44% of U.S Olympic marathon trials runners qualified with 1:04-1:05 half marathon

Doesn't mean the half standard is too easy. Just means that a lot of guys who could have qualified in either the half or full, chose the half because it was more convenient.

It achieved the goal of getting some 10K type runners to take on the manageable half mary as an intermediate step to running a full thon.

not certain.

It will be interesting to see how many of these 81 achieve the standard time during the Olympic Trials Marathon.

There are quite a few fast halfs in the US. Just offer a few thousand and some Kenyans show up and you have a fast race. The same does not hold true for the marathon. For your sub 2:19 you have to run Boston, NY, Chicago, Cal International, RNR San Diego, Grandmas, Houston, or Honolulu. Occasionally another race will have a fast year, but for the most part if you don't go to one of those you can expect to run 26 miles alone, even though the standard is easier than the half.

Cleveland19 wrote:

not certain.

It will be interesting to see how many of these 81 achieve the standard time during the Olympic Trials Marathon.

I bet it is less than 10%.

Houston has produced a great number of pretenders.

There will be a great focus by MLDR on this group at the trials and changes will be made in the future.

Remember 4 years ago 65 minutes was an A standard. Many of us thought it was a silly standard and wanted it eliminated. As a compromise it was changed to a B standard. But if it doesn't produce a large number of sub 2:18's it will be gone in the future.

I am starting to view the half marathon standard as a Wild Card.

When a Wild Card athlete makes the team, we'll know it was well worth it to implement the standard.

I like how it brings in fresh talent, although it's a disservice to those true Marathon guys that slave away the workload to run sub-2:19. But don't be fooled. A 2:16 guy knows he tougher than a 1:04 guy and that proves out on race day most of the time.

Let's recap post-LA and see who fared better: the real Marathoners or the quickie Qualifiers.

Do they still allow top 10 from the USA marathon championship enter?

I think the qualifying should be more about winning or placing highly in important races than simply times (not that I consider the USA marathon championship to be important).

As it is, both the full and half standards are easy enough that anyone remotely worthy can get into the race. It is also a marathon, so lanes being full doesn't get to be a problem until you get close to 1000 entrants (even then, it isn't a huge problem).

Picking the right A standard is important, but beyond that, I don't see a huge issue with letting 105 half 'thoners in.

As an old friend of mine used to say, "twice as far is half as least."

The easy part of a marathon is the first 20 miles. Most of those who qualified with half times are going to be in a world of hurt at least by the last few miles of the marathon. There is no good reason to use half times for a marathon, especially not for a marathon trials race.

Who cares? Seriously, it is a road race in which having an extra 100 people who can't keep up will make absolutely no difference to what happens at the front (which is all that matters).

When will they start allowing headphones for the slower runners so they can better enjoy the experience?

Not Whom wrote:

Who cares? Seriously, it is a road race in which having an extra 100 people who can't keep up will make absolutely no difference to what happens at the front (which is all that matters).

Guys like Diego Estrada, Chris Derrick, and Sam Chelanga all rely on the half marathon standard to get in. The advantage is those potential contenders can get in even if they haven't done a marathon. If a few guys qualify and then only run 2:20 then so what, that's not hurting anybody. Remember they used to even have a 10K time as well.

Men's standards are too easy, period. Doesn't matter if half or full, both are weak.

Women's standards are much harder, as it obvious by looking at the number of qualifiers.

We still have a long way to go to gender equality. Too bad 95% of USATF are old, white men.

What about having the top 300 men/women marathon times allowed to race at the trials? Top 100 or top 50 are "A" standards and the rest enter if they'd like to. Fill out 300 people for both gender and there you go. From here on out, it would just be a matter of being the top 300 runners in the country at the trials. Simple. Track uses qualifying times, but ultimately the track trials are capped. Same could be done for the marathon. And 300 was just an arbitrary number, it could be higher or lower, but for marathon purposes 300 seems like a good amount to have in a field.

Xenostreams wrote:

Men's standards are too easy, period. Doesn't matter if half or full, both are weak.

Women's standards are much harder, as it obvious by looking at the number of qualifiers.

We still have a long way to go to gender equality. Too bad 95% of USATF are old, white men.

Yeah, can't trust them whiteys!

