Context for those not following running news, The Boston Marathon lowered qualifying times for most prospective runners for 2026 race [0]. Because the Boston Marathon has limited capacity, you can only run if you either:
1) raise $5k+ for a charity (limited spots)
2) run a full marathon below* a qualifying time
The reason it's below* is because even if you run under a qualifying time, there may be enough people even faster than you that fill up the available spots.
This results in some years where you needed to be many minutes faster than the posted qualifying time to guarantee a spot, and every few years, the BAA (group in charge of Boston Marathon) drops the qualifying times.
Note, even though the qualifying times have been dropping, they have been even faster in the past (see the 1980s)[1]
As someone that's done the Boston Marathon a few times, I am glad they are trying to find a good balance of reasonable qualifying times for the most participation without dramatically expanding the field. I'm also always surprised with how popular and well known this marathon is given the NYC marathon (and others) are harder to get into, only about 2 of the miles are actually in Boston [2], and the start/finish are so far away making participating a logistic headache. But that could be what gives it the charm and why I'm now thinking about doing 2026
I can't answer this for everyone, but as someone who has run 5 marathons and is running my 6th in 5 weeks (Frankfurt).
Boston has some kind of mythical status among marathoners. You're _not_ really there until you've qualified for Boston. I do not know where this comes from, but what I do know is that QUALIFYING for Boston as a male (33) is a BHAG that's fun to chase after.
Boston is the 6th of the 6 Abbot Marathon that are considered the "big" 6.
New York, London, Chicago, Boston, Berlin and Tokyo. All the others you either win the lottery our you've 4 of the other ones. Nothing you can really do in 6 conseq years.
It's not even the fastest course, but it's the course for those who are "serious" about running as a hobby. Running a marathon isn't enough. Running Boston separates you from the try-hard crowd, with a lack of a better word.
> Boston has some kind of mythical status among marathoners. You're _not_ really there until you've qualified for Boston. I do not know where this comes from
It's literally because BQ is a tough target time. Even if you don't run Boston it's a mark you're in the top X% (X is a bit hard to calculate). So it's a status symbol. Just like 'Ivy League' or "D1 sport".
Similarly in the UK, it's the London qualifying time known as Good For Age or the more challenging 'Championship Place'.
And it's self-fulfilling. You get the time so you chose to run because you have it which keeps the time hard for others.
The race itself is, I'm told, a pain-in-the-ass because of the logistics but also the profile - despite being net-downhill it's got a nasty hill at mile 20. Plus with the race route being pretty much "26 miles straight, then hook a right", if there's a headwind, there's a headwind for 26 miles. If there's driving rain, it's in your face for 26 miles (see 2018's race).
(As an aside, there's a few tricks for the Abbot Majors to get places [aside from just buying one of the expensive guaranteed tour company places or being an elite runner])
I've always thought it was a real shame that the Boston Marathon is so mythical, because there's a much more symbolic potential route: start at the Old North Church in the North End (the "one if by land, two if by sea" place), through downtown/the common/Back Bay, then take Mass Ave all the way to the Lexington Battle Green (site of the first battle of the revolution), and that's almost exactly half a marathon in distance while more-or-less reenacting the Midnight Ride.
An otherwise unmotivated position sustained as desirable only by the difficulty generated by the number of people trying to crowd into it serves as a deeper representation of this country than the story you're proposing to replace it with. ;)
Not a marathon runner but live in Boston and I have been told the route is fairly high difficulty due to hills in particularly challenging stretches. Not sure how true this is but one of my coworkers ran it competitively last year and he got wrecked by the elevation changes.
The first couple of miles are downhill. You're also running with a very large densely-packed group who are just as fast as you. It's very easy to get sucked along to run much faster than you planned for the first few miles.
The Newton Hills, esp. Heartbreak Hill, are near where many people will hit the proverbial wall, distance-wise. Having to go up ever-steeper hills at the same time can be really taxing.
There are so many things that can go slightly wrong, and when you have to endure those slight inconveniences for 26.2 miles/2+ hours, it can feel like an aerobic Chinese water torture.
The year I ran, we had a tailwind, so I had an relatively easy time of it.
Come to Baltimore and check out Satyr Hill. It is very easy to leave your legs behind and not realize that until you have four to six miles to go and no energy.
(But what do I know? I haven't run Baltimore since 1984.)
A while back I thought maybe, just maybe, if everything went in my favor, I could qualify at 3:10. Then they lowered it to 3:05, and that might as well be the far side of the moon.
