Friday, January 25, 2019

The ridiculous journey to Boston

I need to play catch up on the journey to Boston story. For those who don't know the whole, long, ridiculous, exhausting story, here are the previous blog entries that pretty much tell it:

My first attempt at a BQ....not so fast!!

My second, successful attempt at a BQ

My husband's crazy idea

My husband's crazy marathon and BQ

The Boston cut-off

So yeah....in a nutshell:


  • I qualified for Boston a mismarked course, so no official BQ for me
  • I legitimately qualified again 5 weeks later on a perfectly marked course, with 5:07 to spare
  • Husband decides to run his FIRST marathon just so he can qualify and run with me in Boston
  • He crushes his first marathon, getting a BQ with 4:43 to spare
  • Oh, crap, the cut off was 4:52. He missed actually getting into Boston by 9 seconds. 


And then that same week we got that crap news, I injured my hamstring. It was a shit show of a week.

Thankfully, I'm back up and running, and just crushed a personal best in the half marathon in Houston last weekend (race recap soon!).

So, not only did I get a PR this past week, but it was also my birthday on the 15th and on that same day, the husband got the BEST NEWS EVER.

He would run the Boston Marathon after all. He works for Dell EMC and they get several sponsor bibs in conjunction with raising money for a local Hopkinton charity called the Michael Lisnow Respite Center. You can read about this incredible charity HERE. Not only that, but because he is a Boston Qualifier, he gets to use that time to be seeded in the first waves (likely the second one) rather than being put in the charity runner wave, meaning that I wouldn't have to move back in order to run with him. He could come back to my wave (likely the third) and run with me around others with my same speed.

This is not how I would have wanted to write my Boston Marathon story, but it sure makes for a good story, doesn't it? I think it's pretty spectacular that not only does the husband get to run after all, but he also gets to raise money for a charity that Dell EMC has been in partnership for many many years. I really encourage you to read more about it in the link above.

Also, if you are so inclined, we'd love for you to consider a donation to help support the charity, and us in our quest to spend our 20th anniversary together running the oldest marathon in the world!

Click here to donate to the Michael Lisnow Respite Center

79 more days!!





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