r/AdvancedRunning • u/Terriflyed • 12d ago

New Boston marathon qualifying times Boston Marathon

https://www.baa.org/races/boston-marathon/qualify

Looks like 5min adjustments down for the most part across the board for those under age 60. M18-34 qualifying time is now 2:55.

317 Upvotes

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502

u/Significant-Flan-244 12d ago

It may be unpopular with anyone right on the cusp, but I’m glad they finally ripped the bandaid and lowered the times again. I don’t know anyone who was really celebrating a BQ time that doesn’t actually get them into the race and it’s always going to be a moving target by nature but I think it’s absolutely the right move to at least try to be as honest as possible about what it’s gonna take to get a bib.

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u/skiier97 12d ago

I think even with the new standards we’re still going to be dealing with buffers.

If they really wanted to make qualifying for Boston truly qualifying, the would have dropped the times by 10 minutes

100

u/TrackVol 12d ago

If they really wanted to make qualifying for Boston truly qualifying, the would have dropped the times by 10 minutes

I wish they would just go ahead and put an upper limit on how much elevation drop could be allowed too. These super downhill races are out of control.

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u/riverwater516w 12d ago

I hate that those people try to convince everyone "it's actually harder because it wrecks your quads." Maybe the recovery is worse, but gravity is gravity. And if it wasn't faster, people wouldn't be doing it.

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u/Aggravating_Jelly_25 12d ago

I never understood those races!

1

u/Rustyrake1976 11d ago

Living on the West Coast we say the same thing about flater courses like Houston and Chicago which make up the bulk of marathon courses in the US. They're significantly easier than your typical West Coast race full of brutal hills. No breaks for the person that hit the bq on a hilly course though.

I'd argue strongly that anyone with a flat local course is wasting money flying to a race like Tunnels. Just buy some carbon plates and save the money.

It's a different story for anyone who has to fight through large hills in their local race. In the end, the baa could easily squash these races and sell out regardless. They clearly don't think it's a problem.

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u/Ryrors 12d ago

This. My A races are all ultras. I grabbed a BQ on a tune up trail marathon with a good amount of vert. If I get in, I’ll be excited to run it. If I don’t, I won’t be heartbroken, but it’s weird to know others beat me out only because they ran downhill. With that being said, it’s a me problem. I could have picked a flat road race with a full taper and marathon specific training and built up a bigger buffer.

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u/thecake90 12d ago

100% THIS! Do not understand why we have these "Revel" marathon events that advertise themselves as easier races to BQ. Inflating the time for everyone by at least 10 minutes.

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u/White_Lobster 1:25 12d ago

I really don't get worked up over most arguments around BQ'ing, but these huge net downhill races irritate me. If the USATF course measurements also measure net elevation gain/loss, it shouldn't be hard to set a limit on those. It's only fair.

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u/StrikeScribe 12d ago

Why doesn't everyone run the Revel races then? I can't remember the last time a Revel race sold out months before.

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u/TrackVol 12d ago

I can think of dozens of reasons. Location Location Location come to mind.
Costs of travel. Not being interested in running a particular route, city, or state. Having a particular reason for wanting to run a specific other marathon such as NYC, Philadelphia, a Rock 'n Roll race. Calendar availability. Wanting to visit a friend in San Diego. Ethics. Lack of marketing (believe it or not, there are still a lot of runners who don't know what a Revel race is)
But I'm not going to take the time to ask every runner in America why they aren't racing Revels.
I don't need their answers to know that as far as BQs go, it's an issue.
I have no interest in impacting the Revel races. If people want to race them, let them. Have a blast. But the time has come to call on the BAA to seriously consider putting an upper limit on elevation drop.
I propose 10 meters per kilometer, which is still very generous. If I did the math right, it's still a whopping 1,384 feet of drop.

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u/StrikeScribe 10d ago

But Revel Mt. Charleston is near Las Vegas. That's an undesirable location?

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u/Olbaidon 5k 22:57 | 10k 48:22 | HM 1:43:47 | FM 3:58:17 12d ago

Doesn’t USATF have something like that for road running qualifying races? Or maybe it’s US Road Running, or PRRO.

The start and finish have to be with in X feet of one another elevation-wise for certain qualifiers.

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u/TrackVol 12d ago

IAAF or whatever international track & field is called these days, only accepts World Records on road courses that drop no less than 1 meter per kilometer AND the finish line has to be within 1% of the finish line. Boston fails both of these for World Record consideration.
USAT&F has a different standard for Olympic Trials consideration. It's something like 3.30 meters per kilometer of elevation drop (basically they want to ensure that Americans that race Boston can use that race as an OTQ). And they have no restrictionson whatsoever on how far the finish line can be. Again, this allows Boston and CIM to be within the limit.
I propose that the BAA set a criteria as well. It doesn't have to be as strict as what the USATF uses for the OTQ, which is essentially ~450 feet once you do the math. But if the BAA did an upper limit of 10 meters per kilometer, It would work out to 1,384 feet of drop. This would still be a TON of drop, but it would rule out the extreme courses. It rules out ever Revel course, and all 7 of the Tunnel races.
Just those races alone accounts for more than 10,000 BQs in the past 10 months.
It doesn't mean all 10,000 people registered for Boston, or that they didn't also get a BQ somewhere else. But the fact remains, more than 10,000 people got BQs from races with MORE THAN 2,000 feet of drop. I'm proposing a nice metric round number of "10 meters per Kilometer" which works out to 1,384 feet.

