I wrote an article for the Boston Marathon official program about the marathon’s historically early registration closing, and the options available to the B.A.A. for tinkering with their entry process. Now that the marathon is over and the paying customers have their copies, I’ll archive a copy here.

Sizing up the field

Increasing popularity has turned the Boston Marathon into a tough ticket for runners

Ian Hersey had every reason to be confident about reaching the starting line of the 114th BAA Boston Marathon. Hersey, 47, of Menlo Park, California, had run the Big Sur International Marathon every year between 2000 and 2008, finishing between 2:56 and 3:08 every time. Turning to Ironman-distance triathlons in 2005, Hersey skipped the 2009 Big Sur to do the Wildflower Triathlon, so when he committed to run the Boston 2 Big Sur Challenge in 2010, he didn’t have his Boston qualifier in hand, but he had a row of chances. First came the Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii, and “If you think qualifying for Boston is hard,” says Hersey, “try getting into Kona.”

A hot day in Hawaii kept Hersey from knocking off his 3:30 Boston Qualifier (BQ) at Kona (after 2.4 miles of swimming and a 112-mile bike ride), so he went to Plan B, and ran 2:59:54 at the California International Marathon in Sacramento, which bills itself as “The One to Run for Your Boston Qualifier”.

The hitch with this plan was that the CIM was run on December 6, 2009. Twenty-five days earlier, the 114th Boston Marathon had reached its entry cap and closed.

Forty years ago, Hersey would not have had this problem, but the circumstances which created it were already forming.

The May 1969 issue of Distance Running News (now Runner’s World) included a letter from Jock Semple, the de facto race director of the Boston Marathon. The BAA was facing heated criticism as they took steps to control the growth of the marathon, including the institution in 1968 of a $2 entry fee. The 1968 race had 1,014 entrants, the first time the field had gone over 1,000, and despite the fee it reached 1,342 in 1969.

“With all due respect to those who want the race left as it is, it just can’t be done,” Semple wrote. “The entries have increased terrifically in the last two years and it is safe to say that next year it would be 1,500. But the facilities just can’t take it, both at the start and finish. The Prudential’s people are alarmed and I know the people in Hopkinton are, too.

“We plan to have some sort of qualification, but it won’t be very strict. Those who did the four-hour time limit this year are automatically in if they want, but others will have to prove they have run in one of the many marathons throughout the country in three hours or a time we will set for 15- or 20-mile races. Mind me this is not final, but I think we will have to do something.”

Those words introduced the signal feature of the Boston Marathon for the past 40 years: qualifying times. “Across the country,” wrote Amby Burfoot in Runner’s World last year, “thousands of runners who couldn’t pick John Adelbert Kelley out of a lineup can immediately quote the BQ for their age group.” Qualification started with a flat four-hour standard in 1970, and was adjusted three times, down to 2:50, by 1980. Age-group standards were introduced in 1977. The times have been adjusted periodically to fit the changing goals of the BAA and the changing demographics of the running community.

If the BQ is the anvil on which so many marathoners forge themselves, the hammer arrived more recently. Along with the most recent change to the qualifying times in 2003, the BAA added a limit to the number of entries. Initially set at 20,000, this cap was increased to 25,000 for the 112th running in 2008.

Initially the cap was a minor issue for most runners, but when the 2009 Marathon closed on January 26, 81 days before the marathon, hundreds accustomed to entering in February or even March were caught flat-footed. When the 114th Marathon closed on November 13, 2009, just 65 days after it opened and over five months before the actual race, it began to look as though marathoners planning on racing from Hopkinton to Boston in the future would need to be quick with an entry form as well as with a qualifying marathon. It’s not hard to imagine future marathoners in tents camped outside the BAA offices like Red Sox fans hoping for playoff tickets.

The land-rush model of Boston entry is a worst-case scenario, and the qualifying times themselves are proof that the BAA has a history of adapting to change.

Supply side: raise the cap

While raising the cap might sound simple, it’s not, says race director Dave McGillivray. The marathon faces capacity problems all along the course, beginning even before the relatively-narrow starting line, with the patience of the town of Hopkinton. The small town is mobbed with thousands of runners every April and lacks the space and sanitary facilities to handle many more efficiently. (This problem is not new; Semple’s 1969 Runner’s World letter mentioned Hopkinton’s concerns.) Even if adjustments at the start could get more runners on the course with less time waiting in Hopkinton, the BAA would need to address the issue of getting the runners out to the start in the first place.

