If it was a national champs race, there would be American only money in addition to the regular purse. Allow our guys to double dip and, voila, you have an incentive to take a risk in Beantown.
If it was a national champs race, there would be American only money in addition to the regular purse. Allow our guys to double dip and, voila, you have an incentive to take a risk in Beantown.
I had an interesting conversation with one of my coaches and former marathon great Randy Thomas in order to write a paper on the decline of the marathon. RT seems to think that the talent is there but that it is not being harnessed because up until recently there have been very few team running groups and a lot of guys have had to do more individualized training. He credits the GBTC and its members for hammering each other and training and racing as a team and that these new training groups might help usher in a new age of faster marathoners.
The atmosphere around here for the Boston Marathon is amazing. I have never taken part in such an exciting sporting event before. The crowds are great.
I'm still working on my paper and looking for different avenues on the decline of the marathon...any suggestions? Mortimer blames youth soccer.
It doesn't matter how many times Joe Concannon and Charlie Rodgers got loaded and measured the "Commonwealth Ave. Extension" in Joe's Chevy Nova -- the course that Meyer ran on was different than the one Lagat ran on.
The Old Guard needs to turn down the Van Halen Diver Down cassette, drop the Rubik's cube, stop living in 1983 and fess up to the fact that they all ran on short courses.
Listen up folks -- Don't believe the apocrypha. The "Mailman" didn't run 2:13 for the full 26.2, especially while delivering the Sears catalog, the course was about 25 miles.
I agree that Bill Carr is incorrect in his assertion that Americans have had chances to win this race in recent years. We have simply not been good enough to win any marathon as good as Boston in a long time, and that is why we have not won any marathons as good as Boston in recent years (if you don?t include transports such as KK and the South African?Plaajates or something like that).
I was not aware of the course having changed over the last 25 years. Could you give us some details on what course changes have occurred at Boston and how much shorter you really think the course was back in ?83 or other years? Do you have legitimate info? I am just curious.
Lastly, London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Chicago, Rotterdam, etc etc are a lot faster than Boston, no matter what the governing bodies say. Heartbreak hill(s) wear the legs out, and then the downhill?s at BC (mile 21) take your quads from you. KK would NOT run 2:05 in Boston, no way no how (and PR would run 2:19 high at best).
[quote]Kurdt wrote:
I was not aware of the course having changed over the last 25 years. Could you give us some details on what course changes have occurred at Boston and how much shorter you really think the course was back in ?83 or other years? Do you have legitimate info? I am just curious.
I know that the finish was moved farther, to Copley Sq from the Prudential Center (when John Hancock fronted the bucks, they justifiably didn't want the finish at a building named for a competitor). I think "The Pru" is just past the 26-mi mark on the current course. Not sure if the BAA adjusted the start or added some wider turns...I didn't get to the party until 1994.
of course, the "no one could've possibly measured a course properly back then" argument... put away the "cube", alberto-- your low 2:08 at nyc was really only a mid 2:08... any other conspiracy theories???
perhaps I should clarify myself . . . I know that an American has not won since Greg Meyer ran away with it in 1983. My point was that since Boston is probably more difficult than Chicago, London, Rotterdam etc. it is run more like a true race than the others. It is a lot harder to go crank it out at a certain pace with the ups and downs the course presents. Thus it becomes more of a tactical race than the other marathons, and I think an American has a much greater OPPORTUNITY to place highly in that type of race than in Chicago. I think DeHaven's fine race a few years back is an example of this.
One of the reasons that the GBTC'ers "BurkeBC" cited did so well at Boston, irregardless of the conspiracies about it being short, is that they eat, slept, and breathed on the course. Meyer probably could have run blindfolded. All year round, they were training on the course, learning every inch of the run. They knew every nuance of the place -- essentially home-field advantage.
Again, why would someone risk running their best (which may be 2:12-13) and not get paid. First US runner at Boston in 2002 ran 2:13:28 and got 15th. Maybe Culpepper or Browne will run there in 2003 and prove me wrong, but I doubt it ... KK can make a cool $250k just by showing up in London, so the only thing in Boston for him would be pride.
If this is the way our top guys are thinking, it's easy to see why Americans aren't running under 2:10 very often.
...the technology to measure a road course didn't exist until 1990. Before that everyone was afraid that if they went 26 miles from their starting point they'd fall over the edge of the Earth. So no, it was never possible for an American to run much below 2:12 for a marathon. It was all a myth.
But the BAA did move the strating line farther down the road when they moved the finish line to Copley Plaza.
Actually the technology has been around for quite awhile. It's the certification process and standardized rules for measuring, which now include measuring the shortest possible route as opposed to one meter from the curb, that didn't show up until around 1986 or in some cases later.
OK, I must be slow today.
If the new measuring method measures the shortest possible distance, and the old method measured one meter out from the curb, wouldn't the courses be shorter rather than longer now?
