USATF Series Grand Prix Events
This weekend there will be the first event of the MA-USATF Grand Prix Series for 2011, the Adrenaline 5K in Haddonfield, NJ. This is an extremely fast course and we wish the club participants well.
A note from Chris James about the Caesar Rodney Half-Marathon: Just an update from the last CR committee meeting–there will be no race day registration this year, so don’t wait to sign up. Online registration will be active until Monday March 21st and those that don’t make that deadline can still sign up in person at packet pickup at DE Running Company in Greenville Thursday-Saturday.
Pike Creek Valley Running Club expresses its condolences to Becky Yencharis on the loss of both younger sister, Ann Lucas, and a good friend, Mim Rhoads, on March 9.
Boston Send-off Party & Spring Social
2011-04-13 Wednesday, 6:30-9:00pm
Location: Six Paupers – Hockessin DE
Join us as we wish our fellow PCVRC Boston marathoners a safe and successful marathon. Various appetizers/finger food will be served, compliments of the club. Drinks will be available from the bar.
Not yet a club member?
This is a great time to join the club and meet fellow members. Pick up your shirt on the spot and enjoy free food at events throughout 2011!
Non-members are encouraged to donate a few bucks towards food.
Although an RSVP is not necessary for this event it is always helpful if you can us know if you plan to attend to ensure that we have enough food for everyone.
Contact: Rachel Bleacher
Email:
Boston Marathon Qualifying Standards Changes
After a note from Joel Schiller, who is our club treasurer, but was writing as race director of the Delaware Marathon, about the changing standards for the Boston Marathon, I went to the baa.org website and read about them.
A little review of the registration history of the Boston Marathon is in order. With the advent of the running boom in the 1970s, the Boston Marathon started to become a bigger and bigger event. Around 1980, it adapted varying time standards for each sex and different age-groups, instead of a flat 3:10 qualifying time. Attendance started to increase into the thousands. In 1996 there was the hundredth anniversary of the event and the entries were unlimited. 30,000 participated, but the event resulted in the trashing of Hopkinton and the other small towns the course goes through. After than, entries were capped at about 15,000 for several years. But the event wasn’t filling up. Back then, people could run a qualifying time in February and use it to enter the Boston Marathon. In 2003, perhaps partially in response to the fact that the event wasn’t being filled, the time standards were relaxed for runners of middle age or older. By three years ago, BAA had worked things out well enough, coordinating with the small towns, that the entries had been raised to 20,000 with several thousand more charity and invited runners. But people could still register in February.
Then in the last few years, registration went from being sold out in January, to being sold out in November, to last October being sold out eight hours after registration opened. Obviously this deluge caught many runners off-guard and a number who had qualified and who had gone year after year were shut out. Now that BAA has deliberated on this situation, it has issued new rules.
I have to say I have mixed feelings about them. It’s obvious BAA had to do something, but the rules have skewed the event back towards being more elitist. How? Well, BAA is making sure that the fastest runners have the best opportunity of entering the event. Starting next September, registration will first be open to only people who have a qualifying time at least 20 minutes faster than the qualifying time standard for their age group. So, for instance, a 45 year-old male, who needs a 3:30 to qualify, would have to have a time under 3:10 in order to register in the first few days. Then, after several days, registration will open to people who have a time 10 minutes faster. Then five minutes faster. Only after two weeks will people with a qualifying time less than five minutes faster than their age-group standard be allowed to register – assuming there are slots left. I can imagine a mad scramble of people sitting by the keyboards to their computers ready to register when that day arrives.
For the 2013 registration, the time standards will get five minutes faster for every age group. Open males must run under 3:05 and open females under 3:35.
The positive in all this is that BAA has devised an orderly process for people to register. It needed to do something. But…. the negatives are:
1. In most situations in life you are either qualified to do something or you aren’t. People don’t get issued driver’s licenses in the order of their written test scores or their eye test. Everyone gets to drive. But for BAA, even if you’ve qualified, some are “more qualified” than others”.
2. What sort of stress in training and racing will these various levels of registration create? Will people take chances to qualify faster than five minutes and push themselves to injury in order to have a better shot at registering?
3. It used to be that running a fall marathon was the best option for qualifying because the time could count for both the next year, but also the year after that. With the registration process starting in mid-September, the fall marathons will be irrelevant to the following spring and would only be usable for the year after that. Spring marathons will assume a greater importance in qualifying, but will only be good for the next year.
4. What is to become of the marginally good runner? I count myself in this category. Looking back at the times I used for qualifying for the eleven Boston Marathons I have done, I see that in my fifties I mostly qualified with five or ten minutes to spare. Probably good enough to get in by the future standards. But lately it’s gotten tougher. I could have used a time that’s barely over five minutes faster for this year if I had chosen (which I didn’t). But for next year, I have a qualifying time that’s less than two minutes faster. And so it goes. In my late sixties, I slow down in chunks of several minutes each year at the marathon distance. It becomes a question of doing the training for a slight gain at the greater risk of injury with longer recovery. Not worth it to me. If I can get in, I’d better go next year because, with the faster times needed I may not be able to do it again.
I’m spoiled. I’ve been there eleven times. If I don’t get there again, not that big a deal for me. But what about the person who has similar abilities who hasn’t been there yet and really wants to go? What about the person who may only have one qualifying time in her or him? Seems to me this is where BAA is dropped the ball. It needs some provision for first-timers. Maybe a block of a thousand who can get in ahead of the other people who have been there before. That would mean I could be excluded to make room for a first-time runner. If BAA had rules like that, I’d be OK with them. Running the Boston Marathon is to marathon runners as going to Mecca is to Muslims. It’s something you have to do if you can. BAA needs to find a way to make sure that those who CAN qualify just once – WILL be able to register.
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Finally, two days before the Boston Marathon, I am registered for a marathon in Naragansett, Rhode Island, which has qualifying standards five minutes faster than the current Boston standards. The Gansett Marathon is billing itself as the only marathon, other than Olympic Trials into which people can enter by meeting qualifying time standards. In other words, no charity runners. The current issue of Runner’s World has an article about it. I can’t find an online link for that article yet, but here is a link to a previous article, discussing last year’s predecessor to this event, the Exeter Marathon.
http://www.runnersworld.com/article/1,7124,s6-243-297–13469-0,00.html.
Currently, I am the second oldest male registrant, but I have the slowest qualifying time for a male participant. Conceivably, I could end up being the last male finisher in the event and yet still qualify for Boston with my finishing time. To do that, I need to feel a bit better than I do right now.