A deeper dive into the Cutoff Time for the 2025 Boston Marathon
In December 2023, I made an attempt to predict the cutoff time for the 2025 Boston Marathon. Then this past April, I updated my prediction after data from the 2024 Boston Marathon was available.
These posts received many views and some valuable comments.
One comment thread reflected a discomfort that my analysis was based exclusively on the number of BQ’s generated by the top North American qualifying races. Why was I ignoring the big international marathons? And why not, at the very least, take into account the rest of the World Marathon Majors?
It’s a fair point.
Some readers pushed further. One decreed that not all BQ’s are created equal. A BQ earned from one marathon might be much more likely to result in a Boston Marathon application than a BQ from another race. Yet my analysis weighted all BQ’s equally.
Indeed.
In fact, it is likely that some marathons are used almost exclusively to get into Boston. The downhill ones come to mind. And surely, there are races that are entered with no intent other than to run that race such that any BQ earned is irrelevant.
But I had no data to support or refute any of these arguments. To be sure, there are far more BQ’s earned each year than result in applications to the Boston Marathon. Why aren’t there more applications?
Or more to the point, from which qualifiers do the Boston Marathon applicants come from? Why not build a model based upon the BQ’s that are actually used for admission into Boston rather than the total number that are earned?
I get it. But, seriously, that’s a big job. Take, for example, the 2024 Boston Marathon.
It would mean that I would have to get a listing of all the entrants to the 2024 Boston Marathon then figure out how they got into the race.
Doing that would require downloading the results of a statistically significant number of Boston qualifiers and formatting the data so that it is compatible with the way the data is presented in the Boston entry list. From there I’d have to match names of runners from the various qualifiers to names of Boston entrants.
There would be issues. Multiple runners with the same name would need sorting. And matching names is not sufficient. The cutoff time has to be reviewed for each runner to verify they got in as a qualifer and not, perhaps, as a charity entrant. Also, allowance must be made for runners aging up to a less agressive qualification standard. The list goes on.
Anyway, that’s what I did.
I now have a database providing a partial list of the qualified runners in the 2024 Boston Marathon, the qualifier that they used for entry into the race, and their cutoff times.
Sounds tedious? Tell me about it.
It took me a few weeks to collect the data and wrangle it into submission. Good thing I am a marathoner. We live for tedium.
The B.A.A. has stated that “more than 528 qualifying marathons were utilized by athletes entering the [2024] Boston Marathon.” Absent unfettered access to the B.A.A.’s data, I am unable to identify and analyze all of these races. Nor would I want to. I am a marathoner, not an ultra-marathoner.
Alternatively, I use 50 of the top Boston Qualifying marathons (chosen with guidance from baa.org and marathonguide.com) as representative of the 528+ marathons alluded to by the B.A.A. Besides the top North American races, I have now included London and Berlin into the analysis. I would like to include Tokyo as well but those results are obscured by an impenetrable — at least for me — wall of Kanji.
From these 50 marathons (~10% of the total races used), I have identified 13,612 of the 22,019 qualifiers (61.8%) in the 2024 Boston Marathon and which race they used for their qualification. None of the marathons that I have excluded from this subset are heavy hitters according to B.A.A. press releases.
It’s like NASDAQ for the Boston Marathon. I posit that a few marathons can be used to represent the ups and downs of the Boston qualifying market. I’m calling it the “Bring it, Boston!” Index or BIB™. The races that I use to construct this index are the BIB50™.
For reference, the BIB soared to 467 (7 min 47sec, or 7:47) in 2021 upon returning from the pandemic hiatus to a field size reduced from 30,000 to 20,000. Then it crashed to 0 during 2022 and 2023 when, still reeling from COVID, there weren’t so many applicants. Folks either weren’t ready yet to brave the crowds or perhaps there weren’t enough qualifiers open for business.
Once the effects of the pandemic worked their way out of the system, the BIB rebounded to 329 (5:29) for the 2024 race.
Between races the BIB floats about. We don’t know where it will land until the fall when the B.A.A. tells us. In the meantime, any event that may affect the number of applicants received during the registration period may influence the BIB.
