Olympic Trials / USA National Championship Marathon

Mad Durk wrote:

kimosabi wrote:

I have run under 2:30.

Someone give this man a beer!

The thing is, Scott understands that a beer and a pat on the back is all he deserves for a 2:30. These other daydreamers think they belong in the Olympic Trials.

Daydreaming I think not, no one is saying they belong in the trials read through the whole thread, if they expand the time slot, hell sign me in so I can go, If not oh well you can't always win. All we have to do is continue training thats all hopefully it will pay off later.

I AM A WEEKEND WARRIOR!!

RAWR!

LOL

"A good man knows his limitations" -Clint Eastwood

The Trials are not about picking the best team. They are about USATF making money. If it was about selecting the best team they would hold it at a fast major marathon like Chicago. Then you could be assured that the three top american finishersget a Olympic "A" standard. It is a bunch of crap when people like Malmo come on here and say that it is about selecting the team. Honestly does it really make any difference if USATF has the B standard for the trials at 2:22 or 2:30? I think not. It is a stupid system for selecting a marathon team. People in other countries probably laugh at it and say it is another reason U.S. distance running is in the toilet.

It is rather funny that people are objecting to lowering the standard. I would say most of the objections come from people who looked down on Boston for lowering the standards. These are people who went to the trials or Boston under a harder standard that now have to hear about someone making into the race under lower standards. This hurts the ego of these people. Why else would you object to this idea. You charge a fee for these 2:30 people and make more money. Boston did it and it certainly didn't change the race upfront

waitaminute wrote:

[quote]someone wrote:

If it isn't "some kind of status symbol" why are you so worried about keeping people out?

I'm not sure if you realize just how expensive the Trials are to produce. In live in Pittsburgh and in 2000 I helped out at the men's Trials, and the total race budget pushed $1,000,000, including a $50,000 rights fee to USATF and a $250,000 prize money purse. That means it cost $1,000,000 to pick Rod DeHaven to run in the Olympic Games. All of that money came from sponsors and the entry fees from recrational runners who ran the "peoples" marathon.

If you're worried about developing U.S. marathoners, you'd be thinking about shutting down the Trials and using that $1,000,000 for athlete development. Even if we had been able to name a 3-man team in 2000, it would still have cost $333,333 per man to do it through the Trials! Couldn't that money be better spent on coaching, athlete stipends, facility upgrades, travel, lodging etc.?

I guess that is why they are considering using one of the 3 major marathons (Boston, New York, Chicago) as the US trials. Sounds like a good idea to me. Save the million (now probably a lot more than that) and spend it on the athletes instead.

You are absolutely right. The trials should be shut down as we know it. The Pittsburgh edition is a prime example of what disaster it can bring. Oh and how did Rod Dehaven run at the Olympics? He barely broke 2:30. Wonder if MAlmo thinks he had a place in the Olympics. That kind of crap never would have happened had we held the trials in one of the regular big marathons. We would have had 3 guys qualify. Why hold the race in Pittsburgh in May. That doesn't give your guys but 12-16 weeks in between marathons. Not exactly giving people optimum time to prepare. It is all about what race will give USATF the most money.

Why have track trials?

Why have gymnastic trials?

Why does any sport have a 'national championship' to pick its top athletes?

Why don't we go the way of basketball and just pick and choose at will?

Why? Performance under pressure. That's why. Holding the marathon trials in conjunction with another big race will simply water down the significance of BOTH races. If you're going that route for financial reasons then the Trials race should either be earlier/later in the day or the following or previous day NOT in conjunction with.

Alan

Runningart2004 wrote:

Why? Performance under pressure. That's why. Holding the marathon trials in conjunction with another big race will simply water down the significance of BOTH races.

Alan

How will it do that? They used to do it that way all the time. Boston was, for several Olympics THE race or (one of them).

The trials race is not "significant" in any way EXCEPT in that it picks the guys who are going to be on the team. How will holding it in conjunction with a major marathon "water that down" exactly? The fast guys are going to run fast regardless.

I'll never qualify wrote:

How will holding it in conjunction with a major marathon "water that down" exactly? The fast guys are going to run fast regardless.

