Boston's problem with women

Distance: 8.5 km (5.3 miles); Time: 51 minutes; Surface: treadmill

This week all 21,000 places for the Boston Marathon, the world's oldest annual marathon which takes place each April through the leafy, red bricky streets of New England, sold out in a record eight hours. What makes this especially startling is that this marathon, one of the five "World Majors", has strict qualifying times as part of its entry criteria - to get a place, you have to have completed a marathon in under 3 hours 40 if you're a woman and under 3 hours 10 if you're a man (aged 34 or younger). That's pretty quick.

Boston Marathon Qualifying Standards
Age	Men	Women
18–34	3hrs 10min	3 hrs 40min
35–39	3hrs 15min	3 hrs 45min
40–44	3hrs 20min	3 hrs 50min
45–49	3hrs 30min	4 hrs 00min
50–54	3hrs 35min	4 hrs 05min
55–59	3hrs 45min	4 hrs 15min
60–64	4hrs 00min	4 hrs 30min
65–69	4hrs 15min	4 hrs 45min
70–74	4hrs 30min	5 hrs 00min
75–79	4hrs 45min	5 hrs 15min
80+	5hrs 00min	5 hrs 30min

Aside from the astonishing fact that we must all be getting so much faster if so many people can now qualify as "good" marathoners, the problem of over-subscription has prompted debate over whether women's qualifying times should be lowered to be brought more in line with men's. The gap in elite runners' times is now closer to 20 minutes than 30 - in the London marathon 2010, another World Major there were only 17 minutes between the male and female race winners.

As the Wall Street Journal points out, the Boston qualifying times were set back in 1977, Understanding of marathon fitness has moved on a lot since then, especially if you think that in 50 years ago marathon running was still considered an heroic feat suitable only for the unusually talented. I like to think that's still true, despite the fact that even the contestants on The Biggest Loser can run one these days.

Boston's problem also raises the question of age and gender and how they inter-relate in runners - is a man in his 50s still faster than a woman in her 30s? The qualifying times seem to presume so, when to me this feels instinctively wrong. Could it be that the marathon organisers - Boston's are almost all male - subconsciously want to perpetuate the "fragile woman myth" to protect the idea that men are always faster and stronger?

On the getting faster thing, the average human may be speeding up but at the top of the game every nanosecond is still a hard-earned victory. There is only about 6 minutes difference between the winner of the first London Marathon in 1981 (2.11) and the 2010 winner (2.05).

On a personal note (as someone unlikely to ever meet the Boston entry criteria) my knees are feeling a bit twinge-y today, so I think I might do some weights or biking instead of running. What's the best kind of cross training for marathoners, does anyone know?

Marathons: all in the mind?

Distance: 5K (3.2 miles, with backpack) Time: 31 minutes (lots of pedestrians); Surface: road

Last month a friend finished London's Run to the Beat half marathon in 1 hour 46 minutes, an excellent time by most accounts. What's more, it was her first half and she hadn't trained much - her longest run prior to the race was only eight miles. At dinner last night, I asked her the secrets to her speediness. She said that she was baffled by her time and put it down to having competed in running events at school, ten years ago. Not even cross country, but sprints (800 metres). Her conclusion was that having had a smattering of athletics training, “I know how to go through the pain. I sort of just pushed myself round”.

Topically, given my blog's rather lofty title, I’ve been fascinated by the link between endurance sports and the mind ever since I interviewed a tremendous athlete (I'm a journalist) called Katie Spotz - see pic, left - last year. The wonderful Spotz, a 22-year-old from Ohio, takes endurance sports to a level most of us wouldn't even have dreams/nightmares about – purely for fun (and for charity – she’s raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for clean drinking water). Katie has run 62-mile ultra marathons, crossed the Mojave desert solo and unsupported, cycled across America, become the first person to swim the 325 mile-long Allegheny river in the US (there were crocodiles, allegedly) and last year became the youngest person to row the Atlantic (www.rowforwater.com). It's enough to make you reach for the chocolate biscuits and crawl back to the sofa.

What is interesting about Katie is that she doesn’t see herself as a star athlete. She claims not to be fast, not a racer, and even that she was the archetypal “last to be picked for the sports team” kid at school (KATIE, ME TOO!). Instead, she credits her success to extreme mental resilience, telling me that endurance is 90% in the mind. Before swimming the Allegheny river she says she barely put on a swimsuit - yet pulled out distances of 22 miles on her longest day, the same as the English Channel, for 30 days.

To improve her mental strength and stop negative thoughts from derailing her, Katie goes on meditation retreats for up to ten days at a time, without books, conversation, eye contact or The Wire. Jesus.

Does anyone have any thoughts or know of any studies about the physical-mental split required to be an endurance supremo? If so, I would love to hear them.

In the beginning: six months of sweat

Distance: 10.27 km (6.38 miles); Time: 1 hour 10; Surface: road, park; Weekly mileage: 22 miles

Five days after my first half-marathon, by mile 11 of which my legs were ravaged, my stomach nauseous from all the sugar I'd ingested and my mind swearing to my poor, dying body that I would never force it to run anywhere ever again, I decided to sign up for the London marathon 2011. And realised I was hooked.

There are a lot of things I love about running, but one of the best is the feeling of meteoric progress, something I think is easy to lose sight of in other areas of our lives. I'm not fast by any means, and built more for endurance than speed. But, as I'm sure is normal for beginners, in the three months since I randomly decided to put on an old pair of trainers and hit the pavement, collapsing in agony 10 minutes later, my improvement has been rapid. *That's how it gets you*, the lazy, couch-dwelling Gollum voice in my head whispers. Too late. It's got me.

Today is October 16, exactly half a year before M-day. As it's nice to have some kind of symbolic start to these things, I decided that I should take advantage while I'm still naively enthusiastic and start a training log, complete with Bridget Jones-style vitals for each entry. To record what I hope will pass for progress; as an outlet for a growing obsession to stop my non-running companions from disowning me; and to swap geeky tips about hill sessions and heel striking with fellow runners that stumble across the page. Welcome!