Not So Fast
by
Mark Jimenez
I was born in the 70s, but I grew up in the 80s. If that’s all you knew about me, could you guess who my favorite football team was when I was a kid? It was the team of the 80s, the San Francisco 49ers. They won four Super Bowls in the 80s, and that shaped me as a kid. I continued following them until their most recent Steve Young led Super Bowl, and that happened right before I went to college.
As the 49ers faded from contention I found a new sport to love. My attention shifted from the NFL to College Football. I went all in, and my team was my alma mater, the USC Trojans. For many years I lived for Saturdays in the fall. I could watch college football from the early hours of the morning on Saturday until into Sunday morning (if Hawaii had a home game that was on TV). I loved the passion, the pageantry, and the game. I devoured College Football.
Saturdays started off with College Game Day. I would watch Chris Fowler, Kirk Herbstreit, and Lee Corso (the Game Day crew at the time) talk about the upcoming games and make predictions. Anybody who watched college football at the time will remember Lee Corso say to his companions at some point during the broadcast, “Not so fast, my friend.”
Even though we all knew it was coming, it still made us smile.
Over the years I’ve stopped watching most professional sports. I came to the epiphany that it hurts too much to be a fan, and unless your team wins the championship every single year you end up hurting at some point during the season. I am much more of a casual sports fan these days.
In any case, I couldn’t help but think of Lee Corso this week as I sat and thought about the marathon I just ran. I was pretty confident that I was going to make the cutoff time for Boston, considering that 1) I am 4 minutes and 54 seconds below the qualifying time, and 2) they just lowered the qualifying time for 2026.
Well, life has a funny way of saying, “Not so fast, my friend.”
Apparently there are some nerds out there who love crunching numbers. They’ve taken all the data from all the marathons this year and predicted that Boston will once again have a 6+ minute cutoff from the qualifying time.
If that’s the case, then even though I ran a Boston Qualifying time, I won’t be making the trip to Boston in 2026.
Well crap.
I have lots of thoughts about this. My first thought is the most obvious. If the 2025 cutoff was 6:51 and the Boston Athletic Association (BAA) responded by lowering the qualifying times by 5 minutes, and there is another 5+ minute cutoff in 2026, then the system is broken. That’s probably an over-reaction. The downhill penalties come into play in 2027, so we should probably wait to see how those play out and affect the qualifying times. Still, the first reaction is a bit of shock. My 4:54 cushion would be enough to get me into the race in most years except 2025. Crazy that they are anticipating another big cutoff for 2026.
Still, the nerds have been wrong before. I should know, I’m one of them. I’m going to take the approach that I’ll throw my name in the hat, and if I make it then I’m happy, and if I don’t then life goes on. I’m still planning on running a marathon in April 2026, it just depends on where. I have my backup race planned and everything. The only real thing that will change is where I’m going to run the race. I’ve already qualified for Boston four times now, and I’ve already run it twice. Do I absolutely need to run it in 2026?
Nope.
Will I throw my name in the hat anyway?
Yep.
One thing is for sure – I WILL run Boston again, and when I do, I WILL run with Flynn. Even if it means dangling a Twinkie in front of him the whole race. Which suddenly reminds me of the time KJ put Flynn through a blind taste test to see if he could correctly guess generic apple pie from Hostess Apple Pie.
Of course he could…
Getting Flynn to run fast requires a Twinkie
So even though the universe pulled a “Not so fast, my friend” on me, Flynn, and Carl (Drew is for sure in), we’re going to look on the bright side and have fun this spring.
See you in Boston….. or maybe somewhere else!
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Every Run is a Good Run