Even With Tougher Standards, Plenty of People Are Qualifying for Boston – Runner’s World

Runners are qualifying for the 2020 Boston Marathon at close to the same rates at which they qualified for the 2019 race—even though the time standards are five minutes faster across all age groups.

That makes it likely that not every applicant for the 2020 race will be accepted into the marathon during the annual September registration period.

Instead, runners will be facing what’s become an annual rite: guessing the “cutoff” time—how much faster than their qualifying times they had to be in order to gain entry into the race, because the race field is filled by the fastest runners first.

Last year’s cutoff was 4 minutes and 52 seconds. In all, 7,384 people who qualified were unable to get into the race.

For the past six years, as interest in qualifying for Boston has skyrocketed, not everyone who has qualified for the race has gotten in. The race accepts only about 24,000 time qualifiers. (Another 6,000 run for a charity or have another connection into the race that doesn’t require a qualifying time.) Tom Grilk, the BAA’s chief executive officer, told Runner’s World in February that the field size is unlikely to change soon and would require the cooperation of the eight cities and towns that the race passes through on its way from Hopkinton to Boston.

Race organizers had hoped that by tightening the qualifying times, fewer runners would be in the frustrating position of hitting the time needed for their age and gender but not gaining entry to the race.

“We adjusted the times last year, because we wanted to respond to runners and put more stringent qualifying times in effect for 2020, rather than wait longer and have even more runners achieve the standard but then be unable to be accepted due to field size limitations in 2020 and 2021,” a BAA spokesperson wrote in an email to Runner’s World.

Brian Cariaga

Instead, the stricter time standards seem to have motivated potential Boston runners to train better and race faster. Some of the bigger qualifying races in the first half of 2019 have produced nearly the same number of qualifiers as they produced in 2018. Here’s a look at how some of the biggest feeder races into the Boston field have played out.

At the Boston Marathon this year, which every year qualifies the greatest number of people for the following year’s race, 8,883 bettered the time they needed for the 2020 race, according to data the BAA gave to Runner’s World. Last year, 9,254 hit the standard at Boston for the 2019 event. The decline is less than 4 percent.

At Grandma’s Marathon, held in Duluth, Minnesota, in June, the qualification rate was also down just 4 percent from the previous year. According to figures posted on MarathonGuide.com, 1,117 qualified for Boston there in 2018. This year, when the standards were five minutes faster, 1,072 people qualified. (Runner’s World reached out to MarathonGuide.com editor John Elliott, who confirmed that the site is using the updated entry standards for compiling qualification statistics.)

At the Houston Marathon in January, more people actually qualified in 2019 vs. 2018: 829 this year versus 800 last year. The same was true at the Revel Mt. Charleston Marathon in Las Vegas: 401 this year, 393 last.

At the Eugene Marathon in Oregon, which produced 378 qualifiers last year, 358 people qualified this year, down only 5.3 percent.

“Every time the BAA has adjusted the Boston qualifying standards to be more stringent over the last four decades, runners have responded positively and taken on the new standards as a new challenge,” the BAA spokesperson wrote. “We believe this is healthy for our sport and demonstrates the regard for which runners hold Boston.”

To be sure, some popular races for Boston qualifying showed double-digit declines. The Los Angeles Marathon in March had only 465 qualifiers versus 670 last year (a 30 percent drop).

New York Road Runners reports that at the New York City Marathon last November, 3,994 qualified for the 2020 race. In contrast, in 2017, according to MarathonGuide, 4,478 qualified for the 2019 race. (The qualifying window for Boston runs from September to September.) In other words, with stricter time standards 484 fewer runners qualified, or roughly 11 percent less.

Rates of Boston qualifying from the Chicago Marathon, which traditionally produces the second-greatest number of runners who run the time they need for their age and gender, were not available, Chicago organizers said.

But with 2019 data available for 12 of the 30 largest Boston feeder races, 14,188 runners had hit the times they needed for 2020. From those same races in 2018, 15,255 had hit the time. Over those 12 races, the tougher standards reduced the pool of qualified runners by only 7 percent.

Watch: Did you run a Boston-qualifying time? Here’s what to expect on the course

Of course, there is no way of knowing how many qualified runners will apply to run Boston 2020. And perhaps most of them ran only a few seconds better than the time. Until the BAA announces the registration figures at the end of September, no one ever knows for sure.

What seems likely from these rudimentary projections, however, is some people will again be left out when registration closes. One rough way to estimate is by reducing last year’s qualified applicants by 7 percent, which means that 5,187 would still be on the outside looking in.

Olympian Jared Ward, who ran a PR of 2:09:25 and finished eighth at this year’s Boston, coaches a few runners who are on the qualifying bubble every year. He acknowledges the tough situation thousands of runners find themselves in and offers this advice to those attempting a qualifier:

“Keep pressing the last couple miles for every second,” he wrote in an email. “I think the toughest thing is when you hit the time and then find out you aren’t in and you were just coasting the last few miles of your qualifier.

“If you run as fast as you can, and you miss the cutoff by 20 seconds, you can feel okay with yourself knowing that you ran as fast as you could.”

Ray Charbonneau, a running author and editor at Mathematicalrunner.com, where they ran a contest to predict the 2019 cutoff time, concurs. “Because the new qualifying times are five minutes faster and the cutoff for 2019 was only 4:52, if all else is equal, everyone who meets the new standards should get in,” he said. “Of course, all else is never equal but there are some things you can control. If you want be sure to get in to Boston, there’s no substitute for training harder and running faster.”

Correction: A previous version of this story predicted 6,867 people shut out of the race for 2020. A more accurate estimate is 5,187.

Sarah Lorge Butler is a writer and editor living in Eugene, Oregon, and her stories about the sport, its trends, and fascinating individuals have appeared in Runner’s World since 2005.