The differences between the respective times men and women must reach in order to enter various distance events, especially marathons, is one of those issues that never strays far from the collective running consciousness. An October 15 article in the Wall Street Journal kicked this topic back into the limelight by focusing on the difference in the men’s and women’s qualifying standards for the Boston Marathon, the only citizen’s race of note that includes time-based restrictions on entry (dozens of loopholes exist, but that’s fodder for another discussion). At present, the Q-time for a man under 35 is 3 :10 and that for women in the same age group is 3:40. Then, three days after the WSJ article was published, the Boston Marathon opened its doors to online registration for the 2011 race six months away. Within eight hours, the field had filled to its capacity of just over 25,000 entrants and registration was closed. While not a gender issue, this immediately intensified scrutiny of the Boston qualifying times, given that these will likely have to be toughened in order to keep what many see as an injustice from happening in the future.

At the center of this is the ongoing and evolving tension between two opposing positions: an inclination to account for long-standing gender-based iniquities within running and in sports in general by cutting women some slack, and a desire to dispense of what is arguably the most sexist position of all — lowering the bar for the girls so they can play with the boys.