NYC / Boston Cutoffs

Anyone who would claim those Revel races as a PR is probably a sneaky sh💩t.

what do you think 2025 cutoff might be? 2:53?

you mean for 18 to 34 guys with a 3:00 standard? Probably worse than 7 min. I'm thinking probably 9 or 10 but who the F knows

somebody needs a new hobby

Boston is a downhill race.

Idk how accurate that first line is. I ran NYC once & used a 1:16 half qualifier. I didn't realize they were actually turning away time qualifiers. I thought they set their #'s so they didn't have to reject anybody who hits their auto standards.

Boston prolly needs to lower their standards. I agree about the downhill marathons. Maybe there should be a conversion for non-OTQ eligible courses or just don't count them. I'm guessing those races have some sort of relationship with BAA but they're hurting people close to the cut line who ran their times on honest courses. Some of those downhill marathons drop 2-3k or more. You could be looking at a 10ish minute improvement for some runners.

I submitted a 1:18 low non NYRR half marathon as part of my New York City application but received an email yesterday saying it wasn’t accepted and that I would be entered in the drawing.

For NYC, there was a formula that converted HMs to full and was a little more generous to HMs I think 1:15 or so was enough for young guys. Lots who can bust out a fast half but lack the appropriate training or endurance to hit the same time in the full imo

either way, no formula can correctly compare a “race” with thousands of feet of elevation drop to a legit qualifier

what are the hobby jogger olympians going to do when a monstrous 2025 Bq cutoff is announced? At some point there is enough backlash that Baa has to act beyond lowering qual times further

Out of curiosity, I went through Marathon Guide's "top BQ" races from 2023, and picked out the "big downhill" ones - its possible I missed a race or 2, I just picked out races I knew to have > Boston downhill.

REVEL Big Bear and Half Marathon (11/18/23 - Big Bear, CA) 1,837 742
REVEL Mt Charleston (4/1/23 - Las Vegas, NV) 1,516 555
St. George Marathon (10/7/23 - St. George, UT) 3,815 527
Mountains 2 Beach Marathon (5/21/23 - Ojai, CA) 1,423 401
Big Cottonwood Marathon (9/9/23 - Salt Lake City, UT) 1,572 335
Marathon P'tit Train du Nord (10/1/23 - Saint-Jerome, QC) 1,817 328
Light at the End of the Tunnel Marathon (6/11/23 - North Bend, WA) 757 297
The Tunnel Lite Marathon (9/10/23 - North Bend, WA) 664 226
Jack and Jill's Downhill Saturday Marathon (7/29/23 - Hyak to Tanner, WA) 761 175
Jack and Jill's Downhill Marathon (7/30/23 - Hyak to Tanner, WA) 510 156

Note that Marathon Guide mostly covers US/Canada, so I could be missing any big downhill races elsewhere.

Thats 3742 BQs, which assuming they all applied, would be ~11% of the applications for Boston 2024. How much would excluding those times move the needle? Realistically, I'd guess not more than a minute or so.

I suspect we'll see BAA to something eventually, because eliminating these races are an easy target to help lessen the cutoff. But I doubt BAA wants to be in the business of policing course profiles, and ultimately the general growth of the sport + super shoes means the times required to qualify are going to drop regardless.

There is no way I could run of those big downhill races. My quads would explode. Props to those that can.

This is amazing. These races are getting more competitive, thereby making it slightly more noteworthy to run in them, and LRC is still finding ways to complain.

For Boston, yes. But not for NYC.

The ability to qualify for NYC is becoming more difficult, perhaps extremely so. 2:39 guys were shut out this year. Instead NYRR gives priority to 9+1, the 10,000 charity runners, etc. plus all the 4+ hour people who get in through the lottery.

The complaint is that there are merely a few thousand spots open to non NYRR-race qualifiers, and they now go to folks who are essentially sub-elite. Why not double or triple this pool and take the spots away from the lottery, so you let more 2:45 guys and 3:00 women in, instead of the weekend warriors who get in via the lottery with no prior running experience.

I haven't even raced a half or full since 2021, so I entered the lottery this year (not expecting to get in). But something must have changed since I ran NYC in 2018. I got in just fine with a half qualifier that year that was about 4 minutes under the qualifier time and I don't remember hearing from any other time qualifiers that they didn't get in. This year I have seen several friends posting that they didn't get in with their time qualifier. This isn't exactly the same situation as Boston because at least there you have to have a BQ (except charity runners, etc). It seems like NYC is actually preventing too many faster runners to enter by rejecting so many time qualifiers *before* the regular lottery ends.

I was curious one day and looked up the female winner of one of the Revel races. She ran a 2:3x:xx. When I googled her name, I saw that she's entered in the elite field at Boston this year. Boston clearly doesn't care where you qualified.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say it wasn't her Revel performance that got her into the elite field lol

I had a full marathon qualifying time from a non-NYRR race that was 4 minutes under the standard, had relatively low expectations for getting in, and was also notified that I did not make the cut. I saw that this will be the last year that they accept qualifying times from half-marathons, so it will be interesting to see what happens next year.

It's kinda funny to me how many people point to NY as a great example of a more inclusive race, since to me it feels easy to get into Boston, by comparison. That said, the other part of me does think it's cool that they prioritize people with NYRR results, which make it easier for locals to participate.

It's also not super-duper high on my list of running aspirations, so I'm kinda meh about it either way.

Seeded in front of 2:39-2:44 women. Don't see other results for her. It's that marathon (Big Bear w./ 5k elevation loss) that's listed

If we are talking about the same person, her results from 2023 were:

Ogden Marathon (start 5400', finish 4300') - 3:04
Deseret News Marathon (start 7400', finish 4200') - 3:16
St George Marathon (start 5200', finish 2700', sort of hilly) - 2:50
Revel Big Bear Marathon (start 6600', finish 1550') - 2:39

She will be with a bunch of women who ran 2:40 on flat courses who can smoke her. She will get pulled along too fast in the early miles by the corral, be fine for the first 15 miles or so, and then get absolutely crushed in Newton.

So this is the kind of pathetic nonsense we will tolerate as 18-34M running low 2:50s on legitimate courses might get shut out for Boston 2025 with the way the cutoff is trending? Why should anyone even care about Boston at this point if the BQ has essentially been rendered meaningless by cheater courses? It's basically PEDs in topographical form

This is on top of NYCM reporting "Qualification standards," then rejecting over 80% of non-NYRR qualifiers for 2024 including some posting near sub-elite times in the high 2:30s, to make more room for "influencers," 9+1 joggers, and those who gamed the system to run a NYC half with far more generous NYRR qualification standards. And that's fine, it's their race and not aimed at time qualifiers like Boston (supposedly) is, but at least make the standards more opaque and don't get people's hopes up with published qualification standards that are essentially meaningless. Clearly state "this race is geared more toward locals and recreational amateurs, the qualification standards on our website are total bs if you are non-NYRR, we have very few bibs available"