Here they are. How are there so many slow people per category in this "qualifying time standard" race?
http://runnerstats.net/blog/unusual-distribution-boston-marathon-times.html
Here they are. How are there so many slow people per category in this "qualifying time standard" race?
http://runnerstats.net/blog/unusual-distribution-boston-marathon-times.html
Like a third of the field gets in without qualifying through making charitable commitments.
Old people can be "slow" and still qualify. And probably a good number of people become injured training for boston, but still run it "for fun".
Weather was perfect for the first two hours, that is for the womens elite and mens pro race. Afterwards, temperatures quickly reached 60's and the sun did the rest.
Are there equal numbers of runners in each AG? Maybe it's an "old" race.
I would like to hear about the number of runners who actually qualified but ran "for the experience."
dur. I didn't look at the graph's caption. Sorry guys.
I hope your income does not rely on reading graphs. What the graphs show is people are way faster in Boston that in a typical marathon. The majority of runners in Boston run close to the qualifying time for their age group.
There are a few that run slow and a few that run faster. Not sure what expected.
Thanks
I'd love to see the distribution of time qualifiers with out the "special entry" participants.
SBSDUDE wrote:
I hope your income does not rely on reading graphs. What the graphs show is people are way faster in Boston that in a typical marathon. The majority of runners in Boston run close to the qualifying time for their age group.
There are a few that run slow and a few that run faster. Not sure what expected.
I hope your income does not rely on reading ALL pertinent information before making a decision.
Possible explanations of why so many people run slower than qualifier pace in the actual race.
1. They never qualified to begin with and are charity runners.
2. They were registered with travel booked, but got injured or couldn't do as much training as previous race where they qualified.
3. Runners who barely qualify are more likely to run Boston than those that can easily qualify.
4. Boston is a more difficult course.
5. Runners go out too fast. More excitement along with faster runners may cause some faster starts with crashing towards the end.
6. There isn't a penalty for running slower than your qualifying time.
You could do a survey of Boston finishers to find out, but I'm guessing it is some combination of things above.
7. Weather - A large portion of the field lives in the Northern Hemisphere where training conditions in November to March aren't ideal. If you did an analysis of which months these entrants did their qualifying times, I'd guess that most would be May, early June, Sept or October.