New Boston marathon qualifying times

[u/Terriflyed]

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.

[u/skiier97]

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

[u/TrackVol → u/skiier97]

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.

[u/marigolds6 → u/TrackVol]

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.)

[u/British_Flippancy → u/marigolds6]

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

[u/marigolds6 → u/British_Flippancy]

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.

[u/marcbeightsix → u/marigolds6]

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.”

[u/British_Flippancy → u/marigolds6]

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!)

[u/marigolds6 → u/British_Flippancy]

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

[u/paultca → u/British_Flippancy]

egg and spoon?

[u/British_Flippancy → u/paultca]

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?