These are fair questions. After winning I had a discussion with a USATF official. When she mentioned the standards I shared with her that I had run under 2:22 in the LA marathon. This race was 1 or 2 weeks too early to count. In hindsight it is possible she was at this point discussing the standard for consideration and not auto-qualification, but it’s not how I interpreted things at the time.
When I looked at the standards I felt they were very clearly described. For further context, this is the (very different) wording in the 2022 100km team criteria:
”Those who meet the respective qualifying standards at any of the following 50 Mile well-established races also will be considered”
The reason I believed the rules had been changed is because I was sent a new version of the qualification standards with a bolder sentence added which requires the time be under 3:00.
I feel pretty strongly that qualification rules/criteria should not require discussion with an official. Veteran athletes know the committee and officials, but this is not the case for a newcomer.
The MUT community is small. Many can attest that this can be incredibly positive and welcoming, but it can also be isolating as a newcomer who does not know anyone (as was the case for me). It’s difficult to put myself out there and advocate for this - the entire community knows who I am and the committee has been made aware of this thread. I can only hope that 1) Qualification criteria are more clearly defined in the future 2) No precedent is set for changing or re-interpreting rules.