By Michael Dwyer, APRegistration for the Boston Marathon closed in a record eight hours last October, eliciting surprise and anger among thousands of qualified runners who were shut out of Monday's 115th running.
By Michael Dwyer, APRegistration for the Boston Marathon closed in a record eight hours last October, eliciting surprise and anger among thousands of qualified runners who were shut out of Monday's 115th running.
That was the day the 2011 Boston Marathon sold out in a record eight hours. A one-day sellout might be cause for celebration for a rock festival promoter. But as soon as McGillivray realized what had happened, he knew what was coming: thousands of calls and e-mails from disappointed, confused and angry runners who had busted their tails to qualify for the race and were now shut out."I was getting e-mails from some people that night saying, 'Wow, you must be thrilled. A sellout in eight hours,' " McGillivray recalls. "Thrilled? I was hiding under my bed."
There were a lot of reasons for the unprecedented one-day sellout — including the growing popularity of marathon running and Boston's status as a bucket-list ambition for many amateurs — but they all added up to a big headache for the Boston Athletic Association, which oversees the world's oldest annual marathon. Traditionally the race's online registration is open for months, but this year thousands of qualified runners were shut out from Monday's 115th running.
The sellout has sparked lively debates in running circles across the country about what has been happening to the beloved race and what its future holds.
The Boston Marathon tightened the qualifying time standards after this year's race sold out in record time. The last time qualifying standards were adjusted was in 2003. That year the qualifying times for athletes 45 and over were relaxed. For the 2013 race, the qualifying times will be lowered by five minutes for all groups. Beginning next year, rolling registration will be implemented. Registration will be based on qualifying times with the fastest qualifiers (in relation to the qualifying time for their age and gender) being accepted first until the race is full.
Source: USA TODAY research
Qualifying times for the 2012 marathon:
Most of what is being discussed will have no effect on the elite runners in Monday's race featuring defending men's champion Robert Kiprono Cheruiyot of Kenya, defending women's champion Teyba Erkesso of Ethiopia, plus top U.S. contenders Ryan Hall, fourth last year, and Kara Goucher, third in 2009.But the Boston Marathon is about much more than just the freakishly gifted runners who can string together 26.2 miles at a pace of less than five minutes per mile.
"The Boston Marathon is like the Super Bowl, the Masters and the World Series— only better, because everybody can run it," says Amby Burfoot, the 1968 champion and Runner's World Editor at Large.
Everybody, that is, who can run fast enough to get a Boston qualifying time — a BQ, in running parlance.
That's about to get harder. In February, the BAA announced new registration procedures that will go into effect this September for 2012 signups. A rolling registration will be used over a two-week period, with faster runners being given priority. And, beginning in the 2013 race, qualifying standards will be tightened by five minutes in all age groups.
Some runners with qualifying times will not make the cut in the future, organizers acknowledge. But they say the size of the field will remain around 27,000, perhaps growing slightly over the next couple of years. That's because Boston starts in the small, rural town of Hopkinton and has a narrow course early in the race.
"This race started 115 years ago, and there's no more real estate now than there was then," says McGillivray.
The BAA decided not to go the route of the nation's two biggest marathons, the New York City Marathon, run in November, and the Chicago Marathon, in October. Both races start about 45,000 runners. New York fills its spots, which are traditionally in huge demand, primarily with a lottery. Chicago uses a first-come, first-serve basis, and sold out the 2011 race in a record 31 days.
But Boston has a legacy of fast running unlike the others. In 2010, for example, about 44% of Boston Marathon finishers ran fast enough to re-qualify for Boston in 2011, but only 12% of New York finishers and 8.5% of Chicago finishers earned BQs.
"We wanted to make sure," BAA executive director Tom Grilk says, "that the focus of our race was on competitive excellence, and that registration was not a matter of racing to the computer."
To those who complain that they won't be able to make the new qualifying standards when they go into effect for 2013 signups, the BAA basically has a two-word answer:
Run faster.
No less a Boston Marathon expert than Bill Rodgers, a four-time winner of the race and affectionately known all over New England as Boston Billy, likes the sound of that.
"I'm not against having 27,000 people in the race," Rodgers says, "but let's not lose the excellence. It's not a walk-run. It's a gem, like the Masters. It should stand apart."
