What’s the best age to qualify for Boston?
Do the old guys have an unfair advantage?
It turns out the best age is 80 but almost all the ages over 35 have an advantage, some significant.
I compared the 2013 Boston Marathon Standards (without the extra 59 seconds) to the World Masters Athletics Age Graded tables. These tables are based on compiled results of athletes.
The data, if you believe the age graded tables, shows that at every ages except 44 and 54 have an advantage. Sometimes that advantage is significant.
First we take a male runner that can qualify at a 3:05 pace when he is 25-35 years old as our baseline. Then apply the age adjustments to that 3:05 as he ages through his lifetime and compare that lessening of ability to the loosening of the Boston qualifying standards we see clearly that it gets easier.
It gets easier for two reasons. First the Boston qualifying standards make stair-step leaps of 5 and 10 and 15 minutes while the age graded times are a curve. The area under the stair step at the beginning of a 5 year ages group is the biggest advantage.
The Boston standards are a tiny bit harder for the 44 year old runner (I can attest to this!) and a couple percentage points harder for the 54 year old runner. In contrast the 40 year old runner has a 4 minute advantage and the 45 year old runner has an 8 minute advantage.
If you can stay in the game past 60 a big gap opens up and things get even easier. Just when you are retiring you’ll be ready to qualify.
If you think you have the staying power an 80 year old has more than a 40 minute age graded advantage. Alas, if you make it to 90 the bottom drops out for you and it gets really hard to qualify. I guess that’s the last thing you’ll be worried about!
Fear not my male running friends all you have to do is stay alive and you too can qualify for Boston!
For the women it’s not so easy. Unless you consider the existing qualifying times to be set too loosely in the first place for women they are at a relative disadvantage. According to the same age graded tables women start getting slower 6 years earlier than men and get slower at a faster rate as they age.
The result for women, all things being equal, they never see a significant advantage. It’s all downhill after 29.
Again this analysis makes no judgment as to whether the baseline of a 3:05 marathon for a man in his prime or a 3:35 marathon for a woman in her prime are fair or not. What we are doing is taking this as a baseline and comparing the loss in performance due to age to the loosening of the standards.
Interesting, huh? I for one have noticed that I haven’t lost my marathon abilities as fast as the standards get looser. I would have been hard-pressed to run a 3:05 marathon in my youth, but a 3:30 at age 50? Hell yeah! Piece of cake!
For me, I say stuff the standards and just train your butt off and you’ll meet your goals. None of us is an average. Each of us is an individual. It is folly to try to draw conclusions about yourself and your predicted performance from aggregate tables.
Data – Boston Qualifying standards – http://www.baa.org
Age Graded Tables – http://home.roadrunner.com/~alanjones/AgeGrade.html
Very interesting, I didn’t realize age could be such an asset when qualifying for Boston! A reason to look forward to aging, yay!
Phooey.
An equally valid interpretation would be that qualifying for Boston is equally difficult for all ages and that the aging tables are biased by injured runners (or something else).