2020 Boston Marathon Cut Off Predictions

Using the accepted list provided at

there are approximately 15875 people already accepted which would leave at most 7,200 open spots (assuming the same field size as last year), not 9,200. I would expect that the number of accepted applications from last week will also climb.

runner stat guy wrote:

Using the accepted list provided at

http://registration.baa.org/2020/cf/Public/iframe_EntryLists.cfm

there are approximately 15875 people already accepted which would leave at most 7,200 open spots (assuming the same field size as last year), not 9,200. I would expect that the number of accepted applications from last week will also climb.

Ehhh... Link down. But if thats true, good data. To your point, they're not done verifying last week registrations. But 6,000+ spots left is a pretty sizable chunk if it holds. Especially when you compare it to last year at 220 spots. 2018 accepted 2,900 people at a 3:23 cutoff.

5kPace wrote:

runner stat guy wrote:

Using the accepted list provided at

http://registration.baa.org/2020/cf/Public/iframe_EntryLists.cfm

there are approximately 15875 people already accepted which would leave at most 7,200 open spots (assuming the same field size as last year), not 9,200. I would expect that the number of accepted applications from last week will also climb.

Ehhh... Link down. But if thats true, good data. To your point, they're not done verifying last week registrations. But 6,000+ spots left is a pretty sizable chunk if it holds. Especially when you compare it to last year at 220 spots. 2018 accepted 2,900 people at a 3:23 cutoff.

Looks like a comparable number of acceptances would be for the 2015 marathon.

"During the second week of registration, 6,447 Qualifiers were accepted. These were qualifiers who where one minute, two seconds (1:02) or faster than the Qualifying time for their age group and gender."

Registration told me that the automated registration system couldn't find my results from September 1. Hopefully it finds them. I sent a link to the results posted online to the BAA registration account.

evandmiller wrote:

5kPace wrote:

Ehhh... Link down. But if thats true, good data. To your point, they're not done verifying last week registrations. But 6,000+ spots left is a pretty sizable chunk if it holds. Especially when you compare it to last year at 220 spots. 2018 accepted 2,900 people at a 3:23 cutoff.

Looks like a comparable number of acceptances would be for the 2015 marathon.

http://www.runblogrun.com/2014/09/2015-boston-marathon-qualifier-acceptances-release-notes-by-larry-eder.html

"During the second week of registration, 6,447 Qualifiers were accepted. These were qualifiers who where one minute, two seconds (1:02) or faster than the Qualifying time for their age group and gender."

Good stuff. Thanks for hunting that info down for my lazy ass. Never will be apples to apples, but if there is 6,000+ spots left for this week, I think that should put to bed all of the crazy 2-4 minute cutoff talk.

In at BQ - 5:45.

5kPace wrote:

runner stat guy wrote:

Using the accepted list provided at

http://registration.baa.org/2020/cf/Public/iframe_EntryLists.cfm

there are approximately 15875 people already accepted which would leave at most 7,200 open spots (assuming the same field size as last year), not 9,200. I would expect that the number of accepted applications from last week will also climb.

Ehhh... Link down. But if thats true, good data. To your point, they're not done verifying last week registrations. But 6,000+ spots left is a pretty sizable chunk if it holds. Especially when you compare it to last year at 220 spots. 2018 accepted 2,900 people at a 3:23 cutoff.

Link works fine

Lemo man wrote:

In at BQ - 5:45.

We already know everyone under BQ-5 minutes is in. That's not news.

Hardloper wrote:

5kPace wrote:

Ehhh... Link down. But if thats true, good data. To your point, they're not done verifying last week registrations. But 6,000+ spots left is a pretty sizable chunk if it holds. Especially when you compare it to last year at 220 spots. 2018 accepted 2,900 people at a 3:23 cutoff.

Link works fine

Weird. I'm getting the following error on both my phone and computer.... "The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later."

Thanks to those who chimed in with more data points. Knowing roughly the percentage of non-US applicants helps.

My post yesterday was meant for fun - I was playing with the numbers. I did make one mathematical error but the entire approach was superficial and it was meant to be.

So, yes, we do not know the distribution of runners' times but I think we can assume that we will see a larger density of runners per second in applicants as we get closer to the 0-5min applicants. Last year, applicants basically broke down as follows:

2019 Applicant distribution

A 17% - 20 mins+ better than BQ or 5256 applicants and 8.7 runners/min *

B 28% - 10-20 mins or 8620 applicants and 14.4 runners/min

C 28% - 5-10 mins or 8545 applicants and 28.5 runners/min

D 25% - 0-5 mins or 7604 applicants and 25.4 runners/min

*assumes that the majority of these runners would be clustered toward the 20-30 min range.

If we just play with last year's applicants as a proxy of the population of runners who (a) make the grade and (b) are interested in applying and we assume that this proxy holds from last year to this (it doesn't necessarily hold but this is just for sh*ts and giggles anyway).

