2020 Boston Marathon Cancelled

you are the crybaby wrote:

american fruitloops wrote:

Seriously some crybabies need to get a grip. Worldwide pandemic. Your little running race is not an essential activity.

The survival of the fat and old is not an essential activity. COVID crybabies need to get a grip and realize that no one cares if you die.

+1

It is like our society has suddenly realized that they are mortal.

wejo wrote:

I'd rather see a Boston Marathon with 1000 runners than no runners at all. I wish someone had thought outside the box on how can we have a 2020 in person Boston Marathon.

A socially distant Boston Marathon whatever that means is better than no Boston Marathon but you're not going to get a politician to go out on the limb for a mass public event.

This is the biggest problem with this site. too many people who only care about events they get to watch on TV, not the general health of the sport.

A 1000 person Boston Marathon that excludes 25,000 of the participants serves nobody except those who do nothing but watch. Which, in case you hadn't noticed, is a VERY small section of people who care about running.

why??? wrote:

Did they give a reason for the cancellation?

Something about a social media trend gone wild

problem right here wrote:

wejo wrote:

I'd rather see a Boston Marathon with 1000 runners than no runners at all. I wish someone had thought outside the box on how can we have a 2020 in person Boston Marathon.

A socially distant Boston Marathon whatever that means is better than no Boston Marathon but you're not going to get a politician to go out on the limb for a mass public event.

This is the biggest problem with this site. too many people who only care about events they get to watch on TV, not the general health of the sport.

A 1000 person Boston Marathon that excludes 25,000 of the participants serves nobody except those who do nothing but watch. Which, in case you hadn't noticed, is a VERY small section of people who care about running.

This is a big part of why the sport is dying. So many treat it like its elite or hobby jogger - no inbetween. You know what a 2:20 marathoner is on letsrun - a loser, a hobby jogger who wastes time doing more exercise than he needs instead of earning money.

I always thought the brojos kind of embodied this attitude. They both left competing in the sport way before they needed to, when they still could have run fast times. Sure, if you don't have the fire to compete anymore and want to do other stuff - no fault on that, but it seems like the best we get to celebrating the competitiveness of the sport outside of the front of major races is to have some d3 threads. A guy who trains hard and wins a $500 prize purse marathon in the 220s or 230s is a serious athlete. Top nirca men are serious athletes. Yet we treat all these people like hobby joggers. There have been threads on here which labelled 1430 d1 guys as mid packers, etc. Sure, sure threads on all that stuff is allowed, but its not covered, there is no push to make it streamed or get the information out there, and its accepted that competitive running is hidden away behind pay walls. You better have 150 a year or you're not a real fan. There is more out there than the dichotomy than elite and runnersworld.

A 1000 person boston marathon would be a joke. It would leave a bad taste in the mouths of so many and stain the race's history. I don't know that the race ever needed to grow to tens of thousands, but part of that is the result that winning a small town marathon/hometown marathon would bring nothing, no mention in the sports media, no prize money, so its boston or bust. Where is the coverage of Honolulu, or any fall race with a prize purse besides Boston, CIM, Chi, and NY.

All major races will be cancelled through at least the end of the year.

Following the initial postponement of the race from April to September 14, the Massachusetts legislature hurriedly passed a bill recognizing September 14 as a "holiday" for the city of Boston. Now that the race is cancelled for that date, I wonder whether this new holiday will be rescinded?

If we look at the positives of the situation, if there is no Boston marathon there can be no terrorist attacks on the Boston marathon

Okay, so is this still going to be a competition of some kind? As in runners get to choose where they want to run the 26.2 miles, and the fastest times count as official results? That actually wouldn't be awful -- certainly better than nothing. I like the idea of everyone choosing where they can run the fastest.

