Hi. Thank you for reading and for your comment. It is true that if the mean is closer to BQ -8 minutes it would be worse for cutoff time than if the mean was at BQ - 3 minutes. However, I think that is unlikely for a few reasons. First, it would be inconsistent with data that the BAA have announced in previous years whereby more runners are clustered closer to just meeting the qual standards than beating those standards by a wide margin. Second, as is shown in the distribution I posted in this article, I think it is fair to expect that the mean of the distribution ought to be somewhat slower than the qualification standard. That is, to state it more descriptively, the average runner can't meet the Boston Marathon qualification standard. If the mean of the distribution was at BQ -8 minutes that suggests that the average runner can easily BQ and we know that this isn't true.