Guess guess wrote:
They should have categories like cycling. By performing well in races you can move up to higher categories. Races would be started in 5 minute increments or whatever with people of similar abilities competing against each other.
Categories are necessary in bike racing for safety reasons. You can't assume a Cat 2 is fitter or faster than a Cat 4. You can assume they're more skilled at handling, maintaining or changing position in a pack, better able to handle routine bumps and contact, and less likely to make stupid "Cat 4" moves. In a running race you're not going to cause 50 people to go down because of a dumb move. It's pretty easy to do in a bike race.
Running road races require very little skill and drafting/pack benefits are negligible. Faster runners are naturally going to separate from slower runners. Ordering the starting line by seed time makes a lot of sense. Having 5 minute increments between starts doesn't make much sense at all.I know Boston has 20 minute wave start intervals, but because of the wave size the difference in start time between the back of wave N and the start of wave N+1 isn't anywhere near that long. It really just keeps the streets of Hopkinton from being needlessly full of runners waiting for others ahead of them to get moving.