2015 Boston Marathon Qualifier Acceptances Released - You had to run 1 min 2 seconds faster than qualifier to get in

streakers only number 356 for next year.

there are more 'invited' runners - from sponsors and municipalities - than there are charity runners.

for 2015, roughly 80% of the field will be qualified runners, the rest will be invitees and charity entrants

when you get on the board of the BAA, then maybe you can tell them what they need to do

They should just make qualifying for men harder. As it is, there are still more men than women running Boston.

the process has been the same since the year after it closed/filled in 8 hours....

is the system perfect? no, but it's as fair, if not more so, than any other method

3 of the last 4 years, there has been a BQ cut-off time requiring folks to be more than a minute under their BQ qualifying standard

demand dropped a bit this year: they turned away more than 1900 - last year they turned away 2900

One thing I think should be addressed is the "ability" or "loophole" where you can run one fall race, like Erie / St George / Chicago and get two years of Boston Qualifiers.

I know several people that qualified in one of those races in 2012 and ran both 2013 and 2014 Bostons, yet never ran or if they did, totally bombed whatever marathon they ran between Bostons.

If you get in with a fall Marathon, then you shouldn't be able to use it a second time.

You should only get to run Boston once per qualification.

I agree. There should be a separate medal and jacket for those who just got in for charity. It would be easy to do. Have a special bib for charity "runners" and then at the finish line they get the charity medal. And at the expo, you could show your bib or acceptance card to get the appropriate jacket.

Mycrazyx wrote:

A joke. for over 20 years, I've taken pride in making the Boston qualifying time by a good margin. I could and did wear my Boston Marathon shirt with pride ( the one only given to runners, not the one from the expo)

Now? Huh, any friggin Tom, Dick , Jane or Harry can run is they raise enough money. It's a joke, joke, joke. I mean, what has become of this race?

Now we have 30 year old women taking over 5 hours, and they get the same medal and bragging rights as the woman who bust her a$$ to meet the qualifying time?

Huh?

Answer me!!!!

Perhaps you should try raising money for charity.

Raising 5K is a tougher task than running the standard.

Anyone can run faster with hard work and dedication. Begging for money to parade on an event to tell people you did it is a different story

Sentinel wrote:

Perhaps you should try raising money for charity.

Raising 5K is a tougher task than running the standard.

Anyone can run faster with hard work and dedication. Begging for money to parade on an event to tell people you did it is a different story

I agree with this, but I also very much like the idea of separate jackets/awards. Runners could wear them with pride, for their ability to run, and so could the charity runners, for their contributions to the charity.

We have to be careful about being really militant about this kind of stuff. This is a big road race that shuts down a large part of a major city. It needs to have some social merit, some reason for the citizenry to accept it.

If a road race is interpreted as just a bunch of selfish runners out for recognition for the radical skill of being able to put one foot in front of another, then the citizenry can shut down that road race anytime they want. We saw this in NYC recently.

Let's run. Let's be citizens too. And if we can't be the kind of person that helps others, let's at least make some room for those who are the kind of person who helps others.

Not a solution. How will you stop jane schmoe from purchasing and parading a Boston marathon jacket?

oh please wrote:

One thing I think should be addressed is the "ability" or "loophole" where you can run one fall race, like Erie / St George / Chicago and get two years of Boston Qualifiers.

I know several people that qualified in one of those races in 2012 and ran both 2013 and 2014 Bostons, yet never ran or if they did, totally bombed whatever marathon they ran between Bostons.

If you get in with a fall Marathon, then you shouldn't be able to use it a second time.

You should only get to run Boston once per qualification.

the way the qualifying period is set up now - it just started for 2016, very few races, in fact only those held during the registration period, allow for double-dipping

you're talking about very few people. 2012 was an exceptional year, the first under the new faster BQ standards and registration stayed open almost a month after it opened... that will probably never happen again

You're such an unbelievably huge loser. It's amazing and mind-boggling. What do you do in real life? Do you have friends? Does your wife cheat on you? Do your kids hate you?