According to TFA it's now 2:55. There is no way in the universe I would ever run a sub-3 marathon. (I'm no longer in that age bracket, but the time for my bracket is similarly impossible.)
That's fine with me. It's awesome that so many people are running marathons that the most prestigious one is utterly full. It's a really absurd hobby, and the best thing about race day is all of those people going "Wow, we're about to do something incredibly stupid together."
There are plenty of other fun marathons to do. This year mine is gonna be the Dramathon -- which will end with bottles of scotch.
The carbon-plate shoes (starting with the Nike Vaporfly, then AlphaFly) have resulted in faster race times. The Boston Athletic Association is reacting accordingly.
My favorite part: "Despite all the evidence and research I have laid out above, it should be noted that only certain people seem to get benefits from the foams, carbon fiber plates and other technologies associated with these shoes. Research has come out just recently that the actual benefit derived from each subject varies greatly based on individual factors (Herbert-Losier et al., 2020). These performance changes can be as great as 10% (or more) in some people and for others may actually be detrimental. So as much as we talk about the percentages gleaned from the research suggesting how much certain elements contribute to changes in economy, remember that each person is unique in that effect."
> Our mission is to understand fitness so you can achieve your athletic dreams. Recently, athletes have been gathering lot of data, but nobody has been able to fully leverage these sources to help people become more fit.
Strava has an entire data scientist dep devoted to analysing the captured data.
They also publish a lot of their thinking around Relative Effort (RE) and other performance metrics.
I can't say to much because we are trying to keep our methods stealth, but I think it's better to be last than first in this race. Strava isn't the only company in this field: Garmin, Kaizen, and AI Endurance are just a few. For a while, our race predictions were a lot more accurate than the biggest of these (Garmin, which has a lot more data than Strava), which is probably telling of the difficulty. There isn't an obvious company you go to to tell you about your fitness, but if there was we would have never started our mission.
I wish you luck, because I think this space is about to get a lot more crowded.
That said, I suspect that Strava and Apple (and likely even Google) have more data than Garmin. Maybe quality of data is lower (garmin is higher % athletes?).
There are a lot of companies planning or starting to tell you about fitness. Oura and Whoop and now Fitbit are happy to give you basic training readiness info. Google will help you plan runs, Apple will give you “training load”.
I’m not sure what your target market is, but don’t forget to look broadly. Garmin is favored for training athletes but fitbits and Apple Watches are favored for casual workouts. If you’re trying to train models on metabolic or other physiological training ability, don’t forget to look at non-athletes or early-athletes.
Thanks! In my experience in these things, there are only handful of people with the right ML background implement the products well (it tends to be a blend of domain knowledge, researching ideas in the correct way, and engineering to make the iteration loop fast), and I think our team has that. Hitting the right audience like you mentioned is going to key, too.
I have a friend who is something like a 6-hour marathoner and has run Boston a couple times for charity. The experience is pretty subpar to hear her tell it. The college students are pretty intoxicated by that point, the organizers are starting to clean up the course and move the runners to the sidewalks, and the course is full of trash where they haven't cleaned up yet.
The porta-potties don't have a lot to recommend them either once 30-something-thousand people have come through ahead of you too.
I used to live on beacon st in Brookline. Every year the marathon was a nightmare. Drunk people on my stoop. Trash everywhere. It was wicked cool to see the old timers and charity runners running even after it got dark. Would always give them a big cheer as they came by.
Ran Boston and sub3’ed multiple times and have to say it was worth it. But the training process is all consuming especially if you aren’t naturally talented, like running 75 miles per week, so keep things in perspective
This is the kind of information that would be better presented in a simple table.
For every age group up to 60 the window between 0% and 100% chance is under 5min.
Maybe the question is: should you run the Boston Marathon
In 2016, a systematic medical review found that the risk of sudden cardiac death during or immediately after a marathon was between 0.6 and 1.9 deaths per 100,000 participants, varying across the specific studies and the methods used, and not controlling for age or gender. This translates to a few published marathon deaths worldwide in a typical year, although the authors lamented the lack of a central registry for the information.
That said, the Boston Marathon has a lower presence in the marathon-death-tables, the bombing aside: That's really not relevant to this. So, if you want to take the aggregate risk (which is between the risk of fatal insect sting, and lightning) of all the Marathons to chose to run, Boston is one of the better ones.
The Boston Marathon is not open to the general public - you cannot simply "choose" to run it like you can other marathons.
