Last year I was way off my qual time. I had spent so much effort qualifying. I was 13 min under BQ. Then the pandemic happened, throwing a wrench into my training and I got injured. Any other race and I'd have DNSed. Could not do it for Boston. Luckily I got another shot at redemption this year. I know a lot of folks in my club with the same story over the years.
confused about boston wrote:
I assumed that with qualifying standards Boston would have faster average times but that doesn't seem to the case.
In 2021 there were 7942 male athletes
2172 ran faster than 3:10
5578 ran faster than 4:00
2364 finished with a time over 4:00
How do these people get into the race? I have a hard time believing someone who ran a sub 3:00 marathon to qualify will run a 5:00 marathon. A 5:00 marathon is 11:27 pace. A 3:00 marathon is 6:52 pace. The results may include para athletes and masters but even then the qualifying time for males of age 65-69 is 4:05. Maybe they were all masters athletes having bad days or para athletes but I find it hard to buy that.
same reason married people get fat
Derek has entered the chat.
Oh I forgot- - for older runners, just the aging process. It is about 4 sec per mile per year- so that’s 1:44 slower at the same age-relative fitness level.
Nobodyyouknow wrote:
I was 20 minutes slower today in Boston after qualifying @ 2:55. The logistics of the race were a factor. Not a big city guy, all the hype was a lot. Getting to the start line is a hassle. Also, it is hard to train on hills in cold climates.
20 minutes is almost a minute per mile slower than your qualifying time. It’s like 6:40 to 7:30-ish pace or something. That’s a world of difference for a fairly serious runner, that’s like me running a 5k at slower than my HM pace, I can’t imagine the “logistics of the race,” “getting to the start line” and lack of “hill training” would ever be the sole causes of that if I couldn’t even run a 5k I’d prepared for at slower than tempo pace.
Sample size matters wrote:
Oh I forgot- - for older runners, just the aging process. It is about 4 sec per mile per year- so that’s 1:44 slower at the same age-relative fitness level.
Pretty sure Masters records (despite less depth than open competition) show that the deterioration is way less than 4 seconds per mile per year across all distances. Men’s 60+ US road record is 16:38, that would be a time of 12:30 5k for a 40+ athlete. But keep making excuses for yourself.
I’ve ran Boston twice. First time I ran it 19 minutes slower than qualifying. That was because I didn’t train as hard and was treating it like a big vacation. We did every tourist sightseeing thing you could do in Boston. I had 25k steps per day for the two days leading up to the race.
Second time, I trained harder than ever. My predicted time based on my tune up half marathon in March was 2:43 high. So I paced Boston for a 2:46 high since it’s a tough course. Was on pace for 2:46 through mile 24, but ended up bonking with about 2.5 miles to go and shuffled in two minutes slower than my qualifying time. I think the bonk can be partially attributed to the late start in Boston. I never wake up at 5:30am to run at 10am so I don’t think I ate enough. Plus, if you’re catching the buses downtown, you’re walking nearly 10k steps before the race to get to gear check, catch the bus, walk through athlete village, get to the starting corrals which are almost a mile from athlete village, etc. That walking didn’t bother my legs, but it’s a lot of extra calories burnt before starting a difficult course.
I think both of my scenarios are some of the common reasons people go slower at Boston.