I'm sick of hearing everyone droan on about vaccine vaccine vaccine vaccine. The flu vaccine barely makes a difference anyway! Corona will be long gone before any vaccine is developed. New Zealand has pretty much gotten rid of it, so has China, South Korea, Japan, Australia... even in the worst affected countries we're mostly down to a quarter or fewer cases already, barely a month after it peaked... who seriously believes that a full 4,5,6 months etc from now that there'll still be 100's dropping dead... have people been brainwashed??!

new to the game wrote:

Yeah the cutoff is probably gonna be like 8 minutes now. UGGGH

Besides the OT Marathon, there really hasn't been any races this year that would bump the qualifying window down. You might see it around ~2 minutes but there is no data to support this.

runharwell wrote:

Okay, so is this still going to be a competition of some kind? As in runners get to choose where they want to run the 26.2 miles, and the fastest times count as official results? That actually wouldn't be awful -- certainly better than nothing. I like the idea of everyone choosing where they can run the fastest.

This virtual competition already exists. You could compete with the rest of strava at any point over any distance you chose. Why do you think this won't be awful. Some guy will run a net downhill course to get the fastest time. All the elites coming for prize money won't bother uploading their times. A guy training in florida will have a huge disadvantage in his uploading time as will a guy in a hilly area. The winner if not a downhill marathoner, will be some guy who runs 26.2 miles on a track. Plus there is no verification of times in these virtual races - so bikes could be staged along the course and as long as someone was smart about it, could easily cheat.

Just Some Jogger wrote:

I'm sick of hearing everyone droan on about vaccine vaccine vaccine vaccine. The flu vaccine barely makes a difference anyway! Corona will be long gone before any vaccine is developed. New Zealand has pretty much gotten rid of it, so has China, South Korea, Japan, Australia... even in the worst affected countries we're mostly down to a quarter or fewer cases already, barely a month after it peaked... who seriously believes that a full 4,5,6 months etc from now that there'll still be 100's dropping dead... have people been brainwashed??!

It's not about the numbers right now but how it spreads. The key transmission points were conferences and close encounter areas in February that spread the virus to other parts of the community. Three medical conferences in Boston were identified. Large events are similar to fuel for the spread of COVID-19. The 1918 Flu pandemic had the majority of the cases during the second winter of 1919-1920 when it reemerged.

Will this affect my chances of getting in for 2021 I qualified only five minutes under the time

My26cents wrote:

new to the game wrote:

Yeah the cutoff is probably gonna be like 8 minutes now. UGGGH

Besides the OT Marathon, there really hasn't been any races this year that would bump the qualifying window down. You might see it around ~2 minutes but there is no data to support this.

All the old qualifying times roll over. So now the 2020 qualifying period, plus all the fall 2019 races, will count for 2021. So the cutoff will get harder for 2021 unless they expand the field.

Wejo,

You know better than this, this post is shortsighted. It's not just about X number of runners but the amount of people who would be on the race course gathering/supporting the event.

We are already seeing reports of how it can spread for small social gatherings. Imagine if you had 1000's of small gatherings on the course. How big of a public health workforce would you need to potentially trace the spread if an outbreak occurs?

What happens if one volunteer at the finish line who was an active carrier handing out medals to over 1,000 participants. We don't have the current capacity to track this information down.

problem right here wrote:

My26cents wrote:

Besides the OT Marathon, there really hasn't been any races this year that would bump the qualifying window down. You might see it around ~2 minutes but there is no data to support this.

All the old qualifying times roll over. So now the 2020 qualifying period, plus all the fall 2019 races, will count for 2021. So the cutoff will get harder for 2021 unless they expand the field.

We're talking for three months? Including individuals who already would have qualified that you need to take out of the example. It's going to add some but not 8 minutes worth of people. Let alone those who won't consider the risk great enough to register. Overall it should balance it out

My26cents wrote:

Wejo,

You know better than this, this post is shortsighted. It's not just about X number of runners but the amount of people who would be on the race course gathering/supporting the event.

They don't care. to them, the only thing that matters is whether they get to watch a race. They don't even notice the rest of it.

I think these issues could be easily negated with a few simple rules:

1) Everyone must use a pre-approved GPS tracking device

2) The course you choose must be linear (turns can mess with the GPS distance)

3) The course can't have a net downhill of more than a certain number of feet.

With all of that in place, we'd have a legitimate competition on our hands. There's strategy involved in choosing where you'd be at your fastest.

sorry - forgot they'd already scaled the number back. If the old cutoff was 1:39, it's probably closer to 3:00 now.