Go for 3:10

~Let's all Raise the Bar!

Fudge man. 3:03:40 or whatever it took to get in is fast enough. I may have to throw this in the KQ Dream if they go sub 3:00

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Found the answer, I think.

http://www.baa.org/...te-registration.aspx

Kids! It was 2:50 back in my day. I qualified on a course that was uphill, both ways.

In the snow with no shoes...

Yeah...no where in the RW article did it say they were revising the BQ standards. All it said was that they were reviewing the qualification process, as they do every year. Baa.org confirms it...2016 will have the same published standards, but no one knows what the actual bar will be. If they keep the same number of entrants, I'd guess a similar 60-90 seconds under BQ.

The "fudge" that you may be thinking about was that 59 second buffer. Basically, it meant that you could get in with a 3:15:59 (if your BQ was a 3:15). Then, it meant you needed a "x" time. Now, you need under "x". They got rid of that 59 second buffer the same year as lowering the BQ standards 5 minutes...effectively lowering the standards 5:59!

So, if your BQ time is 3:15 and you actually want to race in 2016 (and not just qualify), assuming the same field size, you'd be wise to shoot for sub 3:14...3:13 to be safe...3:12 is probably a lock.

Good luck!

Whether the standards are made tougher or not I wouldn't go into the race with the plan of getting into Boston with a 3:14:XX. Everyone else has seen that qualifiers have been turned down the last two years and will have adjusted their goals to go a little faster.

Also, don't let up until you cross the line, I wonder how many of the 1900 people who just missed the -1:02 cutoff were hamming it up in the finish chute, ecstatic that they BQ'ed?

Like others have said, they are not revising the standards for this qualifying window since it has already opened. They might just be making some tweaks to the procedure like they did this year (eliminating Thurs & Fri from week 2 registration).

I was wondering if they might make a consideration for a "three strikes and you're in" for those who qualified, but were not accepted three times in a row. It would be a small group, probably similar to the streakers or legacy entrants. Another option might be to push back the start of the 2017 registration window until after the 2nd week of registration, closing the "double-dipping" loophole.

I would shoot for -5 to be safe. What happens if the BAA is not able to secure the +/-3,000 additional spots again next year?

Would love to see them continue to make the standards tougher, so you can shoot for getting in all the way up until April.

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Anyone thinks that the 30 min difference in male/female cutoffs is somewhat outdated - given the general number of really fast females in the AG field?

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Well it depends on what BAA's intent is. If the intent is for the standards to be equally challenging for each sex, then the 30 min difference may need to be revised. If the intent of the 30 min difference is to encourage more woman to run Boston and to make the demographics closer to 50/50, then I think the 30 min difference is probably going to stay. There are still more men running then women at Boston.

Revising the qualifying standards makes no sense. If the 1900 people who were excluded could have run 1:03 faster, don't you think they would have? If you toughen the standards, the same number of people are going to get excluded - either they won't qualify or, if they run faster and do qualify, they'll still have too many people who meet the new standard and they'll have to exclude a certain number of qualifiers.

IMHO, what they should do is accept everyone who meets the qualifying standards on the day registration opens and then set the number of charity slots based on the number of remaining slots.

In many marathons, half marathons, the gender participation is near 60% women 40% men. Women for some reason arent not focused on time goals but rather just finishing, considering the standard gender gap for elites is about 10-15 minutes. I have no idea how that female american mentality can be changed.

I have qualified for boston, ran it, but I still feel I didnt qualify, knowing the old standard was 2:50

It's not supposed to be easy to qualify. In the past 5 years they've gone from [time+0:59] to [time] to [time-5:00]. So that 3:10:59 that worked 5 years ago became 3:10:00, became 3:05:00. The incessant reminders to sign up for things have manufactured this sense of urgency. I registered in January for the April race years ago. Then it sold out in November. Now it's immediate. Naturally the emotion surrounding the 2014 edition was going to cause a quick sellout but I remember a -1:17 cutoff for those qualified (expanded field). For 2015 it's -1:02. Maybe for 2016 it becomes 0:55 or something.

If they made the time cut-offs any more challenging I think they wouldn't get a sellout, or it would take a lot longer, and that would be bad for business.

In terms of male to female qualifying times, if we're talking fair it would be a smaller gap than 30 minutes. It would be dumb to mimic men's WR to women's WR differential (+12:20 or whatever) or even an average differential of M/F winning times at Boston (over last 10 years you're looking at 15+ minutes). Something like 25 minutes would be a little more even. But then you're just going to have a race with way more dudes, and honestly who needs to be around more dudes?

As a female, I actually find the female qualifying times a bit insulting. They really don't need to be that slow. I know women who don't train that hard and aren't that talented who BQ, and guys who are decently fast but can't make it until they hit 35-40 and get the age benefit.

I'd like to see a 20 minute differential - I think that's fair.

(As a masters runner, I also think 5 minutes for every 5 years over 35 is a bit much, though I guess it makes for easy math).

my wife feels the same, that is why she is aiming for NYQ instead.

I just did the quick math on our club's record boards, and throwing out our fastest M/F (Olympic Trials qualifiers) marathon times, in our top 10 men's times we have an average of about 2:31 (2:26-2:36 range) and for the top 10 women we have an average of 2:58 (2:51-3:05). 27 minutes, obviously not statistically significant but pretty close to a minute per mile.

This year (2014) we had a guy run 2:56:53 and finish 1750th overall (so maybe 150 women ahead of him?) and a lady ran 3:25:46 for 1516th female. That's pretty even, both around the same finish position relative to gender and around 29 minutes difference.

So maybe it is pretty even. Obviously my numbers aren't statistically significant, but I do have a decade's worth of marathon times (and Boston times) and they all look pretty similar. It would be interesting to look into BAA data.

That was only ONE of the old standards. I think the first standard was sub-4.

In all seriousness...is there really any difference between 30,000 and 31,900?

It seems to me that it's already too big.

Why would you throw out the fastest times?

If you use world records the number is probably somewhere around ~10%, maybe a bit more, slower than the mens time, if you look at world records from a variety of running events from 5k to the marathon. The ~10% also applies in other events like swimming. World records are nice because they do remove some variables from the equation, for example you know that both individuals are training hard and are very talented. It does not answer if the most talented male runner is more similar to an average male than the most talented female is to an average female.

I think the best argument is that the 18-34 woman's time is 3:35 and the men's 50-54 time is 3:30. Should a woman in her 20s could be 5 minutes slower than her father?

As a note I have no problem how ever Boston wants to decide what the standards are. If they want to encourage women to run, after not allowing them to run for decades, they should feel free. I do not think they have ever said that the times are meant to equivalent and there is no reason that they should be.

http://www.runnersworld.com/...ing-times-be-revised

I always thought a straight AG would be the best. Make it a flat 70% AG across the board, or even 65%. But that would hurt the older AG and woman compared to current times and I think the BAA prefers that demographic, they probably spend more and are more into the prestige than the sub 40 year old man

I like this idea but I think an AG of 70 would not give the BAA the pool of runners they're looking for. Maybe ~ 67. BTW, an AG of 67 for 40 year old men is 3:11:02; for women its 3:32:11. Delta = 21:09

Another issue why many do BQ is because peopl are picking down hill courses. Any course with lower elevation drop than boston should not count (mountains to beaches, etc)

It made my quick math easier, ha.