Where is the Gender equality in the Boston Qualifying times?

On the contrary they need to relax the standard for the women. Much nicer to have a bunch of fit women running around Boston.

Maybe you'll realize that life just ain't fair.

the relevant metric is probably the relative gender time gap, not absolute. so it should be, for example for a 3:05 male time limit in the youngest age group, a 185*(1 + 16.23/125) = 3:29 female qualifying time. not too far off from 3:35. in fact, for a 4:40 male you get an equivalent 5:16 female time, whereas it actually is 5:10. so on average the time limits seem quite sensible too me.

above_average_joe wrote:

the relevant metric is probably the relative gender time gap, not absolute. so it should be, for example for a 3:05 male time limit in the youngest age group, a 185*(1 + 16.23/125) = 3:29 female qualifying time. not too far off from 3:35. in fact, for a 4:40 male you get an equivalent 5:16 female time, whereas it actually is 5:10. so on average the time limits seem quite sensible too me.

6 minutes between 3:29 and 3:35 is meaningful. That's like asking Kenenisa to run sub-2.

If spending is the criteria, Boston has it wrong there too, as a 55yo male will definitely outspend a 20-something female

NotanUltraGuy wrote:

Boston knows what it needs to visit during that week. They DGAF about being fast or the athletic accomplishment, it's about getting X number of visitors to the city.

Getting women there is better than some 30 yr old guy that thinks he qualified for the Olympics.

They want women and Master's runner$.

This. These two demographics are the ones that spend money $$.

Rather than say Oh we had 129 men under age 40 that ran sub 2:45!

They had 450 masters men and women that spent tons of $$$

TrackCoach wrote:

Stem cells wrote:

So you fee victimized by these standards? If you are a guy and can't run a 3:05, you really don't have any business running marathons in the first place. Maybe instead of venting your outrage at these standards, you should get and and train some more.

Stop being such a pu$$y.

I guess that's easy to say unless you have a professional job working 50 hours a week, wife, kids and a house.

A lot of us can do it. Quit complaining and go out and run.

Jebus. Can you guys cut it out with the PTSD crap. Suck it up and move on with your life. Stop making excuses.

mcguck wrote:

I'm not uptight, I just don't entertain slow people telling me how hard it is to juggle their personal life and run a blazing 3:00.

You know I'm slow by how?[/quote]

Because you said you run sub 1:30 and could potentially run sub 3:05. That's slow, bro.

You are not the first person to say they would like to be a woman. Talk, talk, talk.

LOL Why not do just that, be a woman.

I love being a woman, so come on over, it's great!

What age group are you in mcguck?

above_average_joe wrote:

the relevant metric is probably the relative gender time gap, not absolute. so it should be, for example for a 3:05 male time limit in the youngest age group, a 185*(1 + 16.23/125) = 3:29 female qualifying time. not too far off from 3:35. in fact, for a 4:40 male you get an equivalent 5:16 female time, whereas it actually is 5:10. so on average the time limits seem quite sensible too me.

Explain where you are getting these equations; they make no sense to me at all. I get the 185 is 3:05 in minutes but where does the (1+16.23/125) come from?

Besides, women have been shown to close the gap on men the longer the distance gets. It is not uncommon to see women push the best men to the limit in ultra events. Pam Reed won overall at Badwater twice, beating all the men.

According to the McMillan calculator, the men's marathon WR equates to a 3:38.1 for the mile, about 5 seconds faster. But the women's marathon WR equates to a ridiculous 4:00.2, a full 12 seconds faster. Women simply close the gender gap in longer races.

patti wrote:

You are not the first person to say they would like to be a woman. Talk, talk, talk.

LOL Why not do just that, be a woman.

I love being a woman, so come on over, it's great!

What age group are you in mcguck?

40-44, is there room for me on the woman's side, most of these testosterone filled men scare me with their speed hate speech.

Mind-blowing wrote:

There should only be a human and perhaps dog and or horse category

The "human" category is the men's category. At the Olympics, the men's competitors are the fastest (or jumpin'-est or throwin'-est) humans on the planet.

The competitors in the women's category are the fastest women.

That's something none of these non-athlete feminists who scream that we should ignore gender in sports never seems to consider.

In all seriousness...take the time you need to train for it.. Unfortunately changing genders is not the answer, though it may seem attractive at times.

You can do it.

If you wait until the times change you will be older and the times will get faster...you watch...mark my word.

The qualifying times for Boston, I think you do need to run a faster time than what is required to bbe able to run in the Boston Marathon.

From what I hear the slots fill up quickly.

Just for your info. I qualified for Boston under three hours forty years ago.

I don't think the qualifying times have anything to do with difficulty or fairness between genders. It seems like the race org just wants to set the bar at the right level to qulalify the right number of athletes they can handle, and get good representation for both genders. Given what I see anecdotally in the races near me, womens' fields aren't as deep as mens' fields, so if you want to have a representative womens' field, you would need to relax the standard more than for the men.

I think what he was trying to say is that the time differences should be based on the percentage difference between the genders, not the absolute difference. The 12:28 difference between the mens and women's world records equates to around 10%. For a three hour marathon, a 10% difference is 18 minutes.

yes, I meant relative difference. assuming the average male winning time is 2:05 (or 125min; pick a different number if higher) and the average female winning time is 16 minutes higher, i.e. the best women are 16/125 = 12.8% slower. this would suggest that females are 12.8% slower, given the same training.

Hence, for age group 18-34, given a male limit of 3:05 (185min), the female limit should be 3:29 (185min * 1.128 = 209min). So it should indeed be 6min lower than the actual 3:35. However, they keep the 30min differential constant, so e.g. for 70-74 the male 4:25 should translate to a female 4:59, whereas it actually is 4:55.

The general point is that OP incorrectly stated that female qualifying times are too easy, whereas the natural conversion suggests that female qualifying times are actually on average fair relative to the males'; they are just relatively easy for young females and relatively hard for old females.

Thank you for the Nobel Prize.

Among my club (~20 marathon participants per year ages 19-23) almost every guy qualifies, our chicks don't. I think women's standards are harder to hit.

Our guys are typically in 27-28 min 8k shape and girls in ??? 6k shape. I really don't know their times.

It's sexism plain and simple. The BAA thinks women can only do 3/4 of the work a man can.

It's always the younger men doing the whining. Take a look at age graded adjustments across all the categories. At the age of 50, the tables turn and it becomes easier for MEN to qualify once you do the age graded conversion.

Funny, older women never whine about the unfair standards.

If you want to whine about women now, then you need to admit that men get an unfair advantage from age 50 and up.

The current standards result in slightly more men than women in the race. If you want an all male elite race, why don't you train to be an elite instead of whining about a co-ed race.

Comparing male winners to female winners, or male course records to female course records, doesn't work because you are comparing outliers. As it stands, even with qualifying times that are 30 minutes slower for women, there are still almost 20% more men entering the race.

http://raceday.baa.org/statistics.html

Yes, the race director (and the city) wants a more or less equal number of men and women running the race because it is better for Boston tourism. To understand the race director's dilemma, it is more helpful to look at the top 100 finishers than it is to look at just the winner. In 2016, #100 male was #111 overall with a time of 2:38:27, meaning there were about 9 times more men than women at a 6:02 pace. For the same year, the #100 female finished with a time of 3:00:53 and was #1580 overall. Nearly 15 times more men than women finished sub 3:01:00! Yes, the fastest women are closing the gap on the fastest men, especially if they are intersex, but overall there is a huge difference in the average XX and the average XY, even when it comes to ultra distances (where there is significantly more parity between the two "primary" genders).