The Boston Marathon

If you’ve heard of one runner’s race, this is probably it. I’ll make you a bet: Within your first year of running, if enough people see you running, eventually one of them is going to ask you, “Whaddya trainin’ for the Boston Marathon?” Another prediction: If you start going to races and let others know about it, eventually one of them will ask, “So, have you run the Boston Marathon?” There’s no more famous race in the world.
Just the Facts
The Boston Marathon starts at noon on Patriot’s Day every year. Patriot’s Day is a New England holiday that commemorates the Battle of Lexington on April 19, 1775; in Massachusetts, it’s a state holiday, and it falls on the third Monday in April. The race begins in Hopkinton, Massachusetts and ends in downtown Boston. The Boston Marathon is put on by the Boston Athletic Association. For an application, write BAA Boston Marathon, The Starting Line, One Ash Street, Hopkinton, MA 01748-1897; or visit the Web site, http://www.boston-marathon.org.
What’s So Special About Boston?
The Boston Marathon has it all: more than a century of history, a great course, and spectacular spectators. For average runners, it’s unique among marathons in that it has qualifying standards. The standards were introduced in 1971 to make the size of the field more manageable. The qualifying time has to be run on an accurately measured course within just more than a year before the Boston Marathon that you want to participate in.
The current standards are shown in the following list:
These standards are tough! For example, if you’re a woman under the age of 35, you have to run 26.2 miles at an average pace of 8:25 per mile or faster. Older folks certainly don’t get a break: a 70-year-old man has to average about 8:45 a mile for 26.2 miles just to make it to Boston’s starting line.
But rather than resent these standards, most runners I know appreciate them. After a few years of running, a lot of runners look at qualifying for Boston as their personal Olympics. Even if they make it just once in their lives, or even if they fall short, they value the challenge that the Boston qualifying standards offer. If only for this once in their running life, they like the idea of having this inflexible goal that they’re willing to make great sacrifices to meet.
The most special thing about Boston is its course and the crowds that line it. You start in a small, New England village and then make your way through several towns with names that have meaning to all marathoners: Ashland, Framingham, Natick, and so on. Near halfway, you pass an all-women’s college, Wellesley, where the roar from the students was so loud that when three-time champion Ibrahim Hussein passed through in 1992, he covered his ears. Then it’s the famous Newton Hills, finishing with Heartbreak Hill, which crests at 21 miles. From its top, you have five mostly downhill miles to the finish right near Copley Square in downtown Boston.

How to Finish a Marathon?

To finish a marathon, the least you need to do is still pretty darned much. There’s no way to get around the necessity of long runs—that’s why they’re the focus of this marathon training schedule. As a first-time marathoner, your goal should be to cover the distance. The way to do that is to gradually build the distance that you can cover without having to slow dramatically in the last few miles.
These long runs are probably longer than you’ve ever run. They’re all the training stress that your body needs, so this schedule doesn’t include any speed workouts. At this point, they’ll just get in the way of recovering from your long runs. But you will be doing striders. Most weeks, you’ll be doing them twice. That’s because when you do nothing but train for marathons, it’s easy for your form to deteriorate. You’re always just shuffling along, not moving through a full range of motion. Striders will help you to improve your form, and they’re a fun contrast to the long runs.
Where the schedule says “2 12” under striders, that means that on two other runs that week, do striders. When it says “1 12,” just do striders once that week. Make one of your striders days the last run that you do before the next week’s long run. For example, if your long run is on a Sunday and you are going for a run the previous Friday, do striders on Friday. Don’t do striders the day after a long run.
The schedule doesn’t have you running a long run every week. That would be too much because your long run starts getting up there in distance. On the weeks when you’re not going long, you’ll see that it says “10 miles” under the “Hilly run” column heading. On these weeks, I want you to do a hilly 10-mile run on the day that you usually do your long run. This run will help to build leg strength and will give your VO2 max a bit of a boost.
The long runs are the key to this schedule. How much you run the rest of the week depends on how quickly you recover from the long runs. You should be running at least two other days most weeks. (Gotta do those striders!) It would be good if most weeks you included a run in the middle of the week that was half the distance of your last long run. For example, in week 6, your last long run was an 18-miler in week 5. So in week 6, do a 9-miler in addition to the hilly 10-miler. These medium-long runs in the middle of the week will help to consolidate the gains from the long run.
With two weeks to go, try to run a 15K to half-marathon race. Don’t worry so much about your pace as about experiencing a race atmosphere. A lot of first-time marathoners train in isolation for months, never enter a race, and freak out when suddenly they’re surrounded by thousands of others in a marathon.

Spaghetti for Dinner Again?

But I also told you that there’s nothing you can eat to make you a better runner. Confession time: That’s not entirely true. In the few days before a marathon, you can help to push The Wall a few more miles back by carboloading. Carboloading is often misunderstood. It doesn’t mean looking at the last three days before a marathon as an excuse to hit every all-you-can-eat buffet in town. You’re running less; you don’t need to eat much more than you usually do. What matters is increasing the percentage of your calories that come from carbohydrates to more than 65 percent, not just chowing down on everything in sight.
Carboloading works for the same reason that tapering works. Your muscles have become trained to store more glycogen. You’re tapering, so you’re not running much. Good—you’re barely dipping into your fuel stores. Simultaneously, you’re eating more carbohydrates than usual. Your muscles love it! They soak up the stuff. Do it right, and you can store an additional few hundred calories. That’s worth an extra three miles of running!
The key to carboloading is to emphasize the right foods. Concentrate on basing all of your meals in the three days before a marathon on high-carb foods, especially the complex ones. Most runners eat pasta when they’re carboloading, but rice and other grains are good, too. Fettucini alfredo is pasta, but it’s pasta in a heavy cream sauce. If you’re going to eat pasta, go with the light red sauces.