sweathog wrote:
Someone else brought up the 1994 race, which I have to admit I don't know much about as that was before I was thinking about marathons. But, I'm guessing the results will stack up pretty similarly. Boston has had a long history of producing fair times, and I'm really not sure why people are disputing that.
Also, in practice there aren't many marathons that are used to qualify for the Trials, and if you remove the St George, Austin et al plus Boston and NYC then you're basically down to a couple of races, and it will be totally dominated by Chicago. I just don't see why you would do that.
Among those of us who have followed the results at Boston a few decades longer than you have, the Boston marathon is recognized as an aided course, and cool temps and a tailwind will produce times for many runners that they couldn't match on a record-quality course. There are two big problems with getting fast times at Boston: (1) you never know whether you're going to get the cool temps and the tailwind and (2) even if you get the right weather, the course is kind of tricky, and it's easy to go out too fast in the early miles and let the downhills beat up your quads. But if you go back to years like 1975, when conditions were very favorable, you will see lots of times from runners who never came close to those times on loop courses.
I would probably get rid of Boston as an OT qualifier, although it would be politically difficult to do. But consistency and even-handedness are worth something. Besides, Boston doesn't need the status of OT qualifier, and OT-level runners don't need Boston to get their qualifying times.
You're wrong about the number of legitimate record-quality courses. There are plenty of them, and there may be one or two more if certain races can no longer advertise themselves as OT qualifiers.