Saturday, April 26, 2008

Qualifying for NY, Part 2: long distances

(Edited on July 6th, 2008: I just found out that the "ING NYC Marathon Tune-Up" is also a qualifier, and was 18 miles last year. I'm editing this post to update the distances.)

Following up on my last post, the next logical question is, "what's the longest distance I could run to qualify?"

This is a bit trickier, because it depends on your gender. (Please take a moment to check this.) There are a couple of long qualifier races that only women are allowed to run. So, if you're a woman who enjoys running, achievement, distance, and (presumably) pain, you could run

[1] 26.2 miles More Magazine Marathon – Women only
[2] 26.2 miles NY Marathon (which is also a qualifier)
[3] 18.0 miles ING NYC Marathon Tune-Up
[4] 13.1 miles Manhattan half 1/2
[5] 13.1 miles Bronx half 1/2
[6] 13.1 miles Brooklyn half 1/2
[7] 13.1 miles Queens half 1/2
[8] 13.1 miles Staten Island half 1/2
[9] 13.1 miles New York 1/2 Marathon

for a total of 149 miles. "Weaker sex" my a__.

If you're one of us Y-Chromosome types, you have to get by with shorter mileage. Here's what it looks like:

[1] 26.2 NY Marathon (which is also a qualifier)
[2] 18.0 miles ING NYC Marathon Tune-Up
[3] 13.1 Manhattan 1/2
[4] 13.1 Bronx 1/2
[5] 13.1 Brooklyn 1/2
[6] 13.1 Queens 1/2
[7] 13.1 Staten Island 1/2
[8] 13.1 New York 1/2 Marathon
[9] 13.1 Grete's Great Gallop

Which is a total of 135.9 miles. With a bunch of women on the sidelines calling you a wimp.

Mind you, I'm not sure that Grete's Great Gallop is happening this year. The NYRR website lists the Norwegian Festival (which in the past has had Grete's), but they don't list the half marathon.

If Grete's doesn't happen, you'd have to do a shorter race. The next one down for men is the 15K (9.3 mile) NYRR Hot Chocolate 15K. This brings us down even further to a mere 132.1 miles. I mean, really, why bother?

3 comments:

The Laminator said...

I always thought it was kind of ridiculous that you can qualify for NYCM without running even a half-marathon. If it were up to me, at least 2 or 3 of your 9 qualifying runs have to be half-marys...what's the point of applying for 26 miles if you can't even run 13. Just my two cents.

Robert W. said...

Yeah, I see your point. I definitely wanted to get a few Halves under my belt before doing my first Full.

sRod said...

Thanks for stopping by Robert! And congrats on getting into the NYCM--I still do the lotto. I don't have the patience to get in the way you did (plus I already have one unpicked lotto entry under my belt).

Btw, I love running through Brooklyn! It tends to have more runner friendly neighborhoods than my home borough of Queens.