From 4:08 Marathon to an Olympic Team trial

This piece of news is about a runner in the US named Erin O'Mara. She completed her first Marathon in Detroit in 2006 when she ran 4 hours 8 minutes and 8 seconds. A year later, she ran 3:17. In 2008, she broke the 3 hour barrier by running 2:55:46 in Chicago. In June of 2011, she ran 2:47:39. She finally qualified for the US Olympic trials last Sunday by running 2:43:55 in the California International Marathon, just 2 minutes inside the qualification standard of 2:46.

Now in reality, Erin O'Shea is only one of some 200 women who have qualified for the US trials and is certainly not going to be qualifying for the US Olympic team. However, it is still a remarkable journey....to go from a 4:08 initial Marathon to an Olympic trial. When it comes to running, everyone is not equal. Besides training, a huge amount will depend on your genetics and this will determine how fast you can run. It would make you wonder though how many people are out there who might have the ability to run really fast times but may have not started running for a whole host of reasons?

For those of you that might be interested, the Marathon qualification standard for men for the US trials is 2:19. Women have 2 Marathon qualification standards........an A standard of 2:39 and a B standard of 2:46. The top three finishers in the Trials in Houston in January will represent the United States in the 2012 Olympic Games in London.