Ralphy wrote:What does the uninvolved public "get" from their displacement during a Gay Rights Rally or KKK Rally or some other road closing? Road closings for demonstrations/parades happen all the time and what does the "uninvolved public" get? Why is a marathon any different. F! the charities, that's not the purpose of a marathon.
Your rallies and parades don't close 26.2 miles of road for several hours. Huge difference.
If you read through the multiple articles about this you'll see a good chunk of the so called "charity" slots go to sponsors or other supporting organizations. No race director if going to go to sponsors and say "there's a bunch of guys whining on message boards, so I'm cutting your 1000 slots to 500".
The fact is there always has been non-qualifiers and there always will be. It's what makes the marathon work. Any recommendation that includes the phrase "kick out all the non-qualifiers" is a non-starter with BAA so there's no point even discussing it.
I'm sure there's goodly number of those slots that could be pulled back, tour operators operators come to mind, but even if you cut them in half that really only means registration would have been open maybe another 45 minutes.
The idea of A and B standards is intriguing. However I see a major logistical problem for BAA. How do you police the standards? Today there's one standard and if your documentation isn't correct you're bumped and there's plenty of time to bump you. If you have a 2:50 A standard and the same as today as a B standard there needs to be enough time between the two registration periods to vet them, or you simply say if you lie about your time to get the "A" standard you're out of luck (my preference). You know people that got the "B" time will put on their online entry an "A" time just to get registered.
I see this first hand on a race I do, we hold slots open for club members and folks will say they are on the online system when the "open" slots fill. I can imagine the hassle of dealing with that for a race with 20,000 people.
I think the most practical solution is to lower the standards based on looking at the qualified pool. Look at some form of curve and drop the standards to a point people would be assured of entry, then maybe 60 or 90 days before the event open the remaining slots to a wait list.