It's an interesting suggestion. The short answer is, no, I haven't looked into it. Of course, if the cutoff time for 2025 Boston is much different than what I have predicted, I am going to have to consider it and other ideas to unearth where my analysis is deficient. Or get out of the prediction business altogether.

As an aside, the whole "year over year" tracking is tricky right now. The rise of the super shoe took place amidst a world rocked by the pandemic and we still feel the effects. I have to concede that year over year analysis during 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 is likely to be fruitless during this stretch - too many disrupting factors going on. I'm not a data analyst but I suspect that as a former analyst, you might agree that actionable correlations would be hard to come by during this stretch.

Restricting it to the 2024 qualifying period vs. the 2025 qualifying period would be an interesting study but with so few data points. Could it change my overall view at this point and perhaps my estimate? Interesting question. But it makes me feel wishy-washy and a bit squeamish. In a way, I am testing a hypothesis that the BIB50 represents the market and I am reluctant to tweak the experiment again.

Going forward, however, certainly it's necessary. Like any index, the BIB may need some maintenance for it to be a useful indicator. Maybe it needs to be expanded to include more of the long tail or revised with new races. For example, if demand for running Boston continues to surge, I imagine the qualifier market might get more creative with how to meet that demand. This might be just a momentary blip. Or it could be a brave new world.