Cheating

THURSDAY, AUGUST 25, 2016

Marathoninvestigation.com is a website dedicated to identifying runners who cheat in marathons, especially those who do so to gain admittance to the Boston Marathon.

As I can attest, for marathoners Boston is our Super Bowl. It is the granddaddy of marathons and garners attention worldwide, even before the bombings in 2013.

Unlike almost every other marathon, to get into the Boston Marathon a runner must run a qualifying finishing time for his or her age group in a marathon with a certified course, generally within a year beforehand. (One exception is that sponsors have exemptions to admit employees and "friends and family.")

Boston makes it tough to qualify. For example, even in my 65 to 69 age group, I need to run four hours and 10 minutes (4:10) or better, and a female will need to run 4:40 or faster. Another example is for runners 50 to 54: Females need to run 4:00 or better and males need to run 3:30 or better. For males 18 to 34, qualifying times are 3:05, and for females, 3:35.

My Ironman friend Ray Britt on his site runtri.com analyzed what it took to qualify for the 2014 Boston Marathon. For that year, about 550,000 runners finished the 1,050 marathons staged in the U.S. Of those runners, 12% ran Boston qualifying times, about 65,000 people. (Actually, fewer qualified, because the analysis does not adjust for those who run multiple marathons in a year.)

Because the number of entries of qualifying runners far surpasses the 30,000 limit (raised to 35,000 for the post bombing 2014 race) that Boston imposes on the number of runners allowed on the course, not everyone who has broken the qualifying time barrier actually gets admitted to the race. Boston fills up its five-year male and female age groups by taking the fastest qualifiers first and working down to the slower until it has reached the number it will accept for the age range.

For the 2016 Boston Marathon, the Boston Athletic Association reports that 28,594 applications were received from those with qualifying times, 24,032 qualified applicants were accepted - pending verification of their qualifying performance - and 4,562 applicants "were unable to be accepted due to the large number of eligible qualifiers who submitted an application for entry combined with field size limitations."

Runner's World reports on the challenge of gaining acceptance to Boston, "For the 2016 race, runners needed to better their age and gender standard by at least 2:28."

As a result, Boston has such a fast field that Ray's analysis shows the average marathon finish time at Boston of 3:50 is a full 16 minutes faster than the next race in the top 25, the California International Marathon. And the Boston course vexes runners with five miles of significant hills to navigate, after mile 16 to the top of Heartbreak Hill at mile 21, a stretch that has challenged me each of my seven times running the course.

So how does one cheat to get a BQ (Boston qualifying) time? One way is to cut the course, meaning skip running some portion of the course between the start and the finish of a qualifying marathon.

Cutting out a section, as famed Rosie Ruiz did in the 1979 New York Marathon by taking the subway, isn't always easy to do. But these days, with the proliferation of marathons, there are plenty of races that use repeat loops. There are ways to skip a loop or cut one short for a fast but misrepresentative time. Marathons use timing chips and place timing mats that record the runner's time for the distance at various points on the course. But a runner can figure out mat placement and cut the course between the mats. And even if the runner does not cut the course between the mats but skips a section with a mat, it may not be noticed by race management or the runner can claim chip malfunction (which may not cut it with the authorities).

Another way to cheat to get into Boston is to claim that you are older than you really are. The website that outs cheaters has discovered instances where runners' ages appear to have changed miraculously after running a series of marathons at a younger age, adding a decade or so. Instantly aging does wonders in raising the time limit that one has beat to qualify.

Just as I find use of performance enhancing drugs in cycling and in track and field abhorrent, I find those who cheat to get into a race for which their performance does not entitle them to run just as reprehensible.

Three cheers for all those runners who have worked their tails off to score the right to run Boston! To the cheaters, I say "start doing the work." If that's not enough, find a coach and learn what you need to do and do it. If you absolutely must run Boston and can't qualify, make a really big donation to one of the charities the race supports (I suggest Dana-Farber Cancer Institute) because they are given non-qualifier slots to dole out to supporters, or go to work for one of the sponsors: At least they are paying big money for the privilege of getting employees, family and friends into the race.