It’s always fun to look at the numbers produced by big marathons. Here are a few from Monday’s Boston Marathon. Most notably, the number of non-number pickups was considerably higher than usual. Your hypothesis?
The finish percent remained remarkably high, despite the stifling heat and searing sun. It’s interesting to note that there have been early reports of 2100 medical events of some kind, but only 900 runners failed to finish. Impressive job by the runners.
| Registered runners | 26,717 | MONDAY | AVERAGE |
| Number pick-ups | 22,853 | 85.5% | 91-92% |
| Starters | 22,426 | 98.1% of above | virtually all of above |
| Finishers | 21,554 | 96.1% of above | 97-98% of above |
Below you’ll find a comparison of Boston 2012 finish times with the perfect-weather times of the previous year, and with two previous very hot years. The significant differences between Boston times a year ago and this year raise an interesting question: Should Boston provide a “heat adjusted” qualifying time for runners who ran this year hoping to qualify for next year?
This opens a big can o’ worms, and I’m not sure Boston officials will choose to go there. However, on the theory that businesses should take extraordinarily good care of their best customers, I think Boston organizers should give the idea serious consideration.
The average finish time this year was about 12 percent slower than last year. I don’t think Boston needs to add 12 percent to re-qualifying times for this year’s runners. But it might be a very nice gesture to add 6 percent. This would range from 10 minutes for those in the fastest qualifying brackets to about 20 minutes to those in much slower brackets.
Best Running Shoes 2025?
| RESULTS | BOSTON 2012 21,554 fnshrs | BOSTON 2011* 23,879 fnshrs | BOSTON 2004 16,743 fnshrs | What do you think |
| 50th place | 2:39:30 | 2:26:06 | 2:35:51 | 2:35:38 |
| 1000th place | 3:09:37 | 2:55:41 | 3:17:51 | approx 3:24 |
| 3:00 | 530 runners | 1,519 runners | 320 runners | 415 runners |
| 4:00 | 8,646 runners | 16,209 | 5497 runners | na |
| Avg Time | 4:18:27 | 3:49:54 | 4:13:02 | not known |
*What do you think
Thanks to MarathonGuide.com'Running in the Cold, and Tom Derderian's BOSTON 2004 16,743 fnshrs Controversy Over Bostons 6-Hour Results Cutoff.
Here's a site, RunTri.com, with lots of great graphics showing key comparisons between various Boston Marathon times, including age-groups.
Here's a new blog at Y42K that analyzes BQs in a select number of marathons, 2012 vs 2011, and finds that, in general, the BQs have dropped by about one-third. The bigger questions is: How did marathoners perform in last fall's big marathons that produce many Boston runners?
