Sacramento Running News

In a move guaranteed to anger some and thrill others, the board of directors for the Western States Endurance Run has just announced new, more stringent qualifying standards for the 2015 race.

Noting the exponential growth in applicants (583 in 2000 and 2,295 in 2013) and the fixed number of entries available (270 lottery slots), they have set the qualifying standard to: 100 Km in 16 hours, or an official finish in a 100 mile race.

As before, not just any race will get you in. You need to run one of their selected qualifying races.

For years now, I’ve been telling anyone who would listen that the qualifying standards were too generous. Many locals had become convinced that this local race was essentially out of reach. So I applaud this move by the WSER board to attempt to improve a difficult situation.

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You do know that registration for the Boston Marathon opened yesterday, right?

The question on everyone’s mind is “will the new qualifying standards slow down the process?”

Due to growing demand, they phased in a rolling registration process for the 2012 race, and then tightened the qualifying standards by five minutes for the 2013 race.

The new standards still aren’t as tight as they were back in the glory days of American running, but it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.

 

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.

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Registration for the Boston Marathon opens today. As with last year, it is likely that all the slots will be taken and registration closed long before this year’s CIM takes place, effectively making the Boston qualifying time you expect to earn this December to be moot.

Some of the demand for marathon entries is clearly “industry-wide.”  For example, our own CIM will sell out very soon. (The website says 325 slots remain as of today.)

The Wall Street Journal has an article on this excess demand for the Boston Marathon, which dares to ask the question of whether the qualifying times for women are too soft.

The Boston Athletic Association pegs the women’s qualifying times at 30-minutes slower than the men’s times, something they established in 1977. More that 30-years have passed. Do women still need this kind of advantage?

What do you think?

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