Besides the course itself being a good one for BQ'ing, other things to consider are ease of travel to the destination, number of entrants (i.e. course congestion), weather, race start time (some folks prefer a very early start, some race better a little later in the day), time of year (e.g, do you want to run a fall race with a backup race a month or two later in case you miss your time, or would you rather train through winter and run a spring race?), course support (how often are the water stops? do they use your favorite sports drink? is there a pace group for your BQ time?), crowd support (if that matters to you), etc. I'm sure there are other things I'm not thinking of.

Personally BQ'ing is going to require a heck of a lot of training for me and I want to optimize my chances of success on race day.

e.g, I would think the Phoenix RnR is highly likely to have good weather, it's fairly easy to get to and the course looks fast. There are a lot of runners but Elite racing seems to do a great job managing that.

The Houston marathon also looks good but I heard the entire course is run on cement and I would find that detrimental (the last few miles of the Miami marathon are run on cement and I definitely felt it...).

CIM is very fast but you never know what the weather will bring. Same goes for just about anything on the east coast (which might be a concern for the Shamrock).

Yeah, I know this is picking nits but that's the point. Trying to find the best overall marathon to give the highest chance of success on race day.

Here's a related thread at letsrun:

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=1084414[/URL" target="_blank">

If you know of any other similar threads (here or elsewhere) please provide pointers. I haven't found much via google.

j.

http://This message has been edited by jaysoffian (edited Nov-03-2005).