You’ll hear runners talk about PRs or PBs or BQs (personal record, personal best, Boston qualifier), but there’s one alphabet-soup abbreviation that most runners don’t like to think about, much less talk about: PWs, the personal worst time a runner has recorded for a given distance.

Runners revel in PBs. PBs mean that we’ve been working hard to accomplish greater speed and all the hard parts of our training plans are finally starting to pay off. And don’t even get me started about BQs. It’s an exciting goal to attain a qualifying time for Boston, a marathon where you must have a proven time to even get to register for the race. PWs, though? They’re just not fun.

But I have to admit: I’m pretty excited to try for a PW this weekend. Continue reading →