The Boston Marathon's tougher qualifying times aren't really new

This is an excerpt from The Buzzer, which is CBC Sports' daily email newsletter. Stay up to speed on what's happening in sports by subscribing here.

On Monday, the organizers of the Boston Marathon introduced more-difficult qualifying times for the sport's most revered race, lowering them by exactly five minutes for runners under 60 years old.

Boston's first qualifying-time adjustment since 2019 was pretty big news in the distance-running community, and it even broke through in the mainstream media. But some reports lacked a critical piece of context, which is that these "new" qualifying standards have, in effect, already been in place for some time.

Let me explain.

One of the hardest things about qualifying for the Boston Marathon these days is that the posted time for your age category is actually just the bare minimum. For example, say you're a man age 45-49. That means your qualifying time is now 3 hours 15 minutes, which you must achieve in an accredited marathon during the one-year window leading up to the application deadline next September.

But here's the rub: running a 3:15:00 (or better) doesn't automatically give you a spot in Boston — it simply allows you to submit an application. The field is capped at 30,000 runners, and many of those spots are allocated to people raising money for charity. That leaves only around 22,000 entries for qualifiers, and in the last couple years many thousands more than that have submitted applications.

The way organizers decide which applicants get to run Boston is fair and meritocratic but nonetheless pretty cold. They simply lower what's known as the "cutoff" time by the same amount in each age/gender category until they're left with the desired number of runners. Anyone