[quote="tayken"]You can descend from your high horse now eh. Don't we already have a few charity volunteer relay/ walks / runs out there already ? The CIBC Run for the Cure taking place around the country Sunday is a typical example, and yes I've volunteered my time last 3yrs for this.
My point which you failed to pickup in my previous post......why set a standard, only to tell runners you can't run because "we didn't foresee places being filled up"
Either create a subset of the race for charity runners only, and let the real runners have their circuit.
Around the Bay (oldest road race in NA) doesn't have that issue as a local race, and other international races don't have this problem either. Boston is becoming a joke really. Anybody can get in through the backdoor i.e. less qualifying times for gender, age, etc and wear the jacket to say they did Boston. So what
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I had to get on my high horse to knock you off yours.
Around the Bay is not a marathon so irrelevant to this conversation. Not to be dismissive but it hardly has the same appeal and allure as a major marathon. As someone from Ontario, it may be a big deal but for the rest of the world not so much and so irrelevant.
Berlin, New York and Chicago all have difficult qualifying times and then a draw. New York Marathon was turning away so many runners it cancelled the three misses and you are in rule. So your entire argument is factually incorrect.
So are you suggesting Boston go to the same model as the other major marathons. Have the men run a 3:15 or quicker and the women a 3:00 and then fill out the field with a draw. Is that really that much more fair then the current system? I frankly fail to see how that makes it less as "joke" as you are attempting to suggest.
And I love the arrogance of "real" runners comment. If we are really being honest about it, you have a small handful of professional runners. You have some very talented elite/ world class runners. Less then 2% of runners break the three hour barrier and so if we use this as an arbitrary and artificial division between "real" and recreational runners, then every real runner actually made the cut. I have run a 3:16 marathon and watching myself on video, if I am really being honest, I look like I am going at a very fast jog but not quite "running". I was thrilled to run Boston and I am incredibly proud of my accomplishment. I still wear the jacket I earned in 2006 and 2007 but I would also like to think I can keep things in perspective. It is a quaint and nice little hobby and so it was nice to feel like a "real" runner when I qualified and then ran but at the end of the day, it is something I did for "fun". I would be disappointed if I "lost" my spot to a charity runner but at the end of the day, those runners are as much a part of the event, the tradition as qualifying times.
And in an almost comical stereotypical narcissist and self absorbed egoist manner, you a runner that puts a simple "athletic" achievement well above any real and appreciable value and in doing so you missed my point that the system is not perfect and some people who "should" have qualified will not. BUT, we are talking about a few thousand "runners" and when the tied up the laces at the qualifying races they entered they knew exactly what they may have to do in order to guarantee an entry.
YEAR
FIELD SIZE LIMIT
CUT-OFF TIME*
AMOUNT OF QUALIFIERS NOT ACCEPTED
2012
27,000 1:14 3,228
2014
36,000 1:38 2,976
2015
30,000 1:02 1,947
2016
30,000 2:28 4,562
2017
30,000 2:09 2,957
Here is a simple solution to anyone who feels hard done by - run faster and be an actual "real" runner and not a pretender.
And logically, the harder it is to get in, the faster one has to run, does this not add to the prestige. That there are so many more runners attempting to fight over a set number of spots to the point one has to run close to 3 minutes faster just to ensure their spot makes this more worthy. At one point, runners who failed to meet even easier standards might be let in the fill the field.
And to bring up an old wound, hard for me to get outraged that a few thousand rich people who like to inflict pain on themselves in order to provide a false sense of meaning and purpose to their lives are not allowed to run Boston because others are running to raise money for charity. On my list of injustices in the world, that has to be pretty close to the bottom.