The course can be extremely rough for a lot of people. The early downhill sections can really crush quads, and although it's point-to-point, the number of turns also adds to difficulty.
There are five turns in the Boston Marathon. - Right at the Newton fire station
I was unaware of charity entries. Just looked it up and now the results make much more sense to me. For the record, the section of the results I was most surprised by was the 5 hour plus section. Having a PR of 3:00 and running 4:00 is something I can understand. Qualifying with a 3:00 time and finishing in 5:00 is much harder for me to wrap my head around. Now that I know about charity entries that are not required to have a BQ I'm much less surprised/confused.
I assumed that with qualifying standards Boston would have faster average times but that doesn't seem to the case.
In 2021 there were 7942 male athletes
2172 ran faster than 3:10
5578 ran faster than 4:00
2364 finished with a time over 4:00
How do these people get into the race? I have a hard time believing someone who ran a sub 3:00 marathon to qualify will run a 5:00 marathon. A 5:00 marathon is 11:27 pace. A 3:00 marathon is 6:52 pace. The results may include para athletes and masters but even then the qualifying time for males of age 65-69 is 4:05. Maybe they were all masters athletes having bad days or para athletes but I find it hard to buy that.
First - charity runners make up 20% of the field. They didn't BQ to get there.
Second - not all men are required to run sub 3; vast majority have a BQ time that is much slower. A 3:10 could be a BQ-30 for them.
Third - As you get closer to the BQ time, the more runners there are. A lot of those runners PR-ed to get their BQ. They may have done that after several cycles of trying, on a perfect day, or even trained up and then picked a race based on weather. It is a lot harder to be at your best on a specific day. Thus, they don't PR again.
Fourth - pretty easy to blow up at Boston.
And you assumed Boston would have have faster average times than what? What are you comparing it to? It has faster times than Chicago; nearly an hour an average.
“Insertname” nailed it — especially with the second reason because the 3:10 cutoff leaves out a lot of male qualifiers.
Someone has probably done a study of qualifying vs. finishing time. I think Derek probably has because this is one way he caught people who used bib mules to qualify.
I just ran Boston today, slower than my qualifier. Here's why:
My home marathon is flat and fast as is the terrain I train on, which allowed me to BQ with 15 min to spare. I PR'd there 6 weeks ago and did Boston today, for the first time. Having only 6 weeks to recover and run another marathon, let alone train my leg for hills, was a tall order.
Not knowing the course I paced super conservatively from the start. I didn't even look at my watch and ran by feel. I'm glad I did, because although I wasn't able to even come close to my PR, my fastest mile was my last and overall it was a great overall experience. I saw some people hauled off by ambulance-ATVs in the Newton Hills, and others moaning in agony clutching their quads doing the death-walk up Heartbreak Hill.
Although, I didn't equal or exceed my PR here, I now have a very attainable Boston-course PR to come back and break. At the same time, I was able to finish much stronger than most marathons I've run.
I barely got a Boston qualifier in October and had awful training from Feb through April, but still ran a 7+ min PR and will be able to easily get in next year if I want (I won’t) but still it was hella fun for ~20 miles and modestly awful after that so props to the people who just show up and run it for fun vs time!
Qualification: Some borderline BQ people don't train as hard once they've been accepted. Others have used bib mules or cheated.
Injury: A good portion of distance runners get injured while training, esp hobby joggers. So many people I know went into the race injured.
Overtraining: People crush themselves trying to get into amazing Boston shape. I was in awesome shape in mid February and then struggled through overtraining and "survived" Boston. As someone else already stated, runners don't make real time adjustments and bomb the race.
Third - As you get closer to the BQ time, the more runners there are. A lot of those runners PR-ed to get their BQ. They may have done that after several cycles of trying, on a perfect day, or even trained up and then picked a race based on weather. It is a lot harder to be at your best on a specific day. Thus, they don't PR again.
I bet it's mostly this. To run a good marathon (which a lot of people need for a BQ), a lot of things have to go right (training, weather, nailing nutrition, avoiding injury, etc., etc.). But they also can take as many swings at the pinata as they want. If everything comes together on their 10th marathon to get a BQ, chances are fairly low that they'll all come together again at Boston. It's just the law of averages messing with your mind.
There's just no where to hide on that course. If you're not fit, you're going to get destroyed. I think most people, the vast majority who make it, are just there to experience it rather than try and run fast at it. To say you qualified and registered is more important to the average runner than what you actually ran.
It's beyond easy to be on PR pace through 15 and then you enter the Hills and it's the best punch in the face in all of running... watching the bodies drop...
Boston is a great "runners" race, but New York is still the best overall.
Lots of hobby joggers train really hard to qualify for Boston, then don't train all that hard for Boston itself, treating it as a kind of victory lap. Why screw up a good vacation by trying to race a marathon?
View the number of runners who have qualified for the 2023 Boston Marathon in eligible races and compare those numbers with the number and percentage of runners who qualified for the 2021 Boston Marathon.
