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During my trip to Erie, PA last month to watch a friend run that marathon I started thinking about why the running organizations don't have a grading scale for each qualifying course through the lens of leveling the playing field. That course is ridiculously easy as it relates to marathons and known as one of the fastest courses to qualify for Boston. Logic might tell you that you need a faster time at the Erie Marathon to qualify for, in this case, Boston. All things being equal a faster runner, who doesn't have access to a pan-flat course might lose out on a spot to another because of the easier course.
The running organizations probably can't organize it like Ironman (take the best times from a specific course and only give so many spots per age group) since they aren't all the same company/organization.
Those would be my assumptions. Has this been tried in a different way before? Does it really matter? I would love to hear your thoughts.
Well you will be shocked Erie is one of the most hardest marathons in the USA , because there is a plague of extreme downhill marathons - so people can fall their way into Boston easily . Blame USATF for allowing downhill races to be certified. Boston accepts USATF certified races
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synthetic: Oct 29, 18 14:00
I think that partially his point: you need someway to account for these net downhill courses that normalizes across courses so as to give a BQ attempt a roughly equal chance on any reasonable course.
The trouble with any such system is that it adds complexity. Any system needs to be immediately understood by the majority of runners. To add a grading system, you'd likely add a handicap in time.
Today's BQ system is (your time) - (Age/gender time) > (required buffer)
Under a handicap: (your time) -/+ (handicap) - (Age/gender time) > (required buffer)
It gets complicated pretty quickly since you'd need handicaps for each AG/Gender - faster runners need a different handicap than slower runners in pure time. So then you're left with a % percentage handicap, which is difficult to communicate to everyone as to what your handicap would be.
On top of it, you'd need a fair formula in order to determine what that handicap would be since it would be tough to rate each race individually. Something on the order of (total elevation gain) and (net uphill/downhill)
Yeah I get that and definitely fair points to be sure.
What if they were to just set a standard course time and then adjust each course up or down a few minutes to adjust for how hard or easy it is across all age groups compared to the standard? For instance, in the men’s 35-39 group the accepted time is 3:05 so at easy course X you need a 2:59 and harder course Y you need 3:11 and then adjust each age group up or down 6 mins in that example.
I agree it gets more complicated but with technology now days this can be somewhat easily managed.
because there is a plague of extreme downhill marathons - so people can fall their way into Boston easily //
Yes, but net downhill does not begin to tell the whole story. Suppose you started your marathon a 1/2 mile up the road to pikes peak, and then finished at the bottom after running to the top, how fast do you suppose that course would be?? Probably one of the hardest and slowest courses in the world, outside of just going up all the way.
I know what you are implying, and their are plenty of course that fit that description, but just because a course finishes lower than it starts, does not make it fast. My last marathon back in the day was point to point, hardly a mile of flat in the entire course, lost maybe 600ft at the end, definitely not fast. Well fast for me, as I loved going up and down, but for the pace type runners, it was miserable...