It's likely that more people suffer health issues from overexertion by trying to qualify for the Boston Marathon, because it's a difficult goal. Once you're already running in the Boston Marathon there is less drive to push yourself over the limit.
Yes yes, discount the fact he'd just finished a battle and ran over 100 miles to get there in the first place.
> He ran about 240 km (150 mi) in two days, and then ran back. He then ran the 40 km (25 mi) to the battlefield near Marathon and back to Athens to announce the Greek victory over Persia in the Battle of Marathon (490 BC) with the word νικῶμεν (nikomen[8] "We win!"), as stated by Lucian chairete, nikomen ("hail, we are the winners")[9] and then collapsed and died.
But sure, it's the last 25 (50 given both ways) that really killed him, not the other 150 miles.
> How could he have fueled properly for that effort?
Clearly, he didn't.
It's hard to get specifics, but that doesn't seem impossible for a pre-industrial, highly trained runner (several hunter-gatherer tribes seem to be capable of those sorts of distances over multiple days, and he was as close to a professional distance runner as existed at the time). Remember also that he isn't running through uninhabited territory; there would likely have been multiple opportunities (pre-established supply depots? well-known locals?) where an official representative of a major local power would have been able to acquire food.
I'm not here to argue for not doing marathons. It's safer than walking out with a risk of thunder, its a bit less safe than walking by a bee hive.
I do note that every marathon runner I know (thats about 5) carries some burdens afterward above and beyond simple post-race injury: there is an effect on your health, it's multi-dimensional, and it goes on a while. They enjoyed the run so I guess it's a fair exchange. Knowing when to stop is part of the process I guess.
> I do note that every marathon runner I know (thats about 5) carries some burdens afterward above and beyond simple post-race injury: there is an effect on your health, it's multi-dimensional, and it goes on a while. They enjoyed the run so I guess it's a fair exchange. Knowing when to stop is part of the process I guess.
People bucket-list it. They don't prepare properly, they train through injury because they want to do the race they spent money on, or they just think they can wing it (not helped by TV shows and celebrity comments). And they get injured as a result.
It's not hard to run a marathon and not get injured. It's just lots of people think they can shortcut hard work.
I've done 9 marathons. The only long lasting sports injury I have is from skiing.
I'm tired of anecodotal data being unacceptable in any field except running, where old wives tales and crappy studies replace actual data, which is that, if you train properly, running is beneficial for your health and there's no actual contraindictions.
Why is it we A-B test button colours on a marketing website but we accept folksy knowledge for serious topics.
Just to concur (and I’ve run a similar number) - what I tell people that ask about my training schedule is that just running a marathon isn’t the hard part. With some training and mental effort, it can be done… but that will only get you so far.
For me, the real reason for training is so that when you’re done, you can still walk normally the next day… that you have a good experience… and that your body feels better for the effort. The training takes (a lot of) time and is hard work, but if you follow a solid training plan, your body can be well prepared for it. If you don’t train enough, you will not have a good experience. I’m about 8 weeks out from my next one and this is when the grind really starts for me. But I know that if I follow the plan, I’ll have a good experience on the day of the race (and after).
Oh, and for the record, I’m nowhere near a BQ time. :)
I’ve seen so many people who do half their weekly mileage in one day: their Sunday long run. That alone is a recipe for injury and, come race day, a good way to find that “wall” everyone talks about. Top that off with weekly mileage that hovers around 30 miles/week at best, and yeah, folks are going to get injured and/or be barely able to walk the next day.
Running marathons isn’t bad for you, but running marathons when poorly trained is.
Context for those not following running news, The Boston Marathon lowered qualifying times for most prospective runners for 2026 race [0]. Because the Boston Marathon has limited capacity, you can only run if you either:
1) raise $5k+ for a charity (limited spots)
2) run a full marathon below* a qualifying time
The reason it's below* is because even if you run under a qualifying time, there may be enough people even faster than you that fill up the available spots.
This results in some years where you needed to be many minutes faster than the posted qualifying time to guarantee a spot, and every few years, the BAA (group in charge of Boston Marathon) drops the qualifying times.
Note, even though the qualifying times have been dropping, they have been even faster in the past (see the 1980s)[1]
As someone that's done the Boston Marathon a few times, I am glad they are trying to find a good balance of reasonable qualifying times for the most participation without dramatically expanding the field. I'm also always surprised with how popular and well known this marathon is given the NYC marathon (and others) are harder to get into, only about 2 of the miles are actually in Boston [2], and the start/finish are so far away making participating a logistic headache. But that could be what gives it the charm and why I'm now thinking about doing 2026
[0] https://apnews.com/article/boston-marathon-qualifying-times-...
