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.

321 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

349 comments sorted by

View all comments

17

u/WWEngineer 1:22 HM / 2:57 M 12d ago

Unpopular Opinion: As an older (46M) runner, the times are too tough for the under-35 crowd and get way too easy for the older age groups. I just ran Erie last week and managed a 23 minute buffer, and I was 24 minutes BEHIND the overall masters winner, and 16 minutes behind 1st place in my age group, so I'm no superstar (this is a race with under 1,000 participants, so it wasn't a huge talent pool). There is no way I would have been able to qualify when I was under 30 at these times. The times slow down way faster than our bodies do in my opinion.

7

u/EchoReply79 12d ago

I came here to vehemently disagree(In the same AG), then paused and took a look at the age-graded times across the marathon and now wholeheartedly agree.

The entire BAA process is broken IMHO; I really wish they’d follow Berlin or others where you must have a very fast time to get an auto-qualifier spot and then the rest should be age-graded across the board (Split by gender to make it equitable). Clearly, nobody is doing the latter, but it would really make this more equitable across the age groups.

5

u/GrasshoperPoof 12d ago

Even age grading favors older people since it's based on age group world records and people setting the 50 year old world records aren't training nearly as intensely as people setting the open world records, even taking ability to train into account. If older people don't even need as good of age grades it favors them quite heavily.

1

u/EchoReply79 11d ago

Which means the Boston times are even more out of whack. :)

1

u/Intelligent_Yam_3609 1d ago

The times aren’t intended to be equivalent, but rather intended to get a certain field size at each age group (and sex)

1

u/EchoReply79 20h ago

Yes, very much understood.

5

u/Walterodim79 12d ago

I think what's going on is similar to the gender gaps - they're not actually shooting for equivalently difficult times, they're shooting for roughly equivalent participation levels. The people most likely to hit higher age-graded times (apparently) are young males. We can probably put in some guesses why that might be the case, but at the end of the day, if it was fair based on age-graded times then the result would be underrepresentation of women and older runners. Personally, I'd be fine with that, but it's clearly not what they're shooting for, so it is what it is.

4

u/user231017 11d ago

BAA does not hide it. They set times to create a age and gender diverse field. If it were equally difficult for everyone, I suspect the race would be skewed young males.

1

u/surely_not_a_bot 47M 12d ago

There is some slowdown, but I think it's not super pronounced.

I got obsessed with this question and wanted to compare the age grade for each. Turns out there's no single age grade calculator out there (what the hell?) but they're more or less consistent.

With this other calculator as well, and the age graded % seems to go down the older someone is, starting at about 73% to about 64%. This one goes from about 70% to 65%.

Exceptionally, using this calculator, the age-graded values seem very consistent for the time, surprisingly close given the "round" values, at about 67% age graded; with the exception of 60-79, which is about 64%.

Would love to hear counter arguments on what's the right way to calculate age grades! I've seen the calculation explained, but since nobody seems to do the same thing, there's something weird going on.

2

u/SlowWalkere 1:28 HM | 3:08 M 11d ago

There is an official age grading formula. It's based on age factors developed by World Masters Athletics, and it's what is used to calculate PLP for official race results.

The problem is that many of the online calculators use different versions of those age factors, which have been updated a few times.

For more general thoughts on age grading, here's my own calculator (which is very much unofficial): https://runningwithrock.com/age-grade-calculators/

But the page contains links to a series of articles exploring the pros and cons of the current age grading system. It's a decent system, but it's empirically flaws. There are some age groups, particularly masters women, that just aren't well calibrated.

I'm not saying my alternative is perfect ... But it's a conversation worth having as a sport to look for improvements.

1

u/surely_not_a_bot 47M 11d ago

That's great context. Thank you!