2026 to date:
books read: three
kilometres ran: 741.5
kilometres rode: 1,449.6
I used to post here weekly and when I decided to resurrect this space I wasn’t sure what my cadence might be, but what I knew was that I wasn’t going to post here weekly. And since then I have posted here weakly.
I finished Perfection and intended to have something written to coincide with 50 days until the Boston Marathon but here we are 35 days away. A colleague once quoted Voltaire at me and I am still not sure they even know who Voltaire is. I replied something along the lines of good enough is rarely synonymous with good.
Perfection is a work in translation that made The New Yorker’s best books of 2025 list, and was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. But I didn’t know that when I picked up a copy that had climbed my to-read pile I cannot remember how. A couple of expat designers settle into life in Berlin during that heyday (or so it seemed from over here) of Berlin being the cool place to be, and they proceed to experience the same mundane life as they would anywhere else. I remember the early aughts when it seemed like every artist and designer was on their way to Berlin or trying to figure out how to join their friends there. I’d just moved to Vancouver from Kamloops by way of a two-winter purgatory in Winnipeg and everybody was talking about Berlin. While reading Perfection I found a few neurons refire with nostalgia for the little gallery space I helped float on the corner of East Hastings and Princess in those early arrival years. Some of those could have remained burnt out. I have found myself thinking about this book a lot in the time since I finished reading it. I think that its praise is deserved.
There’s a problem with the Boston Marathon and everyone talks about it for a few days or a couple weeks every year right around the end of September when everyone who qualified and applied to run Boston finds out whether or not qualifying is actually enough. Spoiler: it’s often not. I know this intimately. This confuses people who are on the periphery of this stupid little hobby, but to some of us it is serious business. Since not everybody knows how this works here’s my explainer. (If you know then just skip a bit.)
The Boston Marathon is the only race I am aware of that you need to qualify for in order to be allowed to run…other than the Olympics, the Worlds…I guess there are a few but Boston is the only that I shlub like me needs to qualify for. Most races you just give them enough money and they let you run. Some you enter a lottery for the chance to give them money. To be allowed to give the Boston Athletics Association (BAA) money to be allowed to run the Boston Marathon you need to have run a Boston Qualifying time (BQ). Times are adjusted by age and gender. For instance, if you are a 30 year old dude you need to run a marathon in under 2 hours and 55 minutes. Do that, and you have a BQ! Congrats you qualified to run the Boston Marathon! But not so fast (pun intended?) because so did a whole bunch of other weirdos. The BAA takes all the qualifying entries and subtracts time until they get to their number of participants. Every year the number changes because it depends on how fast everybody ran, and how many people applied. For 2026, the cut off time was 4 minutes and 34 seconds, which means the 30 year old dude who ran 2:54:58 actually needed to run faster than 2:50:26.
People keep running faster so every few years the BAA lowers the BQ standard. In 2025 the BQ standard for that 30 year old dude was 3 hours flat, but the cutoff that year was 6 minutes and 21 seconds. I feel that pain because for 2025 I had a BQ “buffer” of 5:59. I missed out going to Boston by 22 seconds. (Which is also why I was certain that I wasn’t going to get in this year either, since my buffer was just 5:05.)
After the 2026 field got released, a shitfluincer (a few did…) went onto Insta and probably TikTok (I don’t TikTok but I do assume) to lament the unfairness of it all since they had run the qualifying time but missed the cutoff and now, the horrors, they wouldn’t be running their fifth Boston Marathon in a row. “I ran the Boston Qualifying time; I should get in! This is so unfair!” But everybody — even you unless you skipped that part — knows that running a BQ doesn’t mean you get into Boston. I do sort of hear their lamentations, and it seems like the BAA does too, because for 2027 they have instituted a time penalty for marathon times earned on a significantly downhill courses. Beginning now, courses with a net-downhill of 1,500 feet or more will incur a “time adjustment” of 5-10 minutes. It’s a start but I don’t think this goes far enough.
My idea will never fly. The BAA loves to shine spotlight on multi-year participants, while I think they should sit out and let some first-timers have a run. My idea is to impose a time adjustment of one minute for every time the applicant has already run Boston. If you’ve already run Boston four times, like our shitfluincer has, that’s a four-minute penalty.
I will run the Boston Marathon in 35 days and then no matter what happens I will get out of the way for someone else. Hopefully they’ll be a first timer too.
