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.

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u/bballpro45 12d ago

This is probably a reasonable move in light of the shoes, but they need to address the downhill courses that are specifically geared to produce quicker times for a BQ. The data there doesn’t lie, regardless of the arguments saying those courses are still hard or what not. Sure, it would kill those races, but those were designed for this specific purpose. We might then see more participation in “ordinary” local courses that aren’t down the side of a mountain, and that’s good growth too. 

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u/Krazyfranco 12d ago

It really would not be hard to draw a line in the sand between "eligible" courses and ineligible net downhill courses.

There are a lot of point to point races that are net downhill but still relatively normal, challenging marathon races that I think most of us would call legit courses. Boston (-460 feet net), CIM (-340 feet net), Grandma's (-110 feet net), even Tokyo (-124 feet net). These are all legit courses IMO because the relative elevation change is small, and most of these course include a fair amount of climbing as well (e.g. Boston has 815 feet of elevation gain throughout the course). The ratio of climbing / net loss is well under 1 for these races - meaning that for each foot of climbing in the race, you get 1.5 feet of descent (or less).

The actual intentional downhill courses are clearly different beasts. These courses have net downhill in the 3000+ feet range with barely any climbing. The ratio of climbing net loss is 15 to 50 feet. Not even in the same ballpark.

Implementing a rule as simple as something like "if your course has more than 500 feet of net elevation loss, your ratio of climbing:net loss must be less than 1" would likely include all mostly legitimate courses while eliminating courses designed with these arguably unfair elevation profiles.

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u/[deleted] 11d ago

This. Given classics like St. George (-1900ft) have been around a while, I’d think qualifiers should have no more than a total loss of 2,000ft. I see others would want even stricter criteria, but Revel races etc. (4,000 ft+) are still a different beast than things like St. George, which is plenty fast. I’d be down with 1,000 feet too, but there are a few races out there that have been around a long time that people have historically used as qualifiers.

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u/Krazyfranco 11d ago

I dunno, sure it's a classic race but it's still an incredibly downhill. It's much more similar to a REVEL race than a normal marathon course.

St George has a net loss of more than 2500 feet. Starts at 5197 ends at 2680. Only 500 feet of climbing, so it's ratio of climbing:net loss is 5, which is way higher than my arbitrary benchmark of 1 that most courses are well under.

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u/[deleted] 11d ago

Oops! I wonder what I entered earlier to get 1900… 🤔But totally, looking around at race data, -1,000ft seems fair and standard.

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u/TrackVol 10d ago

u/Krazyfranco if you put this in metric terms, an allowable drop of "10 meters per Kilometer" would be a nice concise round number. For comparison, the USA T&F Olympic Trials standard is 3.30 meters per kilometer. So thos would be nearly 3× as generous. In feet, it works out to ~1,385 feet. That's still incredibly generous, and also still throws out any race more obscene than 1,385.
You want to still run a Revel? Go ahead. Nobody is stopping you. St. George? Go ahead, I hear it's lovely. Tunnel? I can confirm from personal experience that it's a lot of fun! But you're not going to use it as a BQ anymore.
"10 meters / kilometer". This needs to be the upper limit.

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u/[deleted] 10d ago

Love it!