[1]https://www.baa.org/races/boston-marathon/qualify/history-qu...
[2]https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/boston-marathon-route-ma....
I can't answer this for everyone, but as someone who has run 5 marathons and is running my 6th in 5 weeks (Frankfurt).
Boston has some kind of mythical status among marathoners. You're _not_ really there until you've qualified for Boston. I do not know where this comes from, but what I do know is that QUALIFYING for Boston as a male (33) is a BHAG that's fun to chase after.
Boston is the 6th of the 6 Abbot Marathon that are considered the "big" 6. New York, London, Chicago, Boston, Berlin and Tokyo. All the others you either win the lottery our you've 4 of the other ones. Nothing you can really do in 6 conseq years.
It's not even the fastest course, but it's the course for those who are "serious" about running as a hobby. Running a marathon isn't enough. Running Boston separates you from the try-hard crowd, with a lack of a better word.
BHAG = big hairy audacious goal
https://www.jimcollins.com/concepts/bhag.html
> Boston has some kind of mythical status among marathoners. You're _not_ really there until you've qualified for Boston. I do not know where this comes from
It's literally because BQ is a tough target time. Even if you don't run Boston it's a mark you're in the top X% (X is a bit hard to calculate). So it's a status symbol. Just like 'Ivy League' or "D1 sport".
Similarly in the UK, it's the London qualifying time known as Good For Age or the more challenging 'Championship Place'.
And it's self-fulfilling. You get the time so you chose to run because you have it which keeps the time hard for others.
The race itself is, I'm told, a pain-in-the-ass because of the logistics but also the profile - despite being net-downhill it's got a nasty hill at mile 20. Plus with the race route being pretty much "26 miles straight, then hook a right", if there's a headwind, there's a headwind for 26 miles. If there's driving rain, it's in your face for 26 miles (see 2018's race).
(As an aside, there's a few tricks for the Abbot Majors to get places [aside from just buying one of the expensive guaranteed tour company places or being an elite runner])
I've always thought it was a real shame that the Boston Marathon is so mythical, because there's a much more symbolic potential route: start at the Old North Church in the North End (the "one if by land, two if by sea" place), through downtown/the common/Back Bay, then take Mass Ave all the way to the Lexington Battle Green (site of the first battle of the revolution), and that's almost exactly half a marathon in distance while more-or-less reenacting the Midnight Ride.
An otherwise unmotivated position sustained as desirable only by the difficulty generated by the number of people trying to crowd into it serves as a deeper representation of this country than the story you're proposing to replace it with. ;)
> Just like 'Ivy League' or "D1 sport".
Just for the record, Ivy League is D1 sport ;)
Not a marathon runner but live in Boston and I have been told the route is fairly high difficulty due to hills in particularly challenging stretches. Not sure how true this is but one of my coworkers ran it competitively last year and he got wrecked by the elevation changes.
The course is deceptive.
The first couple of miles are downhill. You're also running with a very large densely-packed group who are just as fast as you. It's very easy to get sucked along to run much faster than you planned for the first few miles.
The Newton Hills, esp. Heartbreak Hill, are near where many people will hit the proverbial wall, distance-wise. Having to go up ever-steeper hills at the same time can be really taxing.
There are so many things that can go slightly wrong, and when you have to endure those slight inconveniences for 26.2 miles/2+ hours, it can feel like an aerobic Chinese water torture.
The year I ran, we had a tailwind, so I had an relatively easy time of it.
Great friendly crowds.
(To be read in a grouchy old man's voice.)
Come to Baltimore and check out Satyr Hill. It is very easy to leave your legs behind and not realize that until you have four to six miles to go and no energy.
(But what do I know? I haven't run Baltimore since 1984.)
Wow, they lowered them again?
A while back I thought maybe, just maybe, if everything went in my favor, I could qualify at 3:10. Then they lowered it to 3:05, and that might as well be the far side of the moon.
According to TFA it's now 2:55. There is no way in the universe I would ever run a sub-3 marathon. (I'm no longer in that age bracket, but the time for my bracket is similarly impossible.)
That's fine with me. It's awesome that so many people are running marathons that the most prestigious one is utterly full. It's a really absurd hobby, and the best thing about race day is all of those people going "Wow, we're about to do something incredibly stupid together."
