Woman runs 2:42:55 at Houston Marathon, turned down for Olympic Trials because she was in Corral B

uassATF wrote:

At Boston, the elite women actually started first, almost half an hour before the elite men. So by USATF's stupid logic, the elite men's winner only ran 2:36.

+1

Here is a cool part of this continuing saga

From @Hansonsrun

Here is what I’m thinking.

If @usatf does not bend and you are not allowed to run in the OT, my brother and I will pay for your air flight & 2 nights Hotel & entry in the Community Race on Sunday. Trials weekend experience & be on the same training schedule as your teammates

Ernest wrote:

USATF rules are cut-and-dry and published. Their hands are tied here.

“Gun” time is the only acceptable method of timing. Chip/net times cannot be used for qualifying. Consideration may be given to “chip/tag” times for competitors with “gun” times extremely close to the above qualifying standards."

Ernest, indulge me here...

If these rules are so cut and dry, why did USATF allow someone with a 2:45:59 gun time (and 2:45:00 chip) from Boston into the trials? If their policy ended after the 2nd sentence, I would agree with you about them having a clearly stated, objective policy. But their inclusion of "Consideration..." has introduced a seemingly random aspect to the selection process and mucked this whole thing up.

Her coach should have read the qualifying standards for Houston before hand. She could have ran the qualifying half marathon time at any race before hand.

https://www.chevronhoustonmarathon.com/faq-items/what-are-the-time-qualification-standards/

This is the open standard

Qualifying Time Standards for Guaranteed Entry

Gender Age Group Marathon Half Marathon 10K

Male & Female OPEN (all ages)* 4:00:00 1:52:55

With the note above it saying

Verified times may ALSO be used for front corral seeding if the verifiable time is equal to or faster than the OPEN time standards listed below.

She Should be doing training runs all the time faster than this and could have jumped into any race before they registered.

I wonder though when they made the decision to enter the Houston half. If it was the last day to enter then ya they were out of luck at that moment.

Her coach let her down but she should do her own diligence and verify the standards herself to ensure her coach is providing good info.

And the page also says

All registered runners can also add a verified time to their participant account until Nov. 30, 2019.

There really shouldn’t have been anything holding her back. The citiusmag article says

As a result, she was placed in Corral B on Nov. 20th

THEY STILL HAD TIME TO RUN A HALF MARATHON TO GET IN TO THE A CORRAL.

Unless I am reading those standards wrong or there are different standards to get into the A corral, I don’t know why it took them until Jan 13 to send an email to get her in. They apparently knew about the gun and chip time but maybe they didn’t know this information until they actually looked into the OTQ standards. Hmmmm

This is generally more difficult for women than men, since women are obviously slower and a sub-elite woman will often have trouble getting to the front.

This...

why do we need sob stories for people who have a flucking year to figure it out and run any race but they wait til the last possible second.

UsedToBeFast wrote:

Ernest wrote:

The right call was made here - awards and qualifications are almost universally made on gun time.

Lesson - if you're looking for a competitive result - crowd up to the front of the race or earn your spot there.

Houston is actually very strict and won’t let you into the A corral without it on your bib. Her mistake was she could’ve essentially jogged a half marathon before Houston to qualify for their A corral as the standard isn’t that high to get in.

Houston allows 10k times of sub 52 min or thereabouts to get into A corral. However I’d recently run a 17min 5k and tried to use it to get into the A corral and their Haku service or whatever it is called turned me down. It became immediately obvious to me the Haku people are robots and clearly don’t understand the sport very well. I finally dug into my Athlinks history and found a sh*tty time at a race I either blew up at or jogged for fun and used that to get into A corral. I ended up finishing Houston in the 2:40s (male)

These will need to be adjusted by 2 minutes for vaporflys. It just it was it is. I can see sub 2:17 and sub 2:40 next time.

I love some races that have A corral times that are like either a sub 1:30 half or a sub 3 marathon.

I'm like huh? One of those is much harder than the others.

It’s basically “are you capable of slogging through a marathon in sub 4hrs? Ok Corral A.”

That you have to submit a half marathon or marathon time to prove that if you haven’t raced in awhile due to injury instead of maybe allowing some shorter distance equivalent times seems a bit ridiculous to me. But I guess I can understand that a lot of beginner runners with 5k times of the Daniels VDOT 5k equivalent of a 4hour marathon (25:12 according to the VDOT tables here

https://www.coacheseducation.com/images/vdot1.jpg

)can’t necessarily run a 3:59 marathon since most recreational runners are not putting in serious marathon training (high mileage ) and thus do not have a flat VDOT performance profile from 5k to marathon (tend to fall off a lot as race distance increases )

*stipe wrote:

She petitioned to be included in the A coral and Houston refused. What more could she do?

...run a different race?.

She had a really good day, and it could have been better.

Ernest wrote:

The right call was made here - awards and qualifications are almost universally made on gun time.

Lesson - if you're looking for a competitive result - crowd up to the front of the race or earn your spot there.

I agree. I think going off chip time becomes

slippery slope. If you dont set some limits you'll start getting some weird Rozzi stuff with people over 3hrs hitting the mark.

I don't understand why it was so hard for her to get into the A corral or elite field. Its really a screw up on either her part or Houston's. Either way I'm not that upset over someone who is about 30min off the WR not running the trials.

We can’t change what “should have” been done. That’s in the past.

But what should be done and what will be done is still in front of us.

The performance was worth a Trials entrance and they still can give her a spot.

Les wrote:

Because chip time is outside the normal timing procedure -- it's a calculation, not an actual time from crossing the start line to the finish line. It would be like accepting a wind-aided sprint time.

It is LITERALLY the actual time from crossing the start line to the finish line.

Are you dense?

run about wrote:

If they hold a corral for 13 minutes, isn’t that a second gun time?

It is for boston, not sure why Houston doesn't do that

arunnerinwa wrote:

This is generally more difficult for women than men, since women are obviously slower and a sub-elite woman will often have trouble getting to the front.

Correct. At a major race like London, NYC or Chicago, 2:45 runners are crossing the line significantly after the gun.

Obviously this impacts on OTQ-chasing women more than men. :(

Ms. Kirkpatrick should have gone to the mat on behalf of this young lady. Don't blame the race.

username0 wrote:

Houston allows 10k times of sub 52 min or thereabouts to get into A corral.

What? Are you telling me I'm considered elite? 10k in sub 52min should be easy for anyone not fat.