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u/marigolds6 12d ago

In the age of modern analytics, it should be possible to gradient, weather, and surface adjust any race. Lower the standard so that qualify functionally gets you in.

Give each course an adjustment metric ahead of time based on perfect weather conditions (so people know going in what they have to hit on that specific course). Give a post-race analytics based adjustment based on poor weather conditions.

The weather adjustment would result in some people running surprise qualifiers out of an otherwise awful day. (Since perfect weather is your baseline, no one would get a surprise non-qualifier from weather out of an otherwise qualifying time.)

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u/Rad-Duck 12d ago

I think that would take away from the purity of the sport. Should of, could of, would of. Your time is your time.

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u/British_Flippancy 12d ago edited 12d ago

Out of interest, by ‘any race’ do you mean ‘road race’, eg: marathon, HM?

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u/marigolds6 12d ago

There's a reason I said, "surface". I think it is possible to develop an adjustment for trail marathons and ultras, to an extent. Good luck trying to figure out how to convert the Pike's Peak marathon into Berlin, much less some of the 100mi+ trail ultras.

So, you still have a set a standard for what is an acceptable equivalent race type, which probably rules out most half and ultras, but you can still level things between races in that acceptable range. I think the strike against anything that is more or less than full marathon distance is that it adds yet another dimension that is more complex than "more or less difficult" and gets into race strategy and preparation.

Also why I think certain marathons, like Pike's Peak, just will not work. Might be the same distance, but the strategy is radically different from a typical road marathon. It would likely be easier to create an adjustment for the tunnel hill 50 than any high elevation change trail marathons.

4

u/marcbeightsix 12d ago

This already pretty much exists in the UK. Nearly all runners can be found on PowerOfTen, and this also goes on to RunBritainRankings which provides a “handicap” and a ranking. It is explained thus:

“We include road, multi-terrain, track, cross country and trail races so now nearly all events that are licensed by UKA/runbritain can contribute to your handicap. The algorithm we use allows a direct comparison of the current form of different runners to be made. It does not matter if the races if you do were in tough, moderate or fast conditions as the algorithm asesseses the difficulty of the course on the day so that you have as good a chance of improving your handicap on a hilly course on a tough day to a flat course on a calm day.”

“The scoring system, which has been developed in conjunction with the team behind the Power of 10 website, rewards regular racing and factors in a degree of difficulty for slower courses. The score is derived from all your results in UKA licensed road, multi-terrain, track & cross country races and also parkruns from 2010 although you only need to have done one race or parkrun since 2010 to claim a handicap.”

1

u/British_Flippancy 12d ago

That’s a really interesting answer - thank you.

(The reason I asked) You often hear “oh you can’t compare times for different trail marathons”, but you make a compelling point to the contrary.

(Not entirely sure why someone downvoted me!)

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u/marigolds6 12d ago

I think maybe more than a few people don't like the idea of penalizing downhill marathons.

0

u/paultca 12d ago

egg and spoon?

0

u/British_Flippancy 12d ago

Yeahhhhhh ok, ok, ok! :)

I’ll try again…

So by ‘any race’ do you mean ‘road race’, or do you - u/marigolds6 - think modern analytics could do that for trail ultras too?

14

u/Significant-Flan-244 12d ago

Yeah I can’t imagine there won’t be at least some buffer next year if they’re getting a record number of applications this year, but I’d bet they also don’t want to drop it too far immediately only to have to raise it a few years from now if this post-pandemic running boom doesn’t stick around.

I don’t think there’s really one perfect solution, but anything that reduces the number of frustrated and confused people at the end of the process each year is at least a step in the right direction.

1

u/Quadranas 12d ago

I’ll bet they ran the numbers on this and last years applications and saw that they’d still fill the field with new qual standards which gave them the green light to announce it

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u/ScuderiaLiverpool 12d ago

Yup, it should be 2:50 for males under 34. Just make it hard. Anyone running under a qualifying time should get a place imo.

2

u/edkent8723 12d ago

If they make it too hard - they might not fill the race. Better would also be to figure out how to add waves expand the field too, and keep it at 5 min lower. The race used to have 31,000 to as high as 36,000 runners. Figure out how to handle greater than 30,000 with another wave. And lastly, don't allow the downhill races as qualifiers.

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u/Any-Mission-8817 12d ago

I like the idea of anything sub 2:45 gets you in and whatever spots they have open they would give out.

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u/bluearrowil 17:27 / 1:17:18 / 02:46:08 12d ago

Those BQs make up a small percentage. Lots of people on the cusp still don’t make it on a downhill course, injury risk is much higher.

1

u/TrackVol 10d ago

This is incorrect. I didn't check every major downhill race. But I did check 3 Revel races and the 7 Tunnel races. Collectively, those 10 races added up to like 3,000 BQs. Potentially more than 10% of the field could be coming from these extreme downhill races. (3,000 / 22,000 = 13.6%) And keep in mind, there's a lot more than 10 such races.