There are plenty of other fun marathons to do. This year mine is gonna be the Dramathon -- which will end with bottles of scotch.
The carbon-plate shoes (starting with the Nike Vaporfly, then AlphaFly) have resulted in faster race times. The Boston Athletic Association is reacting accordingly.
Here's a good roundup of the science for anyone who is curious -- https://www.doctorsofrunning.com/2020/04/footwear-science-ev...
My favorite part: "Despite all the evidence and research I have laid out above, it should be noted that only certain people seem to get benefits from the foams, carbon fiber plates and other technologies associated with these shoes. Research has come out just recently that the actual benefit derived from each subject varies greatly based on individual factors (Herbert-Losier et al., 2020). These performance changes can be as great as 10% (or more) in some people and for others may actually be detrimental. So as much as we talk about the percentages gleaned from the research suggesting how much certain elements contribute to changes in economy, remember that each person is unique in that effect."
> Our mission is to understand fitness so you can achieve your athletic dreams. Recently, athletes have been gathering lot of data, but nobody has been able to fully leverage these sources to help people become more fit.
Strava has an entire data scientist dep devoted to analysing the captured data. They also publish a lot of their thinking around Relative Effort (RE) and other performance metrics.
Where do you differ?
I can't say to much because we are trying to keep our methods stealth, but I think it's better to be last than first in this race. Strava isn't the only company in this field: Garmin, Kaizen, and AI Endurance are just a few. For a while, our race predictions were a lot more accurate than the biggest of these (Garmin, which has a lot more data than Strava), which is probably telling of the difficulty. There isn't an obvious company you go to to tell you about your fitness, but if there was we would have never started our mission.
I wish you luck, because I think this space is about to get a lot more crowded.
That said, I suspect that Strava and Apple (and likely even Google) have more data than Garmin. Maybe quality of data is lower (garmin is higher % athletes?).
There are a lot of companies planning or starting to tell you about fitness. Oura and Whoop and now Fitbit are happy to give you basic training readiness info. Google will help you plan runs, Apple will give you “training load”.
I’m not sure what your target market is, but don’t forget to look broadly. Garmin is favored for training athletes but fitbits and Apple Watches are favored for casual workouts. If you’re trying to train models on metabolic or other physiological training ability, don’t forget to look at non-athletes or early-athletes.
Thanks! In my experience in these things, there are only handful of people with the right ML background implement the products well (it tends to be a blend of domain knowledge, researching ideas in the correct way, and engineering to make the iteration loop fast), and I think our team has that. Hitting the right audience like you mentioned is going to key, too.
It looks like my 5:32 time does not qualify me :(
I have a friend who is something like a 6-hour marathoner and has run Boston a couple times for charity. The experience is pretty subpar to hear her tell it. The college students are pretty intoxicated by that point, the organizers are starting to clean up the course and move the runners to the sidewalks, and the course is full of trash where they haven't cleaned up yet.
The porta-potties don't have a lot to recommend them either once 30-something-thousand people have come through ahead of you too.
I used to live on beacon st in Brookline. Every year the marathon was a nightmare. Drunk people on my stoop. Trash everywhere. It was wicked cool to see the old timers and charity runners running even after it got dark. Would always give them a big cheer as they came by.
As a spectator, I’ve always had a great time.
If you get that down to 5:10 and are an 80+ female then you're golden!
Don’t feel bad, being able to run for that long is still 99th percentile.
Try adjusting the slider! Gives us hope.
Anything 2:50:00 or below is 100% and anything 2:55:00 and above is 0%
Is this actually accurate or did I find a bug?
If not, such a weird 5 minute window
The 0% above 2:55 makes sense at least since it's the BAA's new cutoff this year for males <35yo (the default on the calculator):https://www.baa.org/races/boston-marathon/qualify
But that's for 2026 - the 2025 time qualifying time is 3:00.
Ran Boston and sub3’ed multiple times and have to say it was worth it. But the training process is all consuming especially if you aren’t naturally talented, like running 75 miles per week, so keep things in perspective
This is the kind of information that would be better presented in a simple table. For every age group up to 60 the window between 0% and 100% chance is under 5min.
The interactive component was just there so you didn't have to compute the buffer yourself, but I see your point--thanks!
Note that the root site (https://getfast.ai/) also has a marathon time predictor, based on your Strava data.
This would be a lot less confusing if the title were "Will you qualify for Boston 2025?"