After the runners leave Hopkinton, McGillivray’s team would need to address keeping the course closed to traffic longer in the towns along the course, even as those towns place increasing pressure on the marathon to reopen their roads as soon as possible.

In the end, raising the cap would be a stopgap: it would only push off for a few years the time when demand, which historically has only gone up, would once again exceed supply.

Demand side: lower the qualifiers

How about moderating demand instead? Tightening qualifying times would reduce the total pool of qualified runners in the simplest way possible. McGillivray doesn’t rule this out, but prefers to use terms of fairness. “Most other races,” he explains, “you don’t have to earn the right to get there. This one is different, and we need to be very, very sensitive about what is going on [because of that]. If a runner trains nine months, qualifies, then goes to register and all of a sudden finds out they can’t get in … there is not an easy answer to this.”

What’s more, qualifying times aren’t the blunt instrument they once were. Burfoot’s 2009 Runner’s World article observed that in the 1990s, with other marathons drawing huge crowds that provide an economic stimulus to their communities, Boston has reversed course…. “Suddenly, more runners staying in hotels, eating in restaurants  are better.”

The calendar question

Of course, perhaps the problem isn’t supply and demand, but the calendar. Rather than worry about how quickly the cap is reached, the BAA could address how far in advance of the marathon entry is closed. It might be enough to simply open registration later. The BAA says registration for 2011 will not open any earlier than Wednesday, September 8, but adds it is considering a later opening date, such as a day or two after the BAA Half Marathon in October (traditionally Columbus Day weekend). If the field fills at the same sixty-five-day rate, the 2011 race would close in late December.

Beyond supply, demand, and timing, however, the BAA could continue the evolution of its entry process by borrowing ideas from other events.

THE NEW YORK MODEL: The ING New York City Marathon has had qualifying times for years, but they’re much tougher than Boston’s. Men under 40 need to run 2:55 or faster to qualify for the NYCM. Most runners get their New York number through a massive lottery for available spaces. Other guaranteed entries for New York are reserved for New York Road Runners members who run a certain set of club races throughout the year, and runners who are rejected by the lottery three consecutive times.

The lottery idea is not new to Boston  a special lottery allowed runners in to the 100th running, in 1996, without qualifying times  and Boston, like New York, offers limited numbers of guaranteed entries to certain groups, including local running clubs, sponsors, and charities which use the entries for fundraising. Introduction of a lottery, either in combination with tougher qualifying times or for all qualified runners, would move Boston closer to the New York model.

THE IRONMAN MODEL: As Hersey noted, getting into the Ironman World Championship in Hawaii is one of the toughest gauntlets everyday endurance athletes take on; one qualifier featured on the Web site of triathlon’s gold standard called the Kona race “the Boston Marathon of triathlons.” IWC offers a lottery, but most athletes qualify through qualifying slots at 29 designated qualifying events around the world throughout the year. Place near the top of your age group at Ironman Lake Placid, for example, and you may snag one of the 67 slots that race has for the IWC.

The appeal of the slot-based approach for Boston would be to ensure that marathons late in the qualifying window would still be an option for hopeful marathoners. If the BAA held open a number of entries for qualifiers from the CIM in December, for example, Hersey might have been able to beat the cap that way.

“There is a significant amount of due diligence with any decision we make,” says BAA Executive Director Guy Morse. “We are very aware of the impact of any given decision we make. We have to test it out to make sure it is the right decision for the right reason at the right time.”

With the qualifying window for the 115th running already open, changes in the qualifying times for 2011 are not in the works. Beyond that, McGillivray’s point that change has to be gradual is the guiding factor for the BAA.

“The only specific plan we have is that we plan to address it,” says McGillivray. “If we set qualifying standards, and identify races where people can go to qualify for Boston, and then they go to register, and we say no more room, I can only imagine how devastating that could be. It is a big deal, at the end of the day.”

There are silver linings, however. “In a way,” says Hersey, “I’m relieved not to have to do the crazy Boston-Big Sur double.”

Parker Morse is a freelance writer in Latham, NY. His work has appeared in Running Times, New England Runner, and the IAAF magazine, and he works with the bike-spotter program on Marathon Monday.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 20th, 2010 at 9:48 am and is filed under boston, marathon, money, new york, road racing, writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.