USATF Announces 2020 Olympic Trials Marathon qualifying standards

that's correct

Requirements:

1. For a Certified Course-

- the course must be measurement by the approved methods and protocols of USATF/IAAF

- a measurement report was by submitted for review and Certificaion issued

- the course must be on "made up" roads - paved, concrete, etc. A small segment maybe on non paved surfaces.

2. For Record Eligibility-

- all of the above applies

- the course must be measured by an IAAF Level A or B measurer

- the course must have a net "drop" not exceeding 1 meter/ kilometer

- the course must have a separation (straight line measurement from start to finish) not exceeding 50% of the total distance.

For Record Ratification (Course stuff only)-

- All of #2

- the course needs to be re-measured by an IAAF Level A measure to "verfiy" the accuracy. This can also be achieved by having the original measurement done by a combination of one of the following: Two level A measurers or one A and one B togehter.

- The original measurer or his/her designee must be at the race to "validate" that the course that was measured was the course that was run.

Jonathan Gault wrote:

Women

73:00 half marathon/2:45:00 marathon

I haven't read through all the comments so I don't know if this has been addressed, but I find this odd - I'm a male, but looking at these times for women I couldn't help but notice the disparity between the HM and full standards. I can run a 2:45 fairly dependably, but couldn't come close to a 73 minute half. A 2:45 is about equal to a 1:17-mid, and a 73 minute half is more in line with a 2:35. Huge difference. Any reason for this?

dang not going to make it...

seems odd wrote:

Jonathan Gault wrote:

Women

73:00 half marathon/2:45:00 marathon

I haven't read through all the comments so I don't know if this has been addressed, but I find this odd - I'm a male, but looking at these times for women I couldn't help but notice the disparity between the HM and full standards. I can run a 2:45 fairly dependably, but couldn't come close to a 73 minute half. A 2:45 is about equal to a 1:17-mid, and a 73 minute half is more in line with a 2:35. Huge difference. Any reason for this?

The women's full marathon is a soft standard.

Using age grading, a 1:04 for a 30 year-old man is 91.22 and a 2:19 is 88.45. For a 30 year-old woman, a 1:13 is 89.34 while a 2:45 is 82.07. So on an age grading basis, both standards for women are comparatively soft, especially the marathon.

If we we were to raise the women's standards to match the men's standards using age grading, we would get new standards of 1:11:30 and 2:33:00 (rounding by a few seconds). Applying these stricter standards to 2016, the women's field would go from 246 (198 full/48 half) to 25 (19 full/6 half).

Incidentally, applying the 2020 standards to the men's field makes it go from 211 to 127 (86 are lost due to lowering the half standard from 1:05 to 1:04).