commitment. I never spent more than 12 hours per week actually running while training for my OTQ, and even adding in all the associated "overhead" it probably amounted to no more than 20 hours per week. Which is quite doable if the only other thing you do is work, even when your work is quite demanding time-wise.
Nooway wrote:
NERunner053 wrote:Would love to see the men's standard back at 2:22.
No way. I say, why? What is a 2:22 going to accomplish at the trials?
The goal of the OT's is not to throw a bone to some runners who have absolutely no chance of making the team.
If I was in charge, I'd say "Top 25 American marathon runners times within 16 months of the OT's."
This would produce an exciting race. Not one with some guys just showing up and jogging a 2:45. Who wants to see that?
Or, I would say "If you are behind the top 10 by more than 2 minutes by 16 miles, you are pulled"
On the other hand, I'm totally with NERunner053 here. The best US finish in an Olympic marathon was in 1972 with 1,4,9. The Trials standard was 2:30. We did well in'76 too with a 2:23 standard. One feature of the 70s was that almost everyone, or so it seemed, ran marathons and the most ambitious of us did it with the idea of maybe getting into the Trials marathon. The slower standard made that goal seem at least somewhat realistic and the result seemed to be that there were loads of guys running loads of miles and racing loads of marathons hoping to make that happen. Naturally, most of us either missed the standard or barely got it and were never a threat to win anything big or to make the Team.
But out of those masses came a number of guys who ran world class times and I think that semi-attainable standard was a big driving force behind the tremendous depth the US had in the marathon in the 70s and early 80s. That depth began diminishing at about the same time the standard got faster. I don't know if the two are related or not but we have threads here about why the US doesn't do better internationally in the marathon and I think a big reason is that our better runners don't race the distance very often if at all. Slow the standard and I think you get a bigger talent pool consistently running the distance seriously and you'll have a few more Tom Flemings, Dick Beardsleys, etc.
None of that diminishes the "excitement" of the OT race. The top 25 Americans from the previous 16 months will still be there and that's who the TV cameras will follow. You'll be spared the tedium of watching anyone "jogging" 2:45.
I never did give it a shot and it's one of my regrets. I think if I had given myself a window of time to train, I could have qualified for the trials in the marathon. That would definitely be the peak of my ability as a runner.
Not saying that I necessarily agree with returning the standard to 2:22, but it is quite clear what proponents of such a change hope it would accomplish. Namely, they hope that it would encourage more competitive runners to remain active in the sport after college.
While this isn't necessarily a direct benefit in terms of producing a more competitive Olympic team, it would certainly help increase the size of the fan base. At the very least you'd have a few thousand 21-30 year olds staying engaged with the sport a few years longer and spending more on shoes, gear, travel, race entries, etc. than they otherwise would. This could help draw more funding / sponsorship money into the sport of competitive distance running, maybe eventually indirectly benefiting the truly elite runners.
I tried to qualify in 1992. Standard was 2.20 that year.
I was 31 yrs old and had averaged 100-110 miles per week for a couple of years and did one quality tempo on the track each week over the last 3 months before the attempt.
Previous marathon best was 2.26 from 1982.
Went through the 1/2 in 1.09:40, and was still on 2.19 pace at 20 miles.
Hung on best I could but just couldn't do it and finished in 2.22:29.
Have never regretted trying and knew I gave it everything I had.
Posted two marathon times under the standard, but both before the window opened. Injured during the windows.
Missed the 5,000 time by a couple seconds.
Got hurt; game over for many years.
Missed the marathon time by 2 minutes as I closed in on 40 in a mid-life crisis uptick in training.
Still doing XC/TF in college dawg
Jim Bob Cassidy wrote:
Still doing XC/TF in college dawg
I probably should've added that initially.
Also your ages are truly inspiring. I am 26 (turning 27 in a few months) and regret that I have not run as seriously the last few years. However you are all making me realize that it is still possible.
Zee wrote:
For the women responding did any of you make the trials while raising little ones? I guess first I have to see if I can manage getting runs in with two rugrats, but if that can somehow be managed I'd like to see how fast I can get with uninterrupted training. I have yet to do a marathon though which is kind of putting the cart before the horse. I'm a bit worried that I flop my first but it seems like many of the female posters were able to shed off time with more experience at the distance? After my first baby I ran HMs in 1:21/1:22. I guess my goal is to see how fast I can get with over a year of uninterrupted running (which I have not done yet), but were any of you able to juggle this goal after little ones?
____________________
I don't have kids, so I can't comment on how to juggle training with childrearing. Obviously, having an outside paid job will also influence your training. I've come across quite a few women who are stay and home moms and competitive runners. I've also seen some who have a paid job, kids, and run competitively.
I was in graduate school when I started running. I had a bizarre living arrangement. I was a live-in resident head, so I lived in a dorm-based apartment with my two dogs and lots of late-teen early 20s students. I was always on call for emergencies and general social support, but that is much different than having children. I was always running or working (on my research or in the dorm), but I had a flexible schedule, and didn't have to worry about getting childcare or dealing with sleep deprivation (unless a student drank himself into the ER; it was always the guys!). For the last few years, I have been a university faculty member, so I don't have the dorm responsibilities. I know that having kids would impose serious time constraints, but I don't think it takes you out of the game.
I'm a race results junkie, so I'm always looking at other women's time progressions, etc. I know that a non-negligible proportion of the women who qualified for 2016 had young children, especially women in their mid to late 30s. I know of a 2012 qualifier who went on to have kids and ran 2:42 a few months ago. That was a PR for her.
Based on observation and speculation, I'd say that you need a strong support system and maybe a treadmill. Have you ever read about Sheri Piers? She has kids (maybe 3), and I'm pretty sure she logged a lot of miles on the treadmill.
I usually don't post on things not related to drinking/running, but this is an interesting thread to me. I had an unusual progression in that my first marathon was when I was 15 and just steadily improved since. Pretty strong correlation between my mpw (but also probably age) and time. These are "max" mpw but I hit these in 3-6 weeks per build up.
Age 15, 50mpw, 3:05
Age 16, 60mpw, 2:59
I was too slow in HS (4:26/9:41) to run for my college so trained on my own
Age 18, 75mpw, 2:44
Age 19, 85mpw, 2:35
Year off of the marathon to focus on shorter races but ran ~20 100 mile weeks in this year
Age 21, 120mpw, 2:22:29
Age 22, 140mpw, DNF/injury. probably best shape I've ever been in
Year off competitive running while transitioning into a demanding job
Age 24, 110mpw, 2:20:04
Year off competitive running again
Now: age 26, still working a ton, planning 120mpw, shooting for 2:18 in December
I haven't had a coach since high school and train solo now so I experiment with my own training. I've noticed a lot of success with mid-high mileage and incorporate things I've learned from Canova's posts here- long continuous intervals sessions (6x3k, 4x5k roughly at MP and moderate paced recoveries), and hard or progressive long runs including some of 24-28 miles.