jjjjjjjjj wrote:
Citizen Runner wrote:It's the BAA's race, so they get to define the objectives and use their definition of "fair". Perhaps if you can propose a way to select "people who are trying hardest" or some such, they'd consider it. It's not obvious to me how one would do that or whether it would be good for the sport.
That's a classic straw man argument. You set a hard qualifying time and you'll only get people "trying hard."
That's a circular argument, the question is "How do you (fairly) set a 'hard qualifying time'?" You can't meaningfully answer that the by saying you set a hard qualifying time by setting a hard qualifying time.
The BAA answers the question, more or less, by selecting performance at about the 90th percentile of all persons who finish marathons across gender and age.
You may be correct that a higher percentage of men are "trying to run fast times", but I can't fathom how one would begin to quantify that so as to set standards fairly. I also doubt that it would be in the best interest of the sport to do so. Further the women I know who have qualified for Boston are far more committed to training than "just jogging for their health".
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I mentioned up thread an article about using WMA age-grade tables to set the standards. It was an Amby Burfoot article in RW (5/2009):
http://www.runnersworld.com/boston-marathon/all-in-the-timingHe re-evaluates that position in RW (4/2012):
http://www.runnersworld.com/running-tips/age-graded-calculators-qualifying-times-and-the-differences-between-men-and-womenThe latter delves a bit into the root of jjjjjjjj's argument, that is, the distribution of performances is different for males and females.