Few things are more American than the Boston Marathon. For the first time in 124 years the race has been canceled.
Bye bye Miss American Pie.
Here are some thoughts. If you met the Boston Marathon qualifying standard, you will always have that. In the 80s and 90s that alone was a badge to be proud of. No less today. I measure my marathon career by two metrics, my personal best and the number of times I qualified for Boston. In my era you had to run under 2:50.
Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry.
I’ve always contended the Marathon is a Cruel Mistress. Fickle. Brutal. Uncompromising. Caring not for your dedication to training, your commitment, your effort. 26.2 miles of ultimate apathy.
But she lays out there, waiting. And on that one special morning she’ll take you to that place you’ll never forget, your personal best. That has got to be your motivation. That carrot alone. It will always be worth the suffering, the rolls of the die.
Boston. Chicago. Twin Cities (prayers). NYC. All by the by. Hundreds of thousands of runners goals and best laid plans, done for 2020. The distance cares not, it will always be 42.16 kilometers. That is hard for a lot of people to accept but get used to it.
I’ll lay it out for you. Forget the Nebraska Marathon, forget the Heartland Marathon, forget the HITS Marathon, forget the Wabash Trace Marathon, forget the Des Moines Marathon. Forget the Quad Cities Marathon. Market to Market? Don’t see it. Good Life Halfsy? Don’t see it.
You’ll be offered Virtual options, and the offshoot paradigm, OYO (on your own) racing. Coming soon to an inbox near you!
My colleagues around the U.S., at the highest levels, are not confident in returning to what we know as road racing in 2020. Some are even predicting mass participation racing won’t resume until the fall of 2021, or later depending on the covid spread and work on a vaccine.
Valley 7 Lakes is paying very close attention. Keeping all of our options open including April 24th and potentially even a fall 2021 date.
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