Twin wrote:
I don’t think it should have been cancelled or modified at all but if they had to do something they they should have done this: They definitely have a timing strip at the halfway point. They should have run the ten miler and set the time limit for the marathon at 4 hours but gave everyone who didn’t finish an official half marathon time if they made it halfway. They could just remove the barricade at 13.1 so that runners could turn off. To avoid people right on the cusp of 4 hours killing themselves to finish, they’d just have to say anyone who doesn’t make it halfway in 1:45 is disqualified from the full but gets an official half time.
I think this kind of thing makes a lot of sense, and has been done in other races, but the particular times you've chosen (or, frankly, almost any meaningful cutoff times) would likely create a huge backlash, with claims of elitism or something. (What percentage of Twin Cities Marathon participants can come close to running 1:45 for the first half or four hours for the whole? Average marathon times have continued to creep up to around 4:30 (with surprisingly small differences between the sexes), and I would guess (very offhandedly) that 1:45 at the half might put you in the top quarter and 4:00 at the finish would put you within the top third or so. So much about marathons (and even much shorter road races) has changed over the years, and the big city races are now almost all mass participation events (like huge community parades or something) and the racing aspects have been, if not marginalized, placed in a small subset of the overall event. I don't know how much of that change has to do with declining fitness levels of large populations (in the U.S., increasing obesity rates are very significant indicia) and how much has to do with some sort of growing "bucket list" aspect of finishing marathons rather than racing marathons.