Hi David. You are correct that the majors are critical to the analysis and I am working on an improvement to my modeling that takes a more detailed look at the races that feed qualified applicants into Boston. However, I find that the data is not exactly what one might expect. For instance, the BAA reported that the top qualifying race for entry into the 2024 Boston Marathon was the 2023 Boston Marathon. That part is not too surprising because the 2023 race netted a whopping 13,741 BQs. But the total number of entries to 2024 Boston that came from 2023 Boston: 3,703! (Again this data is from the BAA). That is, only 27% of that massive number of BQs actually gained entry into the race. You might say that, "Oh well, the rest of them missed the cutoff." But that would mean that the other 10,037 were denied entry but we know that the total number of denied entries was 11,039. That scenario is not feasible. Hence it is not only important to know how many BQs are generated from each qualifier, one must also make an educated guess as to how many of them will be used to apply for Boston. Ironically, Boston is not the way to go to get to Boston. On the other hand, a smaller downhill marathon is precisely where most people would turn to when they know they want to apply to Boston. All in all, it is critical to know how to weight each marathon when predicting the total number of applicants.