Registration for the 2013 Boston Marathon is starting. The BAA recently sent out early registration notices to the runners who have finished the last 10 (or more) consecutive Boston Marathons. The rolling admission process for everyone else starts September 10. So it seems like now is a good time to revisit my study of the effect of the new Boston qualifying standards on the number of potential entrants.
I can now compare the 2011 and 2012 results from MarathonGuide.com for 22 marathons with more than 108,000 finishers. If I use the results from all 22 races, there’s a drop of almost 50% in the qualifying rate. However, most of that drop comes from the Boston Marathon itself. If I leave out the Boston numbers, the drop in the BQ rate is only about 20%. Boston normally has a disproportionate number of qualifiers (for obvious reasons), but those numbers were hit hard by the heat in 2012.
The most important question, “How does this affect my chances of getting into Boston?”, remains unanswered. If I had to guess, a 20% drop doesn’t seem like enough to keep Boston 2013 from filling up before I run Cape Cod at the end of October. But if I run a BQ at the Cape, the new standards should help me get in in 2014.
Here are the numbers (for another look at my methodology, refer to my blog post from April):
| 2011 | 2012 | |||||
| Marathon | # | #BQ | % | # | #BQ | % |
| Boston | 23,879 | 10374 | 43.60% | 21,554 | 2705 | 12.55% |
| City of Los Angeles | 19,626 | 796 | 4.06% | 18,729 | 667 | 3.56% |
| Cleveland | 2,666 | 435 | 16.32% | 2,594 | 220 | 8.48% |
| Disney World | 13,512 | 638 | 4.72% | 13,467 | 483 | 3.59% |
| Eugene | 2,290 | 551 | 25.00% | 2,345 | 467 | 20.50% |
| Foot Traffic Flat | 393 | 81 | 20.60% | 385 | 62 | 16.10% |
| Glass City | 638 | 127 | 19.90% | 778 | 144 | 18.50% |