AND

We assume that 25% of population A from 2019 will slip into population B for 2020 AND 50% of population B-2019 will slip to population C-2020 AND 100% of population C-2019 will slip into population D-2020 then this year's distribution could look like this:

2020 Forecasted Applicant distribution

A 20 mins+ 3942 runners

B 10-20 mins 5624 runners

C 5-10 mins 4310 runners

Total week 1 applicants: 13,876 runners

D 0-5 mins 8545 runners

And if the above held true, we would have 8765 spaces available for week 2 and 8545 runners vying for them (assuming the same 433 runner population for 10 consecutive BMs. And that's not what's happening according to update BAA registrations so far this year.

So... on to the goalpost effect

Has the toughening of standards drawn some runners from population C-2019 to improve their times by 5 mins and stay in the week 1 population? If even 20% of C-2019 achieved that outcome, then we could see another 1700 runners scattered across the week 1 population but significantly clustered in C-2020. If the number was as high as 25%, that would add a further 427 week 1 applicants. I am going to assume that the number will not be much higher than that. If it is around 20%, then there will be 7,000-ish spaces available for squeakers this week. That number could drop to as low as 6500 or even lower if the goalpost effect is stronger but my 20% goalpost assumption pegs it at 7,056 spaces for week 2.

Regardless, there are clearly thousands of spaces available for us squeakers this week. So, how many of us are there?

I expect the squeaker population will be larger than last year's but not by much - if a part of last year's 5-10 min population managed to stay in week 1, then they're not in the squeaker group this year and this will somewhat reduce the upward pressure on the squeaker group this year due to any goalpost effect from last year's squeaker group. If I had to pick a size of the D-2020 (squeaker) population, I would stick with 8500-ish - or 28 runners per second. Given that, I do expect there will have to be a cut-off and right now it looks like it will be around 47 seconds.

And, yes, I had fun crunching these numbers and I made TONS of assumptions - all of which are undoubtedly going to be wrong.

RIght or Wrong, fun analysis. I prefer this over the people just spewing "2:30 or bust!" guesses. Love seeing how people think through their analysis. I've been of the opinion just based on historic trend that the cutoff would be around 1minute this year. Nothing out there right now to indicate otherwise. If anything, if it gets down to cutting a 500 people, i'd think Boston would consider letting everyone in. Maybe i'm wrong. Seems like a trivial amount of people to cut.

My only question is, how correct (or close to actualizing) is the 13,876 number? The analysis is pretty much predicated on that variable.

What all you guys are omitting is the demand. The major variable no one can come close to knowing.

Demand is very high, but you still need to BQ'ed to be able to enter.

Demand Curve wrote:

5kPace wrote:

RIght or Wrong, fun analysis. I prefer this over the people just spewing "2:30 or bust!" guesses. Love seeing how people think through their analysis. I've been of the opinion just based on historic trend that the cutoff would be around 1minute this year. Nothing out there right now to indicate otherwise. If anything, if it gets down to cutting a 500 people, i'd think Boston would consider letting everyone in. Maybe i'm wrong. Seems like a trivial amount of people to cut.

My only question is, how correct (or close to actualizing) is the 13,876 number? The analysis is pretty much predicated on that variable.

What all you guys are omitting is the demand. The major variable no one can come close to knowing.

Demand is factored in when we have a large sample size of who has applied through Week 1. Sure, it's not perfect. But we can make assumptions and educated guesses on demand for Week 2 based on historical contribution from the 0-5 minute crowd as a % to Ttl.

Or congratulations, I hope you have a blast...

Look at this baloney, despite lowering the standard 5 minutes:

Tunnel Light Marathon North Bend, WA

BQ 2020 - 193 38.4%

BQ 2019 - 140 32.8%

BAA are you listening. End the downhill marathon cheater business.

NoProblemWithDownhills wrote:

Look at this baloney, despite lowering the standard 5 minutes:

Tunnel Light Marathon North Bend, WA

BQ 2020 - 193 38.4%

BQ 2019 - 140 32.8%

BAA are you listening. End the downhill marathon cheater business.

If BAA was fair, they would not give women a 30 mins leeway from the mens. That would change the percentage down a bit. Follow New York, like a 15-20 mins is plenty of time.

NoProblemWithDownhills wrote:

Look at this baloney, despite lowering the standard 5 minutes:

Tunnel Light Marathon North Bend, WA

BQ 2020 - 193 38.4%

BQ 2019 - 140 32.8%

BAA are you listening. End the downhill marathon cheater business.

Your numbers are BQs for 2018 & 2019 from Tunnel Light.

BQ2018 - 140

BQ2019 - 193

BQ2020 - 182

Tunnel Light 2019 is good for BQ 2020 and 2021. I assume it's a double BQ type race each year.

I only copy/pasted from findmymarathon BQ 2020/2019 stats page. If people are using that for calculations they are screwing sh1t up.