also, with all this talk of times ... this was a national championship, where money was awarded based on place. notably, a lot less money was awarded than at the New York, Chicago, London, Olympic etc marathons of the world. there were not time bonuses (right? or did i miss that) , so it would seem to behoove racers to run tactically and compete against each other rather than focus on running the fastest possible time they could. and because the prize money is a lot less than other marathons on the calendar, "higher quality" aka faster marathoners would be better off, for their careers and bank accounts, to target the big marathons. you're not going to have Shalane choose CIM as her fall race if the first place payout is $20k when she can run NYCM and win $125k (or whatever extremely high dollar amount it is). so given that and slightly slower competition, yeah.... you're not going to have people coming to CIM to run 2:07/2:22.
this seems obvious to me. is there something i missed?