Boston Mayor Marty Walsh announced earlier today that the Marathon, previously postponed to Sept. 14, would be canceled. This is extremely disappointing, though not overly surprising. The silver lining in the subsequent announcement by the Boston Athletic Association is that they will refund everyone's registration fee -- specifics to be sent out within the next few weeks. And that they will off a virtual marathon.
Now the uncertainty has shifted from whether the race will be held to what the logistics will be surrounding registering for the 2021 Boston Marathon -- assuming that Boston permits it to happen. In normal years, the qualifying period for one year starts on the Sunday after the 1st week (I think) of the registration period for the preceding year's race closes. So, when the registration period for 2020 ended in mid-September 2019, races being run at that point were eligible to be used for the eventual registration period for 2021 Boston. Where there is a normal 52-53 weeks usable, races started postponing/canceling in Feb/March 2020, so there is less than 6 months' worth of races where qualifying times could be earned. So, what do they do with all the people who qualified for 2020? hat do they do with the people who qualified for 2021 in the truncated timeframe? And which age do they use compared to the date of race day in 2021 compared to the BQs that were run for 2020? There are many permutations possible, and only BAA will be able to tell us. But that won't stop the endless speculation over the next several months.
I'm confident that I will be able to get into 2021 Boston regardless of what they do, since if they allow the times from the truncated period from Sep 2020-Mar 2021, I have a BQ-17:58. But that doesn't mean that I won't be one of the thousands involved in the endless speculation that is yet to come. (Never mind all the speculation about the other 2020 races, including the remaining 4 Majors that could still wind up canceling.)
No comments:
Post a Comment