Take a deep breath. Sitting down? Doesn’t matter. I just submitted my registration for THE. BOSTON. MARATHON. Ah!!! Yes! Ok, now calm down.

Note I say “submitted my registration”, not “registered”. That’s because they need to take a look at everyone who

wants to run the race and determine if there’s enough room (details below). I’m hoping my time (3:03:36) is good enough to get me into the race. It should be, but you just never know.

Before I do anything else, just gotta give a shout out and thank you to Colin for convincing me that it could be done. After my first marathon (2007 Marine Corps – 3:53:42) I was just amazed I finished. How far we’ve come. I qualified at Vermont 50 minutes (and 6 seconds) faster, four and a half years later. From then until Vermont I had no disillusionment of actually qualifying for Boston, but Colin kept pressing the issue. Well here we are. Thanks buddy.

And bear with me, but I must give one big thank you to my support crew. Hazel as my training partner and Ev as my incredibly understanding and loving wife. It might be cliché, but I couldn’t have done it without you. Thank you more than you know.

Now it’s time to wait. Anyone who qualified can register from now through Friday. That’s when they close the doors, check how many people registered, and then either say “we’re full” or open it back up until it finally sells out. I won’t know if I’m officially registered until as late as October 1st. Sheesh. Hopefully they’re so amazed by my application that the race director personally calls me. Or they can just shoot me an automated email ASAP. Either way.

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p>Overly detailed explanation: If more people want to run than there is room, then they start cutting people with the slowest times until they get to their target number. Last year, for example, the qualifying time was 3:10 (for my age group), but because there were too many people who wanted to run, the real cut off was actually 3:08:46. So you could’ve qualified with 3:09:30 and not been admitted. This year they made the qualification standards more difficult, requiring everyone to run 5 minutes faster than previous years. Will it be enough to reduce the number of applicants? I sure hope so.

Last weekend we ventured to our rhyming sister cousin friend acquaintance city Boston for my cousin’s wedding.  While there I figured I’d try to get scope out the Boston Marathon course.  Maybe check out those nasty hills or get a preview of some of the scenery.  Well my plan was foiled when I learned that most of the race route is on city streets with minimal pedestrian access.  It didn’t stop me from getting very excited.

Instead I went out for two amazing runs along the Charles River.  The paths along the river are amazing as you run by all the historic brick buildings.  Starting in Copley Square I crossed the river into Cambridge and then trekked up one side of the river and back down the other trying my best to take it all in. If you wanted to convince me to move to Boston, all you’d need to do is take me on another run along the river there and I’m sold.

But all that running meant eating a lot.  We ate a ton.  Lobster rolls, pizza, pasta, and pastries like whoa.  On day 1 of our trip, my sister (who lives in Boston), Ev, and I hit up the gloriously named Mike’s Pastry for a famous canoli.  Not to waste an opportunity, I also picked up something called a lobster tail, which is really a code name for “enormous pastry stuffed with a pound of cream filling”.  By the end of the weekend I had conquered both desserts, sharing only a few bites along the way.

It’s hard to get perspective, but that lobster tail is about 11 inches long and weighs in, I’d guess, at 1.5 pounds.

What made up for not running any of the actual marathon course was getting to see the real finish line.  Most races bring in a scaffolding on race morning and take it away when the race is over.  Boston takes things much more seriously by actually painting the finish line onto the street.  How cool is that?!  Can’t wait to go back for the real deal!

Can’t wait to cross that finish line 9 months from now!

Oh it hurts so bad. Can you feel it? The dagger from the Boston Athletic Association just stabbed me in the face. They took the holy grail of running and made it even harder to reach. What does this do to a runner like me? Not much, besides crush my spirits and seemingly invalidate all my hard work up to this point.

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