It will not water down the race at all. It will definitely water down the press coverage that each race receives.

Something for nothing wrote:

Lets face it you ran a marathon someplace between 2:22 and 2:30 and it would eat at your self importance to think that someone with an inferior time would run in an event that you were never good enough to qualify for during your day. And if you try to tell me that your self importance is not number one, look at your above quote.[/quote]

This right here is the most accurate description of the thought process of all the naysayers.

I'm sure Miles and Miles has changed his name and posted against this idea. Why? Because all of the people at or near 2:22 what to hold onto their "elite" status.

They do not care about the state of U.S. distance running, they just want to tell people they qualified for the Olympic Trials. The smaller that group, the better they look.

Like many other posters have said, changing the standard is not going to affect the motivation of the athletes that are the real medal contenders anyway, so who the f**k cares?

I'll tell you who, all the people in the past 10 years who have been hovering around 2:25 and could of conceivably ran in the last two trials, had the standard been softer.

And finally, none of the posters arguing against this idea have a f**king clue how to effectively market something.

Scotth, please pick up an introduction marketting textbook because your analysis on what drives revenue is about as painstaking to read as some of the posters on the physics related threads.

One of the reasons I agreed with Mark in the first place is that, by changing the standards, more people would qualify for the Trials and so running would get more promotion in more parts of the country. I think that is a great thing.

Right now, in working about a dozen races this year, plus helping to coordinate our local Grand Prix circuit, the smallest age groups for men are 20-24 and 25-29, just when you would think/hope that college guys would be chomping at the bit to hit the roads and get off the track. Seems that road racing is losing the "youngsters". Offering a goal of the Trials with a 2:30/3:00 can pump some life into a sport that needs a shot of it. If you don't believe it, check with Running USA, they too will validate that the average age of runners is increasing. We are losing our best runners somehow, this MIGHT help bring them back.

I was at St. Louis for the Trials. Not a single woman from StL, or even from Missouri, qualified to run it! And the article in their paper the day before was on page 3 and about 1/8th of a page! I will never run a 2:xx marathon again, so it doesn't matter to me what the standard is, except that I want to see the sport reach more and more people and broaden it's base of support and this is one way to reach it for the most talented runners. We have had Trials standards from 2:19 to 2:30, and even OPEN races when people ran in leather shoes, so it doesn't hurt to experiment. I should mention, there was not a single male OR female from Missouri that made the Trials in 2004, I think we need to try something new. It won't hurt to try it (something my father told me a lot, and he was a pretty smart guy who loved sports, fyi).

piss off wrote:

This right here is the most accurate description of the thought process of all the naysayer's.

You angry little brats are wrong. Grow up. It's real simple and I'll spell it out for you. 2:30 for 26 miles is a training run. Training run efforts do not belong in any championship events, especially the Olympic Trials. That's the reality of it. The Olympic Trials is not a marketing gimmick. The Trials are to select the Olympic Team from a qualified pool of contenders. Nothing more.

Like or not, in running ,and in life, there will always be cutoffs. Wherever you go in the course of your life there will be those who made the cut and those who don't. That's the whole point of athletic competition. It isn't to build your self-esteem. Live with it. Sport is all about the inherent human drama of competition. It's about winning AND losing.

We're all supportive of your efforts, however, there are more appropriate venues other than the Olympic Trials for you to develop your talents . You should show your stuff now - THIS YEAR - don;t wait, it will be exciting to see. Everyone who is against this cockamamie idea of yours will be saluting you. We'll be saluting your drive towards excellence, whatever the result. We will not, for a moment, applaud someone who wants to wallow in mediocrity.

The only change I'd support in our selection process is a "next event" qualifier. If an athlete has qualified in the 10k they should be qualified in both the 5k and marathon. At least the field would be expanded with athletes who have demonstrated a high degree of competence.

Do you really believe everything Tony Robbins says?

piss off wrote:

I'm sure Miles and Miles has changed his name and posted against this idea. Why? Because all of the people at or near 2:22 what to hold onto their "elite" status.

They do not care about the state of U.S. distance running, they just want to tell people they qualified for the Olympic Trials. The smaller that group, the better they look.

