I’ve always been mostly agnostic about the current qualifying system for the Boston Marathon. For years I was on the outside looking in, but so far outside that the fine print didn’t really impact my prospects, and then when I finally broke through, I did so with a 12 minute cushion – I’ve never been a victim of the “qualified, but not entered” bear trap. But the fact of the matter is that for the vast majority of amateur runners, the BQ is the ultimate object of pursuit. It’s important. And as such, it’s incumbent on us all to ask serious questions about whether or not it is serving its purpose, and if there are improvements that can be made. In my mind, there are two issues; the unpredictability (the fact that no one knows exactly what time they have to run to gain entry) and exclusivity (that many dedicated runners will never get their ticket to Hopkinton because of the time standards). As such, I think it is important for there to be a discourse concerning possibly better ways to handle admission. There are an infinite variety of potential fixes. In the space below, I’ve outlined two possibilities that could, I believe, improve the experience.
For anyone unfamiliar with the current qualifying process, the time standards can be found here. It is important to note that meeting those times doesn’t guarantee entry, the BAA simply accepts the fastest times under the standards until the field is full. In 2020, the first year with the current qualifying times and the last year to observe normal ie non-Covid conditions, runners had to be a minute and thirty-nine seconds under to actually enter, leaving 3,161 qualifiers out in the cold and many more nervously crossing their fingers. It hasn’t been an issue the past few years, but as the industry continues to climb out of the Covid-hole, there is every reason to believe that the gap between qualifying times and entrance times will resume, and as training and technology evolve, it is likely that finishing times will trend faster, and the gap will expand.
In 2021 I ran the Monumental Marathon in Indy about a week before Boston registration. I ended up with the 3:05 pace group for most of the race. It was populated almost entirely with men in their 40’s trying to get well under their 3:10 qualifying standard. It was a good group and I’m always impressed with the connections you make with people while running. Like most pace groups, it thinned considerably over the last 10k. Two or three of us from what was once a pack of fifteen crossed just under 3:05. I stuck around for a few minutes to cheer on the others. Over the next five minutes I witnessed a whole range of human emotions, from hopeful optimism at around 3:07, visible distress at 3:08 and total despondency at 3:09. Turns out, everyone who qualified got in that year – thank you Covid. I was extremely happy for everyone from that day, but also mindful of how much better it would have been if everyone had been able to celebrate at the finish line. This, in addition to the obvious frustration for those who qualify, but can’t run, is a major pitfall of the current system. There is so much uncertainty about the qualifying standards that it interferes with our ability to enjoy the accomplishment. The moment for celebration should be at the finish line, not in front of a computer screen months later.
The current system is governed by a handful of restraints; the maximum field size vs the numbers of runners who qualify. The cut-off time is used to offset the difference. With the standard qualifying times, there is always the possibility that, if everyone were permitted to run, the number of runners would undermine safety and efficiency, but in this day and age it is no longer implausible to implement new time standards that anticipate qualifying times accurately enough to make the overflow manageable. My alternative is to use the cutoff time from the previous year as the official qualifying time, and allow entry to everyone who meets that time, regardless of field size, and then to calculate the new cut off, for the next year, based on the ideal field size. This would admittedly add some uncertainty to the field size, but probably by a pretty small amount. From year to year, the cut-off times usually only change by a small amount. Under the old qualifying regime, when the cut-off time swelled to 4:52, the biggest cut-off increase from one year to the next was only 1:29, a figure that would likely result in two to three thousand additional runners. The increase could be easily accommodated by lengthening the start time. This would give runners a concrete time goal to pursue throughout the qualifying window and a firm assurance that qualifying and entering are the same.
The second issue I believe needs to be addressed is who gets in. I like the general range of qualifying times. They’re currently challenging, but attainable. The first time I ran Boston, I went into it with the assumption that I was joining the fraternity of very fast runners. There is some of that – qualifying times are much faster than the average finishing time of a marathon – but what I quickly noticed was that the community at Boston was as much defined by dedication, as it is by speed. Truth be told, you don’t have to be a genetic specimen of divine running ability to run a BQ. You just have to be dedicated and patient. As a coach, I often find that most runners either overestimate or underestimate their ability to qualify. Some are anxious to make a gargantuan improvement in one training cycle, a make-or-break stab at a BQ. These endeavors rarely work. Others look at the gap between their current results and what is required to run Boston, and wrongly assume that it is outside their abilities to ever do so. In fact, what strikes me as being so right about a BQ is that it is hard enough as to evade shortcuts, and yet still attainable via a route that is accessible to all. I’m a firm believer that if any runner who has completed a half marathon without walking would dedicate themselves to a consistent training regiment for three years, that they would find themselves capable of taking a realistic shot at a BQ. The ins and outs of that training regiment would look different for each athlete, but generally speaking, it means making running a top three life priority over the course of a couple years. I like celebrating that kind of dedication. It makes for a special comradery amongst those lining up in Hopkinton every year, but it leaves too many runners out. It’s a very high bar. The cool thing about Boston is that only dedicated runners get to run. The bad part is that not EVERY dedicated runner gets to. There are a lot of very dedicated runners for whom the time and effort required to qualify isn’t practical for whatever reason. Even very dedicated runners sometimes have professional or family obligations that get in the way of training; they have babies, and appendectomies and pickup basketball injuries. I don’t necessarily think those people should get the same place in line as those as those who qualify on time alone, but I do think there should be a pathway.
I believe Boston should have another path to entry that is based on performance and persistence. There are a variety of ways to implement this, but the one that most appeals to me is a system in which ten minutes is subtracted from the qualifying requirement for every five marathons a runner has completed, the qualifiers getting to enter a lottery in which 5,000 runners get to run the race. The adjusted BQ would reset every time a runner is selected, to give the maximum number of runners a shot at doing Boston at least once in their lives. To illustrate how this would work, imagine a 40 year old female runner. Ordinarily, her BQ would be 3:40, but if she had run 15 marathons, she could enter the lottery with a 4:10. This kind of option would have been unthinkable a few decades ago. In the pre-digital era, race directors (always facing scarce resources) would have been unable to handle the paperwork of such a complicated system, but today a pretty simple app could track the results necessary to verify entry. Other marathons would have an incentive to provide uniformed data. Races already lean heavily on the number of BQ’s they produce and would certainly be inclined to help support a system that incentivizes marathon participation across the board.
Ultimately, when we discuss who gets to run the Boston Marathon, the conversation has to be centered around the purpose of the marathon itself. Boston isn’t an entitlement for those who happen to run impressive, but ultimately arbitrary times, but rather a scarce, precious commodity intended to be shared by everyone in order of worthiness. It is a packed cathedral. As a community, it is important for us to transcend our individual impulses to covet our places on the inside or resent them from outside, and instead to celebrate the wider appeal. None of this is to suggest that it should be easy, or capricious, to get in, but that the merit system which makes the current system so respected should be expanded to reflect and reward the many forms of merit that exist within our sport.