Monday April 20th Boston celebrates Patriot?s Day with the 113th running of the Boston Marathon, the second oldest footrace in North America and it promises to be an exciting race. Four time winner ?Boston Billy? Bill Rodgers is still deciding if he will run, Ryan Hall is poised to be the first American winner since 1983 and there will be a showdown between the two fastest legally blind men. Kurt Fiene and Adrian Broca, who are ranked among the fastest 500 men in the race and can both run around 2:50 races. In previous races Broca and Fiene have often taken turns in the winner?s circle.
More important than all of that is the fact that local runner Jutta Merilainen will be running Boston as an invited elite and will start with 41 other elite women such as last year?s winner Dire Tune, gun time 9:32am. Also running Boston from the Quinte area are 15 other runners who will start based on their qualifying time at either 10:00am or 10:30am. The average age of these runners is 45, the fastest qualifying time was 2:47 and the slowest which is not slow at all was 4:04. Achieving a Boston qualifying time is the most sought-after goal of most serious runners but it doesn?t always come easily, so when these runners hit the start line in Hopkinton it?s not always about running as fast as they can to the finish line but rather enjoying the course and the spectators along the way.
A few interesting facts about Boston from a number of sources:
-18 runners showed up for the first running of the event.
-Over 35,000 ran the 100th.
-The field averages 25,000 participants and over 500,000 spectators.
-The first qualifying standards were instituted in 1970 and have changed nine times since.
-The route has changed twice.
-22% of participants don?t qualify...WHAT...shocking but true.
-37% of participants re-qualify at Boston.
-The above fact is because it has the fastest finishers and is not the fastest marathon.
-Bay State Marathon in Lowell Massachusetts is the fastest Boston qualifier with 34.1% of the field making the cut.
-Approximately 10.4% of marathon finishers qualify with the highest age group being women age 45-49 at 14.5%, men age 65-69 at 17% and men and women age 34 and younger only 7.9%.
-1972 saw the first official women runners and they had the same qualifying standards as the men.
-The fastest finishing times are 2:07:14 for men and 2:20:43 for women.
-Boston was the site of two big controversies, Katherine Switzer in 1967 and Rosie Ruiz in 1980.
-Since 1975 more than 1000 individuals with disabilities have participated.
If you would like to follow any of our local runners you can do so at
www.bostonmarathon.com, at
www.universalsports.com or WBZ-TV live from Boston. Check out the following athletes: Janet Adams, Chris Berneche, Rosanne Duke, Patrick Foran, Boyd Kalnay, Craig Parry, Andrew Speedy, Sharon Voteary, Jeff Walsh, Stephanie Warren, Patricia Boehme, Wayne Snowdon, Allan Faulds, Scott Faulds, Tom Fleming and of course Jutta.
