I've interviewed over 200 runners who've qualified for Boston. Here's what I've learned.

middle aged hobby jogger wrote:

it sorta looks like there are TONS of female qualifiers in the ~20 mpw range.

Well its easy to qualify as a woman when the standards are set up to be so lax for them compared to men. They want women runners at Boston not a field packed with men and some women.

What about them equal rights Feminists!!!

Qualifer232 wrote:

I would like to see a break down of MPW by each age group and gender.

To put into perspective, a women in 1:37-1:40 HALF shape can BQ as the hardest standard. How slanted is that? The Average noob male can run a 1:40 with 4 weeks of training.

When I BQ'd in the 18-35 with a 3:03 it took me at least 60mwp and a Half marathon being around 1:25. The women standards NEED to be fixed. OR they need to make it so to get in EVERYONe needs to hit a 3:15 or something male or female.

You wont see a change in qualifying times due to one thing "MONEY". They want women and master age people at these events. Women spend more money then men as well as older people with more disposable income. Also they want to have large amounts of women at the even rather then it being male dominated.

Where is the Equality Feminists!!!

bqrunnercharts wrote:

A few notes on the charts. The info is great but I would clean up the charts as some of them get confusing.

Give better titles to the charts instead of "Count of this."

Give a legend for the pie charts, no having to read through a paragraph to find out which color represents what.

Round the percentages to whole numbers.

Really great work though, I enjoyed reading it.

Thanks, I'm getting a lot of new responses in right now and am going to update the results, I'll keep these ideas on the graphs in mind when I do version two of this post!

Technically you've interviewed zero runners, but you have surveyed 200. Huge difference. You should take a course on design from a school of information. If you interviewed 20 runners for 20-30 minutes you'd have more interesting insights than what you get from survey responses from 200 runners. Not trying to belittle. Otherwise cool data.

Ive qualified, i weigh 120-125

miloandthecalf wrote:

I love the idea of interviewing people who failed, but I'd doubt people would be as excited about responding!

Well, you can offer a carrot by summarizing your data in some way to give them some ideas on how to get to BQ.

You are correct, "You failed! Thanks for submitting. " Won't work.

Those charts don't make sense.

Speed work....blue responses indicate yes

Canned program...blue responses indicate no

Cross training...blue responses indicates yes

Run in hs or college....blue responses indicates no

Am I misreading the charts?

Blue should indicate yes or no, not both depending on the question.

old guy 71 wrote:

Those charts don't make sense.

Speed work....blue responses indicate yes

Canned program...blue responses indicate no

Cross training...blue responses indicates yes

Run in hs or college....blue responses indicates no

Am I misreading the charts?

Blue should indicate yes or no, not both depending on the question.

funny, i've shared this before and no one pointed these criticisms out, but clearly I have to redo the charts.

yeeyeeeeee wrote:

Ive qualified, i weigh 120-125

Fill out the form!

actual worthwhile content on LR. amazing.

Moral of the story:

Women can BQ even if they don't run more than a nooby couch to 5ker. Men need to work 10 x's harder.

I'm not sure if women just have no work ethic and make the standard too easy or if men are way to competitive.

It's "y'all" not "ya'll".

I expect that Boston & other marathons recognize that women represent the future of the sport. It isn't just that women "spend more money" as individuals. Running USA keeps statistics on male v. female race participants, and the numbers aren't even close. You might not see the ratio reflected on the world famous Letsrun message boards, but female runners significantly outnumber male runners, like 57 to 43 percent. In 2015, over 2 million more women than men participated in running events nation wide. The ratio is pretty similar to what you find in college students now. if you were a company, why would you want to alienate your majority share holders?

from an experimental design standpoint you need info from non qualifiers to make any assessment on the effects of any of your survey questions.

For e.g. say all qualifiers ran over 70mpw. without knowing how non qualifiers ran how could you know what mpw is best or if its een relevant. non qualifiers could run under, above, or exactly 70. that number would change the inference substantially vs just looking ay qualifier data.

lots of othet experimental design requirements too, like random sampling, eliminating response bias, etc.

renewed marathoner wrote:

from an experimental design standpoint you need info from non qualifiers to make any assessment on the effects of any of your survey questions.

For e.g. say all qualifiers ran over 70mpw. without knowing how non qualifiers ran how could you know what mpw is best or if its een relevant. non qualifiers could run under, above, or exactly 70. that number would change the inference substantially vs just looking ay qualifier data.

lots of othet experimental design requirements too, like random sampling, eliminating response bias, etc.

All true. there's nothing really scientific about this... purely anecdotal. but i think still gives some good advice.

very cool, filled out the survey today.

I know this survey was more ab qualifying, btw I also used Pfitz 18'55, but I would like to see a survey of median household income, sans elites/professionals, for people who actually run it. I'm starting to add up 4 nights hotel , 2 plane tix, expo, food, whatever else I'm close to 5-6gs. I'm starting to think the journey of qualifying will be more satisfactory than actually running the race in the end.

There's definitely some people sprinkled through the responses who BQ'ed and then never ran the race. The one I remember off the top of my head is pro ultra runner Anton Krupicka

https://miloandthecalf.com/2016/02/08/the-bqq-anton-krupicka-la-sportiva/

Excellent work