Some believe that holding the marathon the day after Easter, as is the case in 2025, pushes the BIB down. Others argue that race day being the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, which again is the case on 2025, props it up. I don’t know about either of these. Do runners care about such things? I suppose some do. Or their support crew might.
In my view, the big influencer is the one that I implied above — a marathon’s utilization rate. That is, the percentage of Boston qualifiers from a given marathon who actually apply to Boston during the registration period.
I don’t have all the applicant data I would like to have. Detailed information regarding denied applicants is unavailable. The utilization rate I calculate is for runners who met the 5:29 cutoff time and therefore were accepted into 2024 Boston. From a qualifying race’s utilization rate, I can estimate how many Boston Marathon applicants come from that race and, therefore, its influence on the BIB.
In turn, for each race in the BIB50, the utilization rate from the 2024 qualification period is applied to the number of the race’s BQ’s during the 2025 qualification period to project the number of applicants to the 2025 Boston Marathon.
What about the other 450+ qualifiers mentioned by the B.A.A? Though each of them may be small potatoes, in aggregate they account for almost 40% of the field.
I look at trends in the numbers of finishers and BQ’s of the BIB50 to estimate how many applicants will come from those 450+ other races. I am counting on the BIB50 to mirror the worldwide interest in getting into the Boston Marathon.
Here’s some interesting tidbits.
The six qualifiers with the top utilization rates, ranging from 56% to 75%, are downhill marathons. People run downhill to get into Boston. But I estimate that in total these six races account for fewer than 1,600 applications to 2024 Boston.
The qualifier that placed the largest number of athletes in the 2024 Boston Marathon is the 2023 Boston Marathon (4,657 by my count). But at a utilization rate of 41%, there were over six thousand 2023 Boston Marathon results meeting the cutoff time that were not used to get into the 2024 Boston Marathon. If Boston had a utilization rate like that of the downhill marathons the BIB would shoot up substantially.
The 2023 London Marathon had a surprisingly low utilization rate of about 15%. Again, thousands of acceptable finish times were left on the table. Berlin also has a low utilization rate of about 12%. I don’t have any data for Tokyo but I suspect it is in the same ballpark as London and Berlin.
The Chicago Marathon has a utilization rate of 31% while New York City’s is low at about 17%. New York City also has a low BQ rate (5.4%). It is a tough race and perhaps a deterrent for giving it another go in Boston.
If you have gotten this far into my post, you are probably wondering where I think the BIB is now. I will get to that. A few more comments first.
My earlier posts described the explosive trend in BQ’s this qualifying period, which led me to predict a longer cutoff time for 2025 than 2024’s. My new analysis changes the story a bit.
At present, all but 5 of the BIB50 have taken place. The picture is clarifying.
The increasing rate of BQ’s generated by the BIB50 is still a thing, but it is ameliorated by other factors.
The suggestion to include London was a good one. One reader noted that because the 2022 London Marathon was held in October, both the 2022 and 2023 London Marathons were in the 2024 Boston qualification period. With the return of London to April, only one of these very large and influential marathons will be used to get into 2025 Boston.
Weather has an influence. Ideal conditions in 2023 helped the BQ rate of the Boston Marathon to soar to 51.7%. The high temperature during the 2024 race whacked that back to a more traditional 38.4%. Difficult conditions led to cancellation of one BIB50 race, the Twin Cities Marathon.
Also, with the B.A.A. announcement this week of the registration period for 2025 (September 9–13), one of the BIB50, the 2024 REVEL Big Cottonwood Marathon, scheduled for September 14, now falls outside of the registration window and can’t be used for entry.
As it is a double-dip race, the 2023 results from REVEL Big Cottonwood can still be used for 2025 Boston (which was also valid for 2024). There’s a catch though. There are three double dippers in the BIB50 and all of them have a significantly lower utilization rate for the earlier one in the qualification period than the later one.
Hence, despite trends suggesting a substantial increase in cutoff time, my current estimate is more modest. Right now I have the BIB in the range of 312 to 359 (5:12 to 5:59).
As always, I welcome feedback. Together we can nail this thing. And if not, well then, we go back to guessing and the BIB goes the way of the dodo.
And with that, it’s my turn. In two days I will take on The Light at the End of the Tunnel Marathon, one of the BIB50.
Best of luck to you in your attempts.