OnePieceToe wrote:

What about having the top 300 men/women marathon times allowed to race at the trials? Top 100 or top 50 are "A" standards and the rest enter if they'd like to. Fill out 300 people for both gender and there you go. From here on out, it would just be a matter of being the top 300 runners in the country at the trials. Simple. Track uses qualifying times, but ultimately the track trials are capped. Same could be done for the marathon. And 300 was just an arbitrary number, it could be higher or lower, but for marathon purposes 300 seems like a good amount to have in a field.

"A" standards cannot be stricter than the IAAF standard for the World Championships or Olympics, due to the wording of the Ted Stevens Amateur Sports Act.

Xenostreams wrote:

Men's standards are too easy, period. Doesn't matter if half or full, both are weak.

Women's standards are much harder, as it obvious by looking at the number of qualifiers.

We still have a long way to go to gender equality. Too bad 95% of USATF are old, white men.

Sarcasm? Has to be, right?

If you were looking only to find the 3 best marathoners for the Olympic team, then you would have only 12 runners in the trials.

Part of the trials should be, and is, to help build the sport.

Having 100 guys running it, even though they have no chance to be in the top 3, will make headlines in 100 towns. This will help inspire the next generation.

I hope all the entrants get swag (jackets, shirts) with the Olympic rings and the words "US Olympic Trials" in big letters.

Letting a 2:20 guy run the Olympic trials at his own cost - $150 (cost to the USATF)

Publicity - priceless.

And I think the "B" guys and gals should be required to give a presentation to their local high school or a community gathering as part of their entry requirement.

Publicity, publicity, publicity.

thinking cap wrote:

Just means that a lot of guys who could have qualified in either the half or full, chose the half because it was more convenient.

Of course it doesn't mean that.

When the half-marathon alternative was proposed as an alternative means of qualifying for the 2012 men's marathon trials, I wasn't wild about the idea, but I believed that it could be justified to allow a very small group of exceptional candidates (perhaps two or three runners) to qualify and participate in certain fairly rare circumstances where it might be counterproductive to require them to obtain a qualifying marathon time before the trials. To a limited degree, that function had been served in a few earlier Olympic cycles by providing alternative qualifying times from 5,000-meter and 10,000-meter races (but not "10k" road races, as another poster seemed to suggest). Those alternatives were, as I recall, rarely used, but they were available. Thus, for example, a top NCAA 10,000-meter runner could move directly into the marathon at the trials shortly after completing his NCAA career.

I believed, however, that the 1:05:00 alternative standard was too soft to be limited to such circumstances, and that became even more apparent when the marathon standard was moved from 2:19:00 for the 2012 trials to 2:18:00 for the 2016 trials. (I understand that USATF recently amended the standard to 2:19:00, with retroactive application). For many runners who sought to qualify for the marathon trials, it was understandable that the goal might shift from training for and running a reasonably good marathon to training for and running a reasonably good half-marathon. I don't believe that it is mere coincidence that, despite improvements in other distance events, the depth in U.S. national-class marathoning has remained quite suppressed.

I have heard a number of bad defenses of the 1:05:00 half-marathon standard. One is based on the belief that a 1:05:00 half-marathon is in some sense harder than (or at least as difficult as) a 2:18:00 or 2:19:00 marathon. For some runners, that's true; for others, it's not. Certainly, for most runners who are capable of meeting either standard, the half-marathon standard is a surer and safer bet. But perhaps more importantly, the perceived difficulty or selectivity of alternative standards at different distances or in different events isn't, by itself, an especially compelling basis for setting appropriate qualifying standards for a particular event. I doubt that many would seriously support a proposal allowing a world-class 400-meter time as an alternative standard for the 200 or 800, even if the 400-meter time were in some sense more difficult or selective than the 200 or 800 standard.

Perhaps the men's long-distance committee was simply trying to make sure that the number of qualifiers or participants in the trials would not be embarrassingly low when the marathon standard was tightened in 2012 and again in 2016. I don't know. I don't believe that I have ever heard any official rationale for the half-marathon standard, and I don't believe that I've ever heard a very compelling one.

My biggest problem with the half standard is for runners who have run a marathon or two and failed to qualify that way. They can run a 1:04 half and qualify even though they have proven that they cant run a sub 2:19 marathon.

Lets have runner A and runner B and look at their resumes.

Runner A:

Boston Marathon 2014: 2:30

Chicago Marathon 2015: 2:25

Jacksonville Half 2015: 1:04:30

Runner B: Boston Marathon 2014: 2:21

Chicago Marathon 2015: 2:19:45

Jacksonville Half 2015: 1:05:30

It doesn't seem right that Runner A gets to compete while Runner B stays home when they are racing a marathon.