This smells suspiciously like math...
1) Still my conclusion would be that as a participant ages and BQ time goes up it becomes "easier" or more likely that an individual will achieve a BQ. Interestingly for both men and women there's not really a linear progression but rather a jump in improvement for making a BQ at age 45-49 which then seems to mostly plateau until you die.
Although statistically speaking once you get over age 65 or so, the n is probably too small to draw too many statistically valid conclusions.
2) Hmmm not sure what I would anticipate to be different with Grandma's results.
Based on this data, I'd assume Grandma doesn't run in her own marathon very often...
But seriously the most interesting thing in this data to me is the number of participants in each group.
Most participants...
- 25-29 female (never would've thought)
- 30-34 male
- 40-44 male
- 35-39 male (actually all of these male groups are essentially the same size)
Asked my DH about this a while back since he was a researcher for a bit of time, but forgot to write his response - similar thoughts as
@ZellyB. He also posits that there may be a larger proportion of runners for fun with the younger people (such as Bay to Breakers) than with us older folks.
The large jump at 45-49 comes from the 10 minutes added on to the time from the previous age group instead of the normal 5.
Aha! That makes sense then that there's a jump. I just wonder why the decision to make that a 10 minute progression. Does that mean at age 45 they expect the wheels to really fall off?
Using my extensive research based on a statistical population of one, the wheels do fall off at 45.
I'm better now than I was at 45, so I'd say they got it wrong. I think they fall off at y+something, where y is your current age. With good training and some luck, the "something" never reaches 0.
My very scientific conclusion about people in the 30-34 division having such a small percentage of qualyifing times is: WEDDINGS & BABIES
Ain't nobody got time for a 20 mile long run with a 1 year at home. Or you think you can do that 16 miler until the baby has a poop-splosion at home and your day gets away from you.
The jump in females at 35-39 and the drop in males of same age = "I can't take it anymore...you watch the kids, I'm going running, this is my hobby now, give me some peace and quiet"
Then at 40-49 both partners say "thank god so and so can get themselves dressed in the morning and feed themselves, let's go on a run together."
My scientific data is based 100% on a single source of myself and my projected future self.
You may think I am joking, but I actually think there's probably some truth to the above
Thanks for playing everyone! The original question when I ran this experiment for myself was "Since BQs are age and gender specific, was my time of 3:05 really that different than her 3:55? Whose time was harder to accomplish given our age/gender?"
I went into this question before collecting any data with two beliefs.
1) I thought that women's BQ times were easier than males based on the 30 minute time difference. Without looking at data I thought that a 30 minute gap seemed to be too much between genders and that males and females of equal abilities relative to their own gender was not at or greater than 30 minutes.
2) I thought that my BQ time of 3:05 was tougher mostly because only 1-2% of people who run a marathon can run a sub 3 hour marathon. Thus, my time was harder to achieve.
But this belief begged the question was my time harder to achieve because of the time, but was actually easier for me to achieve from a gender/age basis than someone else's BQ time based on their age/gender.
I think the data pretty clearly states that my original belief in 1 was false. The gap of the 30 minutes between BQ times from males/females is not only appropriate but very consistent in different age group and two different marathons. But the data from the Chicago marathon caught my eye when I put it together and I saw what
@ZellyB and
@FFigawi saw which was a huge jump at 45-49. That's when I decided to post it here. Because I wanted to see if not only you guys would also see this trend, but how you would explain it. I had two ideas when I put this together.
1) The jump is due to BQ times raising by 10 minutes at this point in time.
2) Motivation. People in the 45-59 age category are further in life and have different motivations than those in the younger age categories. People in these categories have had their kids, have more time, and could likely be seasoned vets from the last marathon boom prior to 2012.
I feel like you guys nailed it perfectly. Some pointed to item 1 and others to item 2. So to try and answer item 1, I altered the Chicago marathon results to cap at a similar % BQ and walaa we have our roughly 5 minute increments back. So this begs the question, why the jump in 10 minutes? What is the point of BQs? Is it to fairly set a time for each age/gender that is equally difficult in obtaining? Or is it to set a time that gives a roughly equal proportion of males and females from each different category? Why did they choose the BQ times they did?
And here we have the
rationale!
From 1990-2002, the times were set by performance and almost identical to what we came up with from our 2014 Chicago experiment. They used the same rationale. Set the times based on equal difficulty of achieving that time based on gender and age based on past marathon performance of those divisions.
“The decision to adjust the standards was made after careful review of recent marathon performances in all age categories, and in response to discussions with many athletes who have competed at the marathon distance. The new standards represent more equitable requirements for all athletes. The new qualifying scheme has been refined to better accommodate the differences which naturally occur with the various age groups. First-class course security, unparalleled community and volunteer support, and state-of-the-art finish line systems enable us to allow many more athletes the opportunity to compete at Boston.” – Guy Morse, Race Director
But something changed in 2002, they upped the cap on the field size. So now they needed (or wanted) more participants. And where are they going to find more people willing to run the Boston Marathon, well those who have the desire and motivation to want to. Thus, they moved the time requirements for the 45-59 age groups up so they could accommodate more participants. They likely figured out this is where the most people were being left out who had the desire to run it.
"Rationale: The new qualifying times for runners 45-years and older reflected the B.A.A.’s ability and desire to accommodate more participants. For the 2003 race, the field size limit was set at 20,000 participants, an increase of 5,000 from the 2002 Boston Marathon. The adjustment in the qualifying times followed a review and analysis of performances across the sport. In addition, three new age groups were created."
Then they changed the BQ requirements in 2013 again.
AND GUESS WHAT I FOUND! The actual rationale and data used to make the new BQ times! Here's the data and
paper! Based on the paper you can see how they came to the conclusion of lowering the standards for everyone down by 4 min and 1 second (because there is actually a 59 second buffer on the BQ time which hasn't been used yet because of the over qualifying of runners).
"As the number of qualified runners has increased, combined with greater demand to run the Boston Marathon, our new registration process enables those who qualify by the greatest amount of time to have the longest period to enter.” - Tom Grilk, B.A.A. Executive Director.
But this now begs the question for the future of BQ standards. The time was moved for 45-59 because they wanted to max the field in 2003. But in 2010 they got together to try and determine a new set of standards and unknowingly couldn't have predicted the running boom of 2012 and events of the 2013 Boston Marathon. Since the recent marathon running boom of 2012, the desire to run it and actually meet the standards has exceeded the field cap. This means they need to make a change and the likeliest place is the 45-59 age categories reverting back to the original time set by performance and not by maximizing the field based on the cap.
So, the original question was "Since BQs are age and gender specific, was my time of 3:05 really that different than her 3:55? Whose time was harder to accomplish given our age/gender?". The answer based on the data gathered by me, the BAA, and Smith et al.. My time is harder. Her time is easier only because they want more people of her gender/age to enter the Boston Marathon to fill the capacity.
This went WAY further than I though it would. It started with a simple question and ended with some advanced statistics! Fun!
Any time girl, I'll get my revenge eventually. 
