Why were NY Marathon times so slow?

at first I was going to say that for the elites, many are doubling back from the Olympics or other recent marathons, but you brought up an interesting fact about the lack of depth. I'd say that since all of the majors were in the fall this year, the field size was simply diluted big time. Most average joe marathoners who ran Boston or Chicago this fall instead of New York.

fhdhfghdfhg wrote:

at first I was going to say that for the elites, many are doubling back from the Olympics or other recent marathons, but you brought up an interesting fact about the lack of depth. I'd say that since all of the majors were in the fall this year, the field size was simply diluted big time. Most average joe marathoners who ran Boston or Chicago this fall instead of New York.

^ This.

I wonder whether the super shoes are as effective on hilly courses. Boston and NY have not seen big explosions of fast times since the super shoes came onto the scene. It may be that the shoes do not help much when climbing hills versus running on the flat.

Also, NY is a hard course. The Queensboro bridge is a b#tch and the climb up 5th Ave is pretty tough too. Then, there are more hills in the park to beat you down. The pros know this and they conserve energy the first half of the race. Korir's negative split was actually pretty fast on the second half of the race. 4:50s seems slow on a flat course, but it is actually crazy fast when you add in the climbing in NY.

We were faster in the 80s. Too much avocado toast for these guys any more.

The women know what they're doing, however.

fhdhfghdfhg wrote:

at first I was going to say that for the elites, many are doubling back from the Olympics or other recent marathons, but you brought up an interesting fact about the lack of depth. I'd say that since all of the majors were in the fall this year, the field size was simply diluted big time. Most average joe marathoners who ran Boston or Chicago this fall instead of New York.

Chicago is always in the fall so runners always have to choose.

I ran 2:32:29 in the NY Marathon in 1981 at age 44. (Yes, I am a really old guy - but not really cranky - yet.) That got me 223rd over-all and tenth in the Masters 40+ (no five year age groups then). Yes, the course was short - about 30-45". But the entrance to Central Park was a nasty little hill, which is why they changed it. Even with a time penalty of 45-50" for the short course, I would have been 55th over-all, not 223rd, and second in the Masters behind a woman from Namibia.

And I sure would have liked to have had the new shoes!

Precious Roy wrote:

I wonder whether the super shoes are as effective on hilly courses. Boston and NY have not seen big explosions of fast times since the super shoes came onto the scene. It may be that the shoes do not help much when climbing hills versus running on the flat.

Also, NY is a hard course. The Queensboro bridge is a b#tch and the climb up 5th Ave is pretty tough too. Then, there are more hills in the park to beat you down. The pros know this and they conserve energy the first half of the race. Korir's negative split was actually pretty fast on the second half of the race. 4:50s seems slow on a flat course, but it is actually crazy fast when you add in the climbing in NY.

Yet Salazar ran a sub 2:09 in 1981 (see David Katz) and a 2:09:29 in 1982 during windy conditions almost 40 years ago.

I had an amazing time spectating at the 25.5 mark. Alexi Pappas came to the fence for some 5s and I also saw Shalane Flanagan who is a huge NYRR star. Shalane is trying for some other sort of record in race volume.

Given the marathon came together late and there were a lot of them clumped together it is possible others did this. A great race nonetheless.

Shalane won NY in 2017 in 2:26:53 and conditions weren't horrible that year. Sidel was 4th in 2:24 this year.

hasnt the field selection of NYC favored foreign runners for quite some time now? or even if this isnt true, qualifying and entering the race based on the posted standards have implied over the years that the field is more and more foreign of admixture

so I dont think that the results are particularly surprising in the 40-49 AG areas that most are foreign.

because the changing demographics of the TCS marathon are increasingly foreign

2:08:22 is a pretty standard time to me without a heavy hitter on their game in the field. The depth was down with stars (Abdi, Kandie and Bekele) struggling and just how many marathons there are in the fall for elites. It was like Boston to me in a good performance by an athlete who we knew was decent, but maybe has take an step forward and can maybe run sub-2:05 or faster on the right day.

There's an easy explanation for 100th place being so much slower than in other years — the NYC marathon didn't accept time qualifiers for this year's race. There were probably some people signed up for 2020 who time qualified and then deferred to 2021, but that means those people's qualifying races took place more than two years ago.

But seeing the times today makes me think the BQ cutoff will be extremely low this year. There were only about 600 people who broke 3:00 yesterday. Pretty crazy.

Not what the OP was asking, but it is amazing that the average winning times in NY and Boston haven't changed since the 1980s, despite supershoes, East Africans, earlier start times

I saw a lot of the local club runners sub 3. I haven't gone over the results yet but I saw a North Brooklyn Runner before the Whippets which seems unusual the Dashing Whippets are a great club. But maybe the Whippets ran together for a while.

International travel is still pretty dicey, so many runners from outside the U.S. probably didn't even try to show up this year. Then there's direct competition from Boston for the first time. It looks like if you had to choose either Boston or NYC, you chose Boston. In my age group, I managed to place in the top 30 at Boston, but my time at Boston plus 2 minutes would have put me at 6th in my age group at NYC. Boston had 7 sub-2:30 men in the 40-44 category, while NYC had 0.

100th place being 2:39 is in line with typical NY marathon results in recent years, and that's more indicative of the current state of distance running than it is of a post-pandemic year with multiple major races crowded into a brief time frame.

Outside the sharp end of the race there's long been a precipitous fall-of in times, which has been a trend in road racing (marathons and other distances as well) for years now, and it's been discussed on these boards. NY -and other majors- do get massive numbers of entrants, but the number of runners who actually race -you know, push themselves to the limit and leave it all out on the course- has been dwindling for decades. The vast majority of entrants treat whatever race they're in as a street fair rather than a competition.

Here's what the 100th place time was at the NY Marathon for the last five pre-pandemic editions, along with the year 2000:

2019- 2:33:53

2018- 2:35:08

2017- 2:37:15

2016- 2:39:28

2015- 2:40:07

2000- 2:37:11

But if you go back almost 40 years to 1982, long before supershoes and when the race had far fewer entrants, 100th place was 2:25:45

The shoes.

SouthernSun wrote:

The weather conditions appear to have been ideal but the men, especially, were particularly slow. Only three under 2:10. And, over-all, 100th place was 2:39! And that included many women. In fact the first two 40-44 finishers were women. And Americans were especially mediocre. In both the 40-44 and 45-49 age groups, 9 of the top 12 were foreign runners.

Why didn't you run and show them how it's done?

hobby jogging harry wrote:

SouthernSun wrote:

The weather conditions appear to have been ideal but the men, especially, were particularly slow. Only three under 2:10. And, over-all, 100th place was 2:39! And that included many women. In fact the first two 40-44 finishers were women. And Americans were especially mediocre. In both the 40-44 and 45-49 age groups, 9 of the top 12 were foreign runners.

Why didn't you run and show them how it's done?

No good reason - except I am 84 years old and have had both hips replaced due to tens of thousands of miles running on pavement. Are those sufficient reasons for not lining up?

As I noted, I did run in 1981. 2:32:29 at age 44.

SouthernSun wrote:

hobby jogging harry wrote:

Why didn't you run and show them how it's done?

No good reason - except I am 84 years old and have had both hips replaced due to tens of thousands of miles running on pavement. Are those sufficient reasons for not lining up?

As I noted, I did run in 1981. 2:32:29 at age 44.

So you're ripping people whose PRs are almost a half hour faster than yours. Gotcha. They really should look you up for some advice.