Hobby jogger here. Boston this year was my second marathon. Aside from the charity runner, I think the winter training is huge for hobby jogger marathon runners. I qualified for Boston off beautiful summer running with long days. Winters where I live are ususlly dark until I leave to work and before I get home. From December to February temperature range from single digits to mid 20s and there is an ice pack on the road for most of it.
Plus I had more injuries this time around and took it easy to make sure I could finish. Running Boston this year was always about the experience, not the time. I'll go all in for a PR in the fall.
Another point I should add is the self selection of the field.
The people who are super consistent and know how to always put together a good cycle no matter what aren't doing Boston every year. I can go hit a BQ on my long run, but I have just done Boston once. Great race, but it isn't cheap and I have other races I want to do.
Someone who had to have every thing go right to hit their BQ is far more likely to sign up, and go no matter how the cycle goes.
I'm not knocking them, sign up when you can. But that definitely plays into the variability of the field.
1. For most marathon runners, it is hard to qualify for Boston so once a % of them do qualify they treat it as a reward and run the race for the sake of enjoyment vs. racing it.
2. Most runners qualify on faster courses opposed to the Boston course so that in itself can yield a slower finishing time.
3. Just a guess on the %, but probably 85% of the field is training in fairly challenging winter climates which is typically not conducive to faster times at Boston.
4. Lastly, Boston weather can be unpredictable in mid-April. I only ran Boston 1X and of course it was the second hottest Boston ever back in 2004 where the starting temperature was 85 degrees and sunny (noon start back then)
I assumed that with qualifying standards Boston would have faster average times but that doesn't seem to the case.
In 2021 there were 7942 male athletes
2172 ran faster than 3:10
5578 ran faster than 4:00
2364 finished with a time over 4:00
How do these people get into the race? I have a hard time believing someone who ran a sub 3:00 marathon to qualify will run a 5:00 marathon. A 5:00 marathon is 11:27 pace. A 3:00 marathon is 6:52 pace. The results may include para athletes and masters but even then the qualifying time for males of age 65-69 is 4:05. Maybe they were all masters athletes having bad days or para athletes but I find it hard to buy that.
I live in the northeast & have qualified for Boston eight times. I know for me it was the fact that Boston is in the spring and all of my fastest qualifying times were in the fall (even if you run a BQ in the spring you get to update your time if it improves in the fall so you can move up at the start). My training is ALWAYS better in the spring / summer than in the fall / winter. For me the time difference was usually like 10 to 15 minutes between spring & fall...
I'm sure the charity runners are the biggest factor by far.
But everyone I know who ran Boston ran slower than their qualifying time. Some intentionally. Well, not intentionally exactly, but they didn't care about their time, they were just there enjoying the race and celebrating. They trained hard and peaked and achieved their goal to qualify. They didn't try to peak as much for the race itself.
It'd be a very simple exercise to look at the race results and count the number under or over the qualifying standards or cut-offs by each age group. You could even subtract out the charity runners by bib number. The times used for qualifying would be clustered just under the cut-offs I would think. The results I'd guess would be a little slower but not a lot.
The course can be extremely rough for a lot of people. The early downhill sections can really crush quads, and although it's point-to-point, the number of turns also adds to difficulty.
There are five turns in the Boston Marathon. - Right at the Newton fire station
- Right at Chestnut hill to Cleveland Circle
- Left on Beacon St in Brookline
- Right on Hereford, Left on Boylston.
FIVE! That's horrific! (Thanks I could not remember).
I'm the OP (I also posted in this thread as "not as confused anymore" on a different device). I could easily go through and categorize results by age group but I can't find any way of knowing whether an athlete had a charity entry or not. If anyone has access to that info and is willing to share that would be great!
In case anyone is curious, the piece of the puzzle I was missing was inclusion of charity runners. I completely understand people with a BQ finishing slower than their BQ time. It was the roughly 1000 people finishing in a time over 4:45 that had me most surprised.
Some people put their heart and soul into qualifying. The race is an experience. It's an opportunity to take the kids out of school and give them an education that the local district won't. If any principal argues with me, I'll open a whole can of whoopass on them on Facebook.
Some people put their heart and soul into qualifying. The race is an experience. It's an opportunity to take the kids out of school and give them an education that the local district won't. If any principal argues with me, I'll open a whole can of whoopass on them on Facebook.
Yes, this too! My wife and I brought my kids with me to watch Boston this year since it was my first time running. I ran, they spectated and we got to show them a new city. We made a family trip out of it and a celebration, of sorts. The last thing I wanted them (or me) remembering from the experience would be me not finishing, or coming across the finish line broken, shattered and limping. So, I went out very conservative, ran by feel and forced myself to not look at the watch until the top of Heartbreak Hill.
It made for a much slower time than my qualifier, but also for a positive experience we'll all remember for a long time.
