Since nobody asked me….

There has been a great deal of discussion online lately about the BQ times. For those who may not know, BQ stands for Boston Qualified. It is a time set by the organizers that defines a marathon time that allows you to submit to run the race without doing it for charity. See the website. But there is a great deal of talk around how the BAA and the running community values being BQ. Many see it as a right of passage. Many see it as an elitest number that continues a rather dismal history of acceptance by the Boston Marathon. With shouts to keep it and shouts to do away with it, I have been thinking on the issue for a few days

I am a big runner. I am a slow runner. I may never run a marathon, let alone reach a BQ standard. But that is not to say I don’t want to. I simply do not know if the BQ should be done away with or not. I know if I ever ran a pace to meet such a standard, I would be over the moon and I would want people to celebrate that achievement… but not more than other’s achievements. BUT, even if the BQ stays, the running hoard of ‘gatekeepers’ who try to define somebody’s abilities, effort, and success by an arbitrary number… well that needs to disappear.

What defines success? What defines effort? What defines mastery of a sport? What baseline do we compare to? All of these questions may be answered differently by 100 people when asked. That means that a BQ does not define somebody as more than another as it only looks at one baseline. A good friend, who can run a sub 3 hour marathon, once told me when I started my run journey to not compare myself to him, as the efforts we put in differ. He may be able to push hard for 2:45, but he also thinks that being able to sustain a run for 5-6 hours is a wildly different accomplishment that he could not imagine doing.

What if the measure of success was somebody changing their reality? A BQ time means nothing to that, but somebody could have completely changed their life in the course of training for and running a marathon. Do all BQ’ers change their lives? I don’t know! AND it doesn’t matter. Because a BQ time deserves praise. Running a marathon deserves praise. Choosing to better yourself deserves praise.

I have been lucky enough not to find many of the ‘gatekeepers’ in my running journey. I have managed to find the most welcoming, accepting, uplifting, empowering, and inspiring runners that make me feel like my efforts and accomplishments are worth the world. That is what we need to do. Gatekeepers feel the need to protect some mythical fiefdom of theirs’ and to do that, it involves diminishing others’ accomplishments. Don’t be like that. Build people up and celebrate their success and effort.

Keep the BQ, do away with the BQ, I don’t know. But the BAA, the running community, and the brands that represent all need to do better about removing the gatekeeping. Celebrate without excluding. Champion all of the champions, compared to all of the different baselines.