THAT hard wrote:

lolwut wrote:

If anything, I have always wanted to see the Boston qualifier time lower to increase the quality of the field. Under 3:10 for a guy is not THAT hard.

By this rationale, why not drop the standards to 2:20/2:40? I'm sure that the top runners don't think these times are difficult to achieve with just a fair amount of training?

I think we're a bit skewed on how relatively fast people on this message board are. And that's ok since most have grown up running and that's what we know. But even if the person I'm responding to in this post is a 2:30 marathoner or faster, don't you think that there are still folks that think your time sucks, and that with a little hard work, you can get under 2:20? I know my 2:4x is solid, but I have no delusions that I'm anything special.

I appreciate posts like this! Fewer and fewer posters on LRC seem to have any sense of civility these days, and being articulate and considerate about your argument goes a long away. Good point.

Sentinel wrote:

Not a solution. How will you stop jane schmoe from purchasing and parading a Boston marathon jacket?

If it bothers you that much that this could happen, I suggest you undergo some kind of de-sissification treatment.

They *do* publish statistics regarding percentage of runners who qualify 5, 10, 15, and 20+ minutes under their cut off. In 2013, only about 15% of qualifiers accepted ran within 5 minutes of their times:

Another metric to go by is the bib numbers. Bibs are assigned by qualifying time, and in 2013 a 3:00 mark put a runner at about #4500. Given that there were 17,000 time-qualifiers, that would mean about 26% field qualified with a time under 3 hours.

I would like to see qualifying marks be better correlated to age-grade standards. Let's hypothesize and say qualifying was pegged at 70% and look at age grade calculators. This would make times a little harder for men (qualifying would be about 3:01 for a 30 year old man), and a lot harder for women (3:18 for a 30 year old woman). Right now, qualifying for 18-34 year old women at 3:35 is an age-grade score of roughly 64.5%, but for men it's roughly 69%. I always wondered why women have a lower age-grade standard.

Dude, if wearing a shirt makes you feel special and when someone else wears the same shirt who cannot run as fast as you makes you feel less special, I pity for you.

I have a bunch of Boston medals in a box and do not care if people slower than me also have them. That isn't what the race is about to me. It is about having fun training for the race and running the race.

As long as the slower charity runners start in the back and don't get in the way, I have no problem with them. I have more of a problem with people jumping in and banditing and getting in the way.

Flip the issue. Instead of if you meet the fundraising number you are guaranteed in, but with your time you may or may not be, whoever has the time is in. The charities sign up a lot of people, they all train, then after the timed runner's sign up period is over whatever left is given to the those who raised the most money.

nicities wrote:

I would like to see qualifying marks be better correlated to age-grade standards. Let's hypothesize and say qualifying was pegged at 70% and look at age grade calculators. This would make times a little harder for men (qualifying would be about 3:01 for a 30 year old man), and a lot harder for women (3:18 for a 30 year old woman). Right now, qualifying for 18-34 year old women at 3:35 is an age-grade score of roughly 64.5%, but for men it's roughly 69%. I always wondered why women have a lower age-grade standard.

Age-grade standards are based on percentage of the world record. This is a flawed way to compare male and female runners.

The Mercier Score Calculator actually pegs the women's standard as harder, which I don't agree with, but there's no way 3:01 for men is at all equivalent to 3:18 for women. The latter is more impressive (neither are really impressive though).

Wow a lot of sore slow pokes on this thread. Plain and simple it was meant to be a competitive amateur race, so how can you justify someone who ran 3:04 getting in and a 3:01 person not? Because they could register faster? get a life

I'd rather the spot went to the guy who ran faster (current system) than the guy who was better about being glued to a computer on one specific day (old system).

BQ is still a BQ. It qualifies you to apply for entrance into the Boston Marathon. It does not guarantee that entrance will be accepted. Your assertion that there is some new, absurd ambiguity with the system is sad.

The qualifying times are soft. I think you should have to run sub 2:50 like the old days..