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Will I run Boston 2026?

getfast.ai

31–40 of 45 posts

Re: Will I run Boston 2026?

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there is now a time adjustment for downhill, and extreme downhills are no longer qualifying https://runtothefinish.com/downhill-boston-qualifiers/

Dunno man, running downhill is murder for knees, I usually had to slow down instead of speeding up on down slopes.

You’re not running down Helvellyn, it’s more the cumulative downhill that qualifies a “downhill” marathon. Remember this is 1500 feet drop over the course of 26 miles, so you’ll get the benefit of gravity without the downsides of steep drops.

Re: Will I run Boston 2026?

#32
post #25
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, doing it by flat time delta rather than percent delta seems fundamentally flawed, but of course it makes it easier for the average person to understand. I also don't understand what the motives are behind how the age/gender buckets are calculated in the first place. I'm not sure if it's public or not. Are they: * Trying to calculate based on an nth percentile finishing time across each bucket? * Trying to ensur…

Making sure they can accept a lot of high disposable income 40+ runners that will buy a lot of merch. The time cutoffs start to get much easier after 40.

Doesn't look true, I inputed the times in an age grading calculator and 39 cutoff time was easier than 44, even if it's not very accurate I doubt it's "much easier".

Re: Will I run Boston 2026?

#33

Your site looks interesting but your terms of service seem really onerous. That stopped me from finishing the signup process. My running data is deeply personal; it's tied to my health metrics and contains years of location patterns around my daily life. So when I see stuff like "irrevocable, sublicensable" rights to all of my running data...that's a lot to give up for a company and product I know very little about.…

OTOH, it's nice when companies that will screw you over, signal that, by having lawyers appear to carefully set up the cover for them to do so.

Re: Will I run Boston 2026?

#34
post #22
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Methodologically, why would you have one cutoff vs a different cutoff per group (as there are different qualifying times per group)? I am not a marathoner, but I'd imagine that a 6 min decrease from the stated qualifying time cuts out a larger proportion of younger runners (i.e. decreasing the threshold from 2h55 to 2h49 for men 18-34 seems like a much sharper cut than decreasing 4h20 to 4h14 for women 60-64). I woul…

Yeah, doing it by flat time delta rather than percent delta seems fundamentally flawed, but of course it makes it easier for the average person to understand. I also don't understand what the motives are behind how the age/gender buckets are calculated in the first place. I'm not sure if it's public or not. Are they: * Trying to calculate based on an nth percentile finishing time across each bucket? * Trying to ensur…

It’s a common problem. Time trialling uses Age Adjusted Time for events which uses a flat time reduction based on age. One guy pointed out the absurdity that he’s still extremely fast in his 50s, so his AAT end up impossibly fast, winning him a lot of events as a result!

Re: Will I run Boston 2026?

#35
post #13

If you're not fast enough to qualify then you can also run Boston 2026 by donating or raising about $10K for charity. https://www.baa.org/races/boston-marathon/charity-program

I have a friend who has run it for charity multiple times. They're a six-ish-plus hour marathoner. My partner has run them in the last 10 miles a couple of times pre-bombing. Her take is that it's pretty miserable if you're that slow because they start breaking down the course, the aid stations get light on supplies, and the porta-potties get unspeakable. So yeah, you can, but it would be a better experience if you're not quite so far behind a BQ time.

As for me, I don't run. Props to anyone who can run a BQ and enjoy it.

Re: Will I run Boston 2026?

#36
post #10
post #5

Context: There's a limit on how many people can run the Boston Marathon. To qualify to "run Boston", you have to run another marathon in a qualifying time[1], prior to applying. For example, the qualifying time for a male 40-44 is 3h05m. For a female of the same age, 3h35. Non-binary, 3h35. You submit your application and qualifying race and time, and then some time _later_, based on the number applications received…

Methodologically, why would you have one cutoff vs a different cutoff per group (as there are different qualifying times per group)? I am not a marathoner, but I'd imagine that a 6 min decrease from the stated qualifying time cuts out a larger proportion of younger runners (i.e. decreasing the threshold from 2h55 to 2h49 for men 18-34 seems like a much sharper cut than decreasing 4h20 to 4h14 for women 60-64). I woul…

They can also improve that balance by adjusting the qualifying times from year to year, and they do.

They could even make a projection of future cutoff times and take that into account when setting the baseline qualifying times. In other words, be a little more generous with the 18-34 group initially knowing that you'll like penalize them more with your one-size-fits-all cutoff. I'm not sure if they do that.

Also, the current qualifying times are all multiples of 5 minutes. If they really want to improve balance between groups, the low-hanging fruit is to make those more granular.

Re: Will I run Boston 2026?

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there is now a time adjustment for downhill, and extreme downhills are no longer qualifying https://runtothefinish.com/downhill-boston-qualifiers/

Dunno man, running downhill is murder for knees, I usually had to slow down instead of speeding up on down slopes.

I ran a downhill marathon that was on a rail trail through the mountains. It was a very very gradual downhill the whole way.

My friend that ran it was mad at me when we finished because he thought parts of it were uphill (even though it wasn't.)

That race won't be a Boston qualifier next year.

Re: Will I run Boston 2026?

#38

Your site looks interesting but your terms of service seem really onerous. That stopped me from finishing the signup process. My running data is deeply personal; it's tied to my health metrics and contains years of location patterns around my daily life. So when I see stuff like "irrevocable, sublicensable" rights to all of my running data...that's a lot to give up for a company and product I know very little about.…

Same. Paused the signup process to take a look at how they were going to use my data, and then decided against it once I understood.

Re: Will I run Boston 2026?

#40

Your site looks interesting but your terms of service seem really onerous. That stopped me from finishing the signup process. My running data is deeply personal; it's tied to my health metrics and contains years of location patterns around my daily life. So when I see stuff like "irrevocable, sublicensable" rights to all of my running data...that's a lot to give up for a company and product I know very little about.…

Firstly, thanks for reading the ToS and for raising your concern. Not that it means much, but our goal is not to screw over our users. This is the first time someone has raised an issue with the ToS.

We understand how personal user fitness data is, which is why we’ve tried our best to leave data in the control of the users. A first step was to make sure that users actually see the ToS, and we require all users to scroll through them and accept before they link any data with us. But honestly, we know the ToS is daunting for many users, which is why we give clear switches for users to revoke our access to using their data (both for model training and for using their anonymized stats in aggregated statistics); we respect the user’s decision to revoke our access in these ways, even though our ToS doesn’t require us to. Your fitness data gets immediately deleted when you delete your account; we also allow specific sources (e.g., Garmin) to get deleted without deleting your entire account.

But we agree with you–the ToS are too aggressive. For context, we had them drafted by a well-respected firm in the Bay Area. As a startup, we didn’t have the budget to carefully, line-by-line, draft terms that perfectly fit our site. Instead, we gave the firm some ToS from large companies like Strava and Garmin, and asked them if they can draft something similar. We wanted to ensure that we were legally allowed to glean insights from the fitness data of our users, and when we read the terms, it looked like it provided that, which is why we approved it. We aren’t lawyers, so we didn’t understand the ramifications of the legalese, and we’ll make sure to emphasize that we respect the user’s decision to remove our access when we re-draft them. We’ll shop around again for other firms that specialize in this area.

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