If the old measurement was done one meter out from the curb, then the old measurement will result in a shorter course. The number of turns and the sharpness of the turns will have an impact on the overall difference, but at each turn the one meter out measurement will add distance compared to a measurement right along the turn. The result of this change in measurement is relatively unimportant in my opinion, as even on a curvey course we are almost talking about less than a couple of hundred yards. Many courses would have differences of less than 20 yards.
Racers want a fast course, and $. They're not going to out anymore stress on their bodies in the downhill section of the course for way, way less money. Racers want a flat, fast course, not a muscle/joint pounding descent. London, Chicago, Rotterdam & Berlin provide that. Many women prefer to run the Osaka International Ladies Marathon in January over the April BAA Boston. Flora London, LaSalle/ABN-AMRO Chicago, Fortis Rotterdam and Real Berlin are the big marathons. Boston belongs in the past, don't romanticize the past.
PS Haile and Tergat are yet to win marathons, don't mention them in the same breath as Khalid Khannouchi. el G, KK are in a class of their own, no man compares. Merci Maroc/Shukran al-Maghreb
Don't blame the course.
SALAZAR, ALBERTO
Aug. 7, 1958- Runner.
Alberto Salazar, the world's swiftest marathon man, has won all four of the 26.2-mile races he has entered, usually in the time he predicted. A top runner in the 5,000 and 10,000 meters since 1977, the intense, gutsy Salazar in 1980 won his first marathon, the New York City, in 2:09:41, a course record and the fastest marathon debut in history. The following year he won the New York race in 2:08:13, a new world record, and in 1982 he surged ahead of Mexico's Rudolfo Gomez to finish the event in 2:09:29. He won the 1982 Boston Marathon in 2:08:51, a course record. In road racing, his best marks are five miles in 22:03, a world record (1981), and 10,000 meters in 28:03.5, an American record, in 1982. His best track marks are 1,500 meters in 3:44.5 (1980), one relay mile in 4:01.9 (1981), two miles indoors in 8:24 (1981), 5,000 meters in 13:11 (1982), an American record, and 10,000 meters in 27:24 (1982), another American record.
Copyright © 1996 by The H. W. Wilson Co.
I'm sick of people saying runners don't run Boston because the course has hills. The top guys run London and Chicago because of money. The budgets of London and Chicago are much greater than Boston. With the marathon, money talks.
If Boston or NY paid the same appearance fees and overall $$$ as Chicago or London, once again you might see the world's best there. Until then you won't.
And someone also said Americans don't run Boston because they can't win it. They (kk excluded) can't win Chicago either yes they go there, so that's not a good argument.
If the money were equal some people might choose to run a flat course Chicago, but some would just as likely run Boston for it's history. The race directors of Boston and NY like to pretend it's all about a flat course. But money talks in sports these days.
joseba wrote:
PS Haile and Tergat are yet to win marathons, don't mention them in the same breath as Khalid Khannouchi.
Exactly, they're only the second and... what fourth (fifth?) fastest marathoners of all time. Those guys suck.
"The top guys run London and Chicago because of money. The budgets of
London and Chicago are much greater than Boston. With the marathon, money talks."
That's "Flora London" and "LaSalle Bank Chicago." I guess their money should speak up ("joseba" heard it well enough).
I've friends in rotterdam who work in the sponsership and promotional department of the Belgo-Dutch company Fortis. Fortis sponsers the Rotterdam Marathon and they've approached Sandra Inoa-Khannouchi and Jos Hermans about taking back some of London's glory. They want KK to go head to head against Haile G, el Mouaziz, and many others this April 13th. I've heard that each is being offered $1/2million just to show up. Money does talk.
I've also heard that ABN-AMRO the dutch bank who is the parent of Chicago's LaSalle Bank(which sponsers the Chi-town Marathon) is thinking of renaming the race the ABN-AMRO Chicago Marathon when they rename all of the LaSalle Bank locations in the Chicagoland area. Just thought I'd let ya' all know what's going on over on this side of the Atlantic. Salaam.
Such a major rebranding of the bank (especially given the virtual non-existence of the ABN-AMRO brand in the US) can be risky but it has precedent...HSBC has done OK re-naming their US operations -- with the help of the HSBC arena that the Buffalo Sabres play in (having Hasek on the team during the changeover sure helped). And the historical litany of name changes that race has gone through (back before the 'hiatus") has been overwhelmed by the popular takeup of the race since it revived in the 1990s. I think it could work. (Then again, what do I know?)
Rebranding the race will be a non-event; as we have seen, not many people whose names begin with letters other than "jose" seem to know the race's name.
As I see it from all the posts its not about the world record. Its only about the money!
This is logical. We have a local 5 mile race (Slattery's Turkey Trot, Fitchburg,MA) the Sunday before Thanksgiving. The winner gets $600. This race is very popular on a day when every town around is having their turkey trot. 23:26 was the winning time last year.
On the local level $600 is good money. I have to agree that money talks.