Local Residents Qualify for the Boston Marathon

Exercise-MovementRunning is quite popular in Northwest Indiana. People from all over the region have trained diligently for months to participate in the Chicago Marathon that recently took place. And some who ran the race used their time to qualify for the Boston Marathon.

The Boston Marathon takes place next year. It is always the 3rd Monday in April (Patriots Day) and this year, that is the day after Easter. Just because somebody "qualifies" for Boston does not mean they will "qualify" to run it. It means they can register. For example, for my husband's age group (45-49) he had to run an approved marathon in 3hrs and 25min or less to be able to register. He ran a 3hr and 16min and some odd second so he registered and was accepted. They have a certain number of participants for each age group/sex. They give spots to the fastest in that group first until it fills up (Several of our friends qualified to register, but were not accepted).

 This will be the 116th running of the Marathon. This year they allowed extra participants due to the bombing last year. If participants had not finished before the bombing and had reached a certain check point, they were allowed to re-register this year.

The Boston Athletic Association (BAA) puts it on and you can find out more info at www.baa.org. Here is an interesting link to why the Unicorn is the symbol for the Boston Marathon: http://www.examiner.com/article/the-elusive-unicorn-and-the-boston-marathon

Here are the qualifying times to register, but as stated before, that does not mean they get to participate:

boston-qualifying-times

Below is a lis of people who qualified from the region:

Porter County

Valparaiso

Boehlke, Heather 25 F Valparaiso IN USA USA

Bowker, Beth E 50 F Valparaiso IN USA USA

Klepsch, Taylor 33 F Valparaiso IN USA USA

Neyhart, Jeffrey B 55 M Valparaiso IN USA USA

Pontrelli, Mike 46 M Valparaiso IN USA USA

Siewin, Crystal L. 40 F Valparaiso IN USA USA

Walsworth, Jeff 46 M Valparaiso IN USA USA

Lake County

Crown Point

Bernard, David 38 M Crown Point IN USA USA

Duncan, Carl 22 M Crown Point IN USA USA

Kostouros, Christina 41 F Crown Point IN USA USA

Gary

Finck, Douglas 49 M Gary IN USA USA

Hammond

Barta, Rob 55 M Hammond IN USA USA

Whiting

Stanich, Louis M 54 M Whiting IN USA USA

Dyer

Staal, Sam L. 24 M Dyer IN USA USA

Highland

Goolik, Natalie M 25 F Highland IN USA USA

Smailis, Donna 25 F Highland IN USA USA

Turek, Bob 56 M Highland IN USA USA

Lowell

Hudak, Joe 59 M Lowell IN USA USA

Schererville

Knestrict, Ron 43 M Schererville IN USA USA

Saint John

Kirchhoff, Dan W 55 M Saint John IN USA USA