Maybe the question is: should you run the Boston Marathon
That said, the Boston Marathon has a lower presence in the marathon-death-tables, the bombing aside: That's really not relevant to this. So, if you want to take the aggregate risk (which is between the risk of fatal insect sting, and lightning) of all the Marathons to chose to run, Boston is one of the better ones.The Boston Marathon is not open to the general public - you cannot simply "choose" to run it like you can other marathons.
It's likely that more people suffer health issues from overexertion by trying to qualify for the Boston Marathon, because it's a difficult goal. Once you're already running in the Boston Marathon there is less drive to push yourself over the limit.
That's a far better death rate than the original marathon.
(1 death per 1 participant according to the tale of Pheidippides.)
Yes yes, discount the fact he'd just finished a battle and ran over 100 miles to get there in the first place.
> He ran about 240 km (150 mi) in two days, and then ran back. He then ran the 40 km (25 mi) to the battlefield near Marathon and back to Athens to announce the Greek victory over Persia in the Battle of Marathon (490 BC) with the word νικῶμεν (nikomen[8] "We win!"), as stated by Lucian chairete, nikomen ("hail, we are the winners")[9] and then collapsed and died.
But sure, it's the last 25 (50 given both ways) that really killed him, not the other 150 miles.
Are those numbers even possible with the resources he’d have had at his disposal? How could he have fueled properly for that effort?
> How could he have fueled properly for that effort?
Clearly, he didn't.
It's hard to get specifics, but that doesn't seem impossible for a pre-industrial, highly trained runner (several hunter-gatherer tribes seem to be capable of those sorts of distances over multiple days, and he was as close to a professional distance runner as existed at the time). Remember also that he isn't running through uninhabited territory; there would likely have been multiple opportunities (pre-established supply depots? well-known locals?) where an official representative of a major local power would have been able to acquire food.
Yea, I think Cochrane decided that wasn't an adequate sample to include.
And what's the sudden cardiac risk for any other given activity. "Cardiac Risk in the Young" is a legitimate problem regardless of running a marathon.
And what's the cardiac risk for no exercise at all?
You're not controlling for the fact you have to exist.
I'm not here to argue for not doing marathons. It's safer than walking out with a risk of thunder, its a bit less safe than walking by a bee hive.
I do note that every marathon runner I know (thats about 5) carries some burdens afterward above and beyond simple post-race injury: there is an effect on your health, it's multi-dimensional, and it goes on a while. They enjoyed the run so I guess it's a fair exchange. Knowing when to stop is part of the process I guess.
> I do note that every marathon runner I know (thats about 5) carries some burdens afterward above and beyond simple post-race injury: there is an effect on your health, it's multi-dimensional, and it goes on a while. They enjoyed the run so I guess it's a fair exchange. Knowing when to stop is part of the process I guess.
People bucket-list it. They don't prepare properly, they train through injury because they want to do the race they spent money on, or they just think they can wing it (not helped by TV shows and celebrity comments). And they get injured as a result.
It's not hard to run a marathon and not get injured. It's just lots of people think they can shortcut hard work.
I've done 9 marathons. The only long lasting sports injury I have is from skiing.
I'm tired of anecodotal data being unacceptable in any field except running, where old wives tales and crappy studies replace actual data, which is that, if you train properly, running is beneficial for your health and there's no actual contraindictions.
Why is it we A-B test button colours on a marketing website but we accept folksy knowledge for serious topics.
Just to concur (and I’ve run a similar number) - what I tell people that ask about my training schedule is that just running a marathon isn’t the hard part. With some training and mental effort, it can be done… but that will only get you so far.
For me, the real reason for training is so that when you’re done, you can still walk normally the next day… that you have a good experience… and that your body feels better for the effort. The training takes (a lot of) time and is hard work, but if you follow a solid training plan, your body can be well prepared for it. If you don’t train enough, you will not have a good experience. I’m about 8 weeks out from my next one and this is when the grind really starts for me. But I know that if I follow the plan, I’ll have a good experience on the day of the race (and after).
Oh, and for the record, I’m nowhere near a BQ time. :)
They don't prepare properly…
I’ve seen so many people who do half their weekly mileage in one day: their Sunday long run. That alone is a recipe for injury and, come race day, a good way to find that “wall” everyone talks about. Top that off with weekly mileage that hovers around 30 miles/week at best, and yeah, folks are going to get injured and/or be barely able to walk the next day.
Running marathons isn’t bad for you, but running marathons when poorly trained is.