2021 Boston Marathon cutoff predictions

I got one too saying I didn't get in -- I had a buffer of 5:17. I'm slightly disappointed, but was much more disappointed when the 2020 race got cancelled (not saying they should have held it, just that personally I was having a really good training cycle and felt like it got wasted). I guess it might have been nice for them to throw some sort of bone to the 2020 entrants, but I can't think of anything that logistically would have been workable and so I don't fault them, and there have been a lot of "no great option" situations over the past year plus with the pandemic. I also don't have any problem with the way they do qualifying: at the end of the day the fastest people get into the race and I can't think of a more fair and efficient way to do things.

cutoff wrote:

At the very least, allowing people to age up in the intervening year and a half was a terrible decision. Some people who didn’t qualify for 2020 were able to get into 2021 using the same “qualifying” race, but because they aged up in the intervening year and a half they got an extra 5, 10, or 15 minutes, and now jumped ahead of people who actually did qualify for 2020. If your time wasn’t a BQ when you ran it, it shouldn’t become a BQ just because some more time has passed.

“We’ve long had the policy that your qualifying standard is based on your age on race day, despite how long before that you may have ran your qualifying race, but this year we are going to arbitrarily assign a date 17.6 months before the race date and use that to set your qualifying standard.”

This is not the 2020 race. It is the 2021 race.

They’ve also long had the policy that the race actually gets run every year, so it’s kind of a unique situation that warranted some flexibility.

It would’ve been trivial to say “races run before Sept 2019 are based on your age in Apr 2020, races run after Sept 2019 are based on your age in Oct 2021”. There, you’re not changing what a BQ is after the fact.

There’s always a few double dipper races in September anyway. Usually two weekends full of them. This isn’t new.

cutoff wrote:

They’ve also long had the policy that the race actually gets run every year, so it’s kind of a unique situation that warranted some flexibility.

It would’ve been trivial to say “races run before Sept 2019 are based on your age in Apr 2020, races run after Sept 2019 are based on your age in Oct 2021”. There, you’re not changing what a BQ is after the fact.

You really think that having separate dates for determining the age standard, based on when each athlete’s race was run, is better than what they chose to do for the 2021 race?

It's not true that "at the end of the day the fastest people get into the race." That's the bizarre thing about this. The average Boston runner is roughly a 4 hour marathoner and thousands are 4+ and 5+ hour runners, some even 7+. All this while thousands of runners who qualified with times 1 and 2 hours faster or more, are told that can't run because they "weren't fast enough."

The B.A.A. can run their race however they want. I accept that 100%. It's their race. And I see the value in charity and all that. But it's a bizarre system when you're telling 2:55, 3:00 and 3:15 runners they're "too slow" to run Boston, "you qualified but you didn't qualify," yet half our runners running will finish between 4 and 7+ hours.

Some data on average Boston finishing times:

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I do. I think the idea of having a non-qualifying time suddenly become a qualifying time just by sitting around doing nothing for a year and a half is absurd.

cutoff wrote:

I do. I think the idea of having a non-qualifying time suddenly become a qualifying time just by sitting around doing nothing for a year and a half is absurd.

It was never a non-qualifying time for the 2021 race.

You’re being obtuse, or just living up to your username. When the person crossed the finish line, it was a non-qualifying time.

cutoff wrote:

You’re being obtuse, or just living up to your username. When the person crossed the finish line, it was a non-qualifying time.

That is false. If you are saying that it wouldn’t have been a qualifying time if Boston was that same day as their qualifying race, then that happens every year.

the author is this analysis has a very poor understanding of the effects of weather on marathon runners... and perhaps an even poorer understanding of the kind of people who show up on Patriot's Day looking for a good experience and not a fast time

https://ade3.medium.com/why-is-the-boston-marathon-so-slow-6f8512129e24#:~:text=The%20average%20finish%20time%20of,and%204%3A05%20for%20women

I ran two nearly identical marathons in 2019 in terms of finishing times. I used the Spring race to get my invitation to 2020. I intended to use the Fall race to run 2021.

Then crap happened and millions of people suffered, died, lost family members, their jobs, and their businesses. In the face of his, the BAA is actually running a marathon this Fall. Kudos to them. I have zero sympathy for the self-serving arguments about why the BAA's approach to aging up or charity runners is somehow unfair or wrong.

Is the guy who did this analysis aware of the fact that Boston is the marathon with the highest number of BQs?

Source:

https://findmymarathon.com/bostonmarathonqualifiers-2020.php

A couple of things: About this aging-up discussion, maybe a decent compromise would have been to backdate the qualification window to, say, summer of 2019 instead of all the way back to fall of 2018. Clearly we're in an anomaly time with all that's transpired and the race date being in October after multiple cancellations and postponements. Backdating it any less than to summer of 2019 would not have provided enough BQ opportunities due to races halting by early March of 2020. Does this make sense?

I'd also like to point out re: slow times in the Boston Marathon that it's not just due to charity and other misc. invited participants but because older runners get to participate, which obviously factors into the "average" finishing time. I'm one of those. Boston tries to be a lot of things to a lot of people. It's more than just an Olympic or exclusive championship-style showdown, and the BAA has always emphasized a certain amount of inclusivity. If you look at the age-graded times for us older entrants, you wouldn't belittle our achievement. I only started running 11 yrs ago and got into 2020 Boston on my first and only (until Oct!) marathon.

cutoff wrote:

At the very least, allowing people to age up in the intervening year and a half was a terrible decision. Some people who didn’t qualify for 2020 were able to get into 2021 using the same “qualifying” race, but because they aged up in the intervening year and a half they got an extra 5, 10, or 15 minutes, and now jumped ahead of people who actually did qualify for 2020. If your time wasn’t a BQ when you ran it, it shouldn’t become a BQ just because some more time has passed.

I'm with you cutoff.

I was concerned this would be a factor. I have (or had) a 6 Boston streak going. For a few years I was around BQ-33 to 40, but in recent years was just running fast enough to qualify. So I knew BQ-7:07 was a slam dunk shoe-in time, or so I thought. If I knew ahead the bar would be artificial raised I wouldn't have coasted the final 6.2.

Yeah, I’m a little annoyed I ran that qualifier in the same age bracket I’d be on Oct.11th. Someone a year older would have been accepted running 4:20 slower than I did. The age on race day thing added an element of “luck” to beating the cutoff that wasn’t there in the past that bumped the less lucky ones. Yes I know, life will go on. Thank you for listening to my rant

I have ZERO sympathy for someone who claimed to have coasted in the last 10k of their marathon.

John Macardle wrote:

I have ZERO sympathy for someone who claimed to have coasted in the last 10k of their marathon.

Instagram is full of people complaining about that. “If I had known I would have ran/trained harder.”

Yeah right. Sure you would have.

Everyone will benefit from the age on race day thing at some point. It's definitely not "fair," but much of Boston qualifying isn't.

Disko Eric wrote:

John Macardle wrote:

I have ZERO sympathy for someone who claimed to have coasted in the last 10k of their marathon.

Instagram is full of people complaining about that. “If I had known I would have ran/trained harder.”

Yeah right. Sure you would have.

If you had specific goal of qualifying Boston, no more, no less; Why kill yourself trying to shave another minute or two? I suspect you guys are still at a PR age, not me

Incidentally, 6 weeks before that (Sept 9th, 2018), ran a a BQ-9:23 on a warmer day, so yeah, I wish I did run a little harder in Oct 2018