I'll tell you who, all the people in the past 10 years who have been hovering around 2:25 and could of conceivably ran in the last two trials, had the standard been softer.

And finally, none of the posters arguing against this idea have a f**king clue how to effectively market something.

Scotth, please pick up an introduction marketting textbook because your analysis on what drives revenue is about as painstaking to read as some of the posters on the physics related threads.

Friend, nowhere do I say anything about revenue & the Trials. What I've said is somebody is going to win the Trials bid and they'll have to come up w/the money. How they do it is their biz to a large extent (they have to abide by USATF rules). What any of this has to do w/2:30 runners in the Trials is unknown to me.

I'll guess that some here think it'd be easier to attract sponsor money if more runners ran in the Trials. And 2:30 qualifier would inflate the field, thus attracting more sponsors. Doesn't matter. Whoever wins the bid has to come up w/the money regardless of field size. I don't see it getting easier to attract sponsors w/more running...you're already selling a race that features the best of the best to select The Olympic Team members. So far as I know, getting sponsors lined up hasn't been a problem in the past.

Some have brought up media attention...don't know why and don't know what it has to do w/2:30 qualifiers.

First of all, that's uncalled for. With all due respect, I know who you are, but I don't believe you can say the same. Trust me when I say that I've been deeply involved with the sport a bit longer you have, and while I don't have a 2:12 marathon on my PR résumé, I'm within shouting distance. That being said, I am still one of the most ardent supporters of what you deemed to be a "cockamamie idea."

That might be a training run for YOU, but it isn't for 99.9% of the Americans who run the marathon. Beyond that, I'll echo what another poster said previously: the Olympic Trials is not a championship event...it's merely a preliminary round for the Olympics! Yes, the skeptics on this thread can jump up on their soap box and say it's the U.S. championships, but that's not really true. A championship event doesn't regularly feature athletes intentionally trying to finish in 3rd place, rather than going for the victory.

I will once again regurgitate another quote for emphasis...

scotth wrote:

Some have brought up media attention...don't know why and don't know what it has to do w/2:30 qualifiers.

If that's the case, you haven't been reading the thread very carefully.

Run5k wrote:

That might be a training run for YOU, but it isn't for 99.9% of the Americans who run the marathon.

99.9% of Americans who run the marathon do not belong in the Olympic Trials. It IS a training run for anyone with a snowball's chance in hell at qualifying for the Olympic team, much less medaling in the Olympics.

malmo wrote:

Like or not, in running ,and in life, there will always be cutoffs. Wherever you go in the course of your life there will be those who made the cut and those who don't. That's the whole point of athletic competition. It isn't to build your self-esteem. Live with it. Sport is all about the inherent human drama of competition. It's about winning AND losing.

Bravo. Well said. This has turned into a rather ugly thread dominated by 1 (or 2) posters. I'm done with it and hope that most of you can grasp the wisdom Malmo and others (Wineturtle to name but one) have tried to inpart.

In conclusion I'd like to ask you to name one instance in which the dumbing down of a standard has been helpful to that organization. It simply doesn't work, its against human nature. And before you go and throw 1972 in everyone's faces, that was 34 YEARS ago and it was a toughening of the standard as there was no cut-off standard in 1968. To suggest we can't expect more from athletes today then we did 34 years ago is insulting to our sport.

What may I ask is the purpose of choosing a 3 member Olympic team? To make 3 2:14 - 2:17 guys feel good about themselves? I say it is to send guys with a legitimate chance to win. A quick glance at recent world best lists confirms what Malmo said: 2:12 sucks! The current world record is 2:04. If you're not within 2 or 3 minutes of that you have no chance. I say therefore, that we set the standard at 2:07. That way the lagards in this pitiful excuse for a country who are lollygagging around at 2:09 or 2:10 will pull themselves up by their bootstraps and run the sort of times really required to compete. Our current standards - 2:22 only molly coddle the pitifully slow and unambitious among us. Hell, let's make the standard 2:03. This will surely return the WR to the comfy confines of our shores!! And we'll be sure of sending men who take seriously the notion that only being the absolute best is good enough.