Yes, I thought the same.
Is Champs age related or just for you youngens? 
Qualifying time. Sub 2:40 to lineup just behind the elites
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Is it? Women’s times only dropped by 1 minute to 3:14 but unless women dont buy shoes (
) you’d expect a similar reduction?
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I’ve not seen as many women in >£200 running shoes though 
OSB Events definitely used facial recognition AI this year. You had to upload a selfie before the race and that would be used to tag you in photos real time as the race was going on.
I don’t understand a lot of what you said (!) but just demonstrating some form of it is definitely happening
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Ah that’s interesting.
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Damn it - was going to say “but but but I said that!”
Turns out I didn’t type it. 
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Straying way off topic. Was doing some research today for a couple of personal projects I have on the go. Some robotics type stuff.
AWS has a whole host of stuff I didn’t know about. You can train soem ML models and then analyse real-time HD footage for object detection at very little cost. Amazon now sell a DeepLense camera which will do a lot of the heavy lifting, but it’s expensive. Can do the same with a RaspberryPi.
I’ve been designing my own robot lawnmower. Most use a perimeter wire to keep it in place. Some uber expensive ones use GPS, but that requires to RTK chips at a cost of 600 notes. Thinking now I could train it to recognise grass and use LiDAR for object detection.
Interesting stuff. Wish I had more time to work on this stuff. Get frustrating during prototype phase when you have to wait 4 hours for something to 3d print before you realise its wrong.
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We aren’t all young!
Bl00dy frustrating though, definitely need a good day on a flat course, preferably with some crowds to feel comfortable enough to give 2:40 a crack. Not many flat courses around here. Hence I was going to Gold Coast to give it a go until it was cancelled 5 days out. Probably a good thing though as I otherwise I would still be stuck there 
Not sure where Tokyo is going with qualification, they have a small number of guaranteed entrants at sub 2:45, or at least it was pre covid, but they only accept runs on a specific set of courses. Which in NZ is only Auckland, which is neither flat or popular.
Luckily London is not so picky (I dont think), so Christchurch in March is my target now…
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When I was watching Berlin and London, people were talking about the 6 marathon majors. I thought there were only 4, being London, Berlin, Tokyo and Boston.
Then I saw that NY and Chicago are majors! I thought you could just enter NY if you got in early enough, I know my mate in Sydney did, he was much younger than me and ran a 4.15, which his previous best being a 4.50.
Have they changed that? What makes a marathon a major?
Probably money and size of field etc
They are about to add another, think it was a choice between South Africa or Aus but don’t quote me on that. They are covering the continent’s though.
NY has been for a long time, fairly sure it was when I did it in 2011
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I suspect there is probably fewer women in the champ group than men, so they’re probably trying to balance the numbers up a bit by giving more leeway in the women’s qualifying time.
Do the champ women start behind the elite women, i.e. ahead of the main field?
Someone give this man a race before he punches someone lol
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No they start with the other champ starts. It’s only the elite women that start earlier
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Definitely less women! I would estimate 10% (if that) but that’s a rough non-scientific observation 
.
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I tried to do a check of how many from champs start but not easy to spit it out of the results. I think 10% is very low estimate though. It didn’t feel like a sausage fest in there
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I know it’s not the exact question but I did a quick scan of the top 100 mass start men and women and both had 85 from the champs start and 15 elsewhere (you have to be British club member…or Shalane Flanagan to start from the champs)
My old colleague had done London 3 or 4 times, Chicago twice, NY and Berlin. He was booked into Tokyo in 2017 which would give you auto entry to Boston and would also give you a special “majors” medal. Unfortunately he had to defer to 2018 due to a back issue and died of cancer before he had the chance, the back problem was a tumour! Actually made me think about doing what you plan whilst you can!
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From when I started being learned about such things, it was the big 5.
Boston/NY/Chicago/Berlin/London. My mate completed this around 2010 I think, so Tokyo was added after, my mate is a bit p!ssed about that.
But like the everything else these days things have to get bigger/better (mot money making), so I read somewhere about adding a marathon in SA/China.
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