Tell Mallory Ham to run faster, and he's OK with that, even considering he's one of the runners who got left on the sidelines by the one-day sellout.
Ham, 54, a meteorologist from Simi Valley, Calif., is a typical Baby Boomer runner. He picked it up around age 40. He found he had some talent, he had a competitive streak and he was goal-oriented. Racing appealed to him.
For a decade or so, he pursued a BQ. Then, at the Surf City Marathon in Huntington Beach, Calif., in February 2009, he ran a 3:29, well under the 3:35 he needed for a BQ in the men's 50-54 age group.
He ran Boston in 2010, and was, like many first-timers, in runner's heaven.
"It was such a thrill," Ham says. "I was so excited. Those who haven't run it, I say, 'If you've never done it, you have to get there at least once.' "
That's why Ham, who ran the race in 3:33 in 2010, re-qualifying him for the 2011 race, was eager to sign up for this year's race.
But on Oct. 18, he didn't sign up in the morning. He didn't sign up in the early afternoon. He figured he'd get to it that night, or the next day.
Then a friend called. Boston is sold out, he was told.
"Eight hours!" Ham says. "I couldn't believe it."
Ham says he's planning to try to qualify for 2012, and he embraces the tougher standards.
"Why not?" he says. "We all want to be faster. We'll just have to figure out how to do it."
There is no definitive reason why this year's race sold out so fast, but there are several factors. There are simply more people running marathons, and a lot of them seem to be focused on qualifying for Boston. According to MarathonGuide.com, an online database of marathon information, the number of marathon finishes in the U.S. rose from 406,000 in 2007 to 468,000 in 2009, an increase of about 15%. The number of BQs during the same time went from 44,300 to 59,000, about a 33% increase.
In 2009, registration for the race closed in January, then a record. Then, registration for the 2010 race closed in November 2009, which astounded everyone. So, in anticipation of selling out the 2011 race in maybe a week or two, the BAA alerted its constituency, sending e-mails to 2010 finishers that registration should be done early. In hindsight, BAA officials regret that as unnecessarily alarming — it added to a sense of urgency..
Some Boston veterans, though, no longer sense the urgency.
Ron Kobrine, a 74-year-old retired actuary who lives in Aptos, Calif., finished the first of his 30 consecutive Boston Marathons in 1980, when he was 43.
That year, there were only two qualifying standards for men — 2:50 and, for men over 40, 3:10. There were 5,417 entries, and they were fast.
"It was exhilarating," Kobrine says. "It was unique. It was hard to get in."
Three decades later, the race is about five times as big, and there are a lot of relatively slow runners.
Men 50-54 got into this year's race with a 3:35, a serious but not particularly fast time for a dedicated runner. Women 50-54 could get in with a 4:05, respectable but certainly not what one would consider fast.
And almost 6,000 bibs will be worn by non-qualifiers, people who gained entry by raising money for charity or being in an organization that partners with the BAA. Many of those nearly 6,000 runners could not post a qualifying time. The percentage of non-qualifiers in the race has gone down slightly during the past five years, but McGillivray says the charity runners are here to stay.
"It gradually got to a point where it?s not special any more," Kobrine says. "It's kind of easy to get in. The mystique that it had is gone. It's not the Boston Marathon any more. It's just a marathon in Boston."
There's ample anecdotal evidence, however, that to hundreds of thousands of recreational runners, Boston remains a goal sought with hard work and passion, a challenge completed with exhaustion and emotion, a memory cherished forever.
"It's the Holy Grail of running," Ham says.
And to the handful of elite runners who won the world's greatest race — like Rodgers, 63, who will serve as Grand Marshal at Monday's race, and two-time winner Joan Benoit Samuelson, 53, who is back for the first time in 18 years — it is so special that it almost defies description.
"I'm really looking forward to just getting back on the course," says Samuelson, winner of the first Olympic women's marathon, in 1984 in Los Angeles, and still capable of finishing in the 2:50 range. "It's been a long time."
No mystique left in Boston? Nonsense, says Boston Billy.
"The mystique is there still, primarily because of what all those great runners did in the past," Rodgers says. "Sometimes we forget about this kind of sport in this cage-fighting culture of ours. But this is the highest level of sports. This is where sports came from."
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