2019 Boston Marathon Thread (Read 386 times)

Today's update includes this.  Yowsers.

A small percentage of those registering during Week 2 (today through Wednesday at 5:00 p.m. ET) will be accepted. 

 

Whoa. I wonder if this means that the standards will change for next year.

Not likely.

 

I've thought about that and have come to the conclusion that they have no reason to.  Their race is in huge demand with enormous hype and they have no problem selling out the field.  Tighten the standards and people may stop trying.  I do think they should get rid of those marathons with 6,000' elevation drop as qualifiers, but that's another discussion. 

Ha! I guess I was thinking that having to get 7-8 minutes under your qualifying time starts to get really silly. But I guess it guarantees that they will get to full capacity and $$.

 

This makes sense to me. I guess don't have a major beef with how they do it. I'm not sure of a better way, if their goal is to ensure a full field (of whatever number they set as the cap) with the fastest runners. If they had made the cutoff 5:00 last year, the 0-3:22 people would not have been disappointed, but all the 3:23-4:59 people wouldn't have gotten in at all. And they'd have fewer runners i.e. less income. I would imagine if they had a few years in a row of a >5:00 cutoff, they'd change the standards. But what do I know.

Actually, they would have continued accepting registrations and people who qualified in Fall races would get in. It would still fill up, just not in the initial 2 weeks. The current system is probably easier for them. Get a bunch of volunteers to cram it all in over the course of 2 or 3 weeks. Then the registration period is over and on to the next item on the planning checklist.

Anymore, with these high cutoffs, the BQ times are more of a guideline. They're going to take the fastest. If you want in, you need to know the history of your age groups' accepted time (e.g., under 35y.o. male needed 3:01:37 last year). Then just aim for some factor better than that. How much of a factor is the unknown.

I think everyone is missing one important factor: if they lowered the qualifying standard by 5 minutes, some percentage of people would just work harder to get to that standard. For example, if the men's under 35 was 3:00, it's not like all of the people who ran 3:02 would not make it. At least half of them would train harder to get in an extra few minutes.If I ran a 3:10 and knew I needed a 2:57 to get entry instead of today's 3:02, I might run an extra 5 miles per week or whatever I deemed needed to get that extra bump.

Maybe for some people. In the marathons I've run, I could not have trained any harder or run the race any faster. I was able to BQ because I finally got good enough, not because I knew what the qualifying time was. I would think more people are like that. But again, what do I know.

I think everyone is missing one important factor: if they lowered the qualifying standard by 5 minutes, some percentage of people would just work harder to get to that standard. For example, if the men's under 35 was 3:00, it's not like all of the people who ran 3:02 would not make it. At least half of them would train harder to get in an extra few minutes.If I ran a 3:10 and knew I needed a 2:57 to get entry instead of today's 3:02, I might run an extra 5 miles per week or whatever I deemed needed to get that extra bump.

I agree. They bumped it down by 5 minutes in 2011 or 2012, right? I remember because even though I aged up, my BQ time stayed the same. And yes, people rose to that new standard.

Now of course, there is a threshold somewhere. They obviously can't put the under 35 time at 2:40 and up from there. But as the cutoff approaches 5 minutes, they probably should lower it, just so people know what is required to get in (or at least closer to getting in).

 

Maybe for some people. In the marathons I've run, I could not have trained any harder or run the race any faster. I was able to BQ because I finally got good enough, not because I knew what the qualifying time was. I would think more people are like that. But again, what do I know.

Unless you're running 100+ MPW, I don't think that's true. Maybe you decided you couldn't train harder because you have other life commitments, but that's a trade off we all make, i.e. how much are we willing to train. It's hard for an amateur to say they've reached their absolute physical peak unless they put in that kind of work. Also, you may have not known what the time was, but many people do. That's why I think it's somewhere around 50/50.

Let's put it this way: there is no way that if they made the qualifying times 5 minutes faster, the race wouldn't fill up within a year of them moving it. They had to change the standards a few years ago for this reason and yet here we are again. I don't think the average runner has gotten 5+ minutes faster over a decade.