Boilermaker and Beyond

The St. Louis Rock and Roll Full and Half Marathon took place Sunday, October 21^st. This race (which had 16,000 participants) instituted a unique barrier system to deal with slow runners. If a person running the full marathon could not reach the 12.8 mile mark by 3 hours and 46 minutes they met a barrier which pushed them to the finish line of the half marathon.

Race rules stipulate that the maximum limit of the marathon is seven hours.

To bring this down to a granular level; if you have covered 12.8 miles in 226 minutes you are running (or perhaps more accurately walking) at a seventeen and a half minute a mile pace.

What racing is experiencing nationwide, including the Boilermaker, is a slower running field. This phenomena has a number of implications, especially for marathon races.

Here are a few:

Roads can’t open until you get the participants off the course; people don’t like the feeling that they are trapped in their home.  St. Louis had an additional demand as the St. Louis Rams had a home game that Sunday.

Increased demands on race support. Think about bands, water stations, aid tents, and finish line crew that have to be on the course for over seven hours (actually longer because they also have to set up/ tear down).

People that have not trained will, in general, be a greater demand on medical staff. Think about it; people in the worst shape are on the course longer than the elites (and usually experiencing the hottest temperatures).

While the Boilermaker is fortunate to only have 9.3 miles rather than 26.2 miles to support we have the same issues to deal with.  Our rules stipulate that participants need to be off the course in two and a half hours.  That means you need to be traveling at a sixteen minute a mile clip.

When registration opens in January be realistic with your goal setting. If you struggled finishing the 5k last year are you now ready to take on the 15k? Last year, for the first time, the 5k sold out so the ability to bump people down from the 15k vanished.

Just remember we have a walk for the walkers (Saturday of Boilermaker Week) and runs for the runners!

On a totally different note, the ING New York City Marathon is scheduled to be run Sunday, November 4^th (50,000 runners). Let’s hope New York can put itself back together in time.