Boston Finally Re-Works its Registration Process
If you’ve been isolated from your email and the internet for the past few days, you might not be aware that the Boston Marathon has finally made changes to its registration process.
These changes are an attempt to address complaints about the race filling too rapidly and faster runners getting shut out by the overwhelming number of slower runners.
As written about here, and elsewhere, the 2011 Boston Marathon sold out in eight hours. This led to immediate speculation about whether the qualification standards were too loose.
The BAA chose to leave the qualifications standards intact for the 2012 race, but will open up registration earlier for runners with qualifying times well below the standard.
BAA has, however, announced plans to lower the the qualifying times for all age-groups by five minutes for the 2013 race. It will be interesting to see how this affects their numbers.
Local runner Craig Newport says he is still waiting for the BAA to respond to his suggestion that they help manage the growing numbers by splitting the field in half and starting from both ends of the course.
You can read more about it on the BAA Boston Marathon website, and this article from USA Today.