Is it really possible?

The GFA and championship times for both genders and age groups are all set to fill quotas. If the women's times were set as harsh as the men's the numbers would drop hugely, which would cause a big imbalance.

However, when you check the current world records, it's men  2:03 v women 2:15.

So 12mins difference at the very top, yet women are afforded 30mins more than men for the championship start, and even more for the GFA.

That 2:15 was run by Paula Radliffe in 2003, and noone has come within 2mins and 55ish secs since, in 9 years. If that had been a Chinese woman, or a different nationality with a history of doping, I think the media would have been all over it, suggesting all sorts.

Compare it to other long lasting world records, like the 1500 and 3k for women, both set by Chinese athletes. Noone has come close to the times in 20years! Yet the runner involved never failed a drugs test.  Instead she underwent incredible training and took on wacky substances like "turtle blood", yet the stain of doubt is always on her as China were found gulity of other doping at the time, along with her own coach!

Back on the marathon, I know a 2:42 woman. Now that's pretty fast, probably top 15 in the country for women.

However, she's still a good 20mins off elite pace. So wouldn't start along side them, so would have the lonely run Piers suggests.

Otter wrote (see)

Surely using the wava percentage scores they could set a GFA time for each age category for both men and women that would be fair, 65% for example.

Set it too low, and too many men will qualify.

Set it too high, and not enough women will qualify.

It's on quotas, so the scores have to be more weighted in favour of women.

Otter,

There's a problem for VLM, the vast majority of endurance runners are middle aged men. If they set the "good" for age at 65% you would fill the event with 40 yo blokes like me!

VLM don't want that, they want first time charadee runners and sub 35 yo women.

If they set the good for age at 70% which is a true "good" standard there would be alot fewer women.

VLM is a marketing and money making exercise; it stopped being an athletics event year's ago.

I thought good for age for an under 40 was sub 2:45 - When I was running marathons and a non vet it was sub 2:40!! missed it by a minute in 1989!!! 3 hours is still for me the benchmark =but the post above sums it - apart from the elite it is not an athletic event just a fun run for charity runners - (sorry)

Can't believe that Grendel, surely that's the championship start you're thinking about.

Stevie - I think Grendel is probably right. I have only qualified for GFA times recently, I certainly didnt get any automatic entry for times of 2:48/2:51/2:52 in the 80s/90s.

Championship qualifying was probably more like 2:20 then.

All i can say in that case is thank fudge i wasn't running in those days 

Even though the VLM does appear to have evolved into a fund raising carnival, the GFA qualification does at least allow some participants the possibility of believing they are actually in a road race. 

The London Marathon is a ''proper race'' in more respects than some people appreciate.  As well as being a very nice pay day for a few elites, it's also the England Athletics championship race, and the Southern Athletics Association championship.  I didn't even know about the final one myself until a bunch of medals finally came through the post a few weeks ago, since our club came 2nd. 

It's too withering an attack on London to say it's only a proper race for elites.

Championship start runners aren't elites, and you can't tell me that guys who ar sub 2hr 45 aren't taking part in an athletic event!

You probably wouldn't tell guys after sub 3 hours that they're just in a glorified fun run either

London Marathon not a "proper race" .............hhhhhmmmmmm What's the definition of a proper race!!!

6 of the 10 fastest marathon times in my category this year were set at London (MV55) according to RunBritain rankings.

The worlds best runners are competing with you in the same race.

It is one of the 5 World Marathon Majors.

Hundreds of thousands of supporters cheering you all the way.

Certainly feels like a race to me - but whether it feels like a race is probably got more to do with the individual than the race.

It was my first marathon at 50 only having been running for about a year. I have done it six out of the last 7 years and pb'ed 5 times - if only I'd known I wasn't in a proper race!!!

It is a proper race at the sharp end, but as far as I'm concerned races start when the gun goes "bang".

If your chip time says 3:00:00 but it took 20 mins to cross the start line then no matter what you claim it's still a 3:20:00 finish time for the "race".

That's hardly fair - if you're stuck behind 20 minutes of people, you can't start your race, can you?

marshallini wrote (see)

It is a proper race at the sharp end, but as far as I'm concerned races start when the gun goes "bang".

If your chip time says 3:00:00 but it took 20 mins to cross the start line then no matter what you claim it's still a 3:20:00 finish time for the "race".

if that's true, why does the main rankings site power of 10 only go off chip time?

Going on gun time basically penalises people for doing bigger races

Millsy1977 wrote (see)

It is a "proper race" if you want it to be. I suppose it just has a higher percentage of "just get round" fun runners than your usual event.
The majority of the 35,000 will not be "racing" so that's where people get the idea from.

do you have any stats for that out of interest?

I'd wager that the percentage of "get rounds" is pretty similar to your average race with 300 runners in. The only difference is the totals are higher due to being a huge mass race.

Agree with Marshallini.

This has been done to death many many times but a 'race' can only be on Gun times by definition.

Any rankings based on Chip times are simply a comparison of individual time trials, a completely different thing to racing.

If that means a 3.15 marathon then no, there is no way my body could handle either the training for it or the race itself now let alone in another ten years time @59y. In the SM age band I guess a higher proportion will be in some vague kind of underlying physical shape to manage it but I'm sure there are many who couldn't, either due to being an exercise 'non-responder' or other issues.

marshallini wrote (see)

It is a proper race at the sharp end, but as far as I'm concerned races start when the gun goes "bang".

If your chip time says 3:00:00 but it took 20 mins to cross the start line then no matter what you claim it's still a 3:20:00 finish time for the "race".

If anyone puts their 3ish predicted time in for London, there's no way it will take 20 mins to cross the line. You always get the twats claiming that they can run much faster than they can, but that is more apparant in reality when you get down to the 8.5 min mile av and beyond.

And then you get the congestion....

Sorry, that sounded really harsh. I'm talking about the people who deliberately want to push themselves forward of the queues with the knowledge that they know they can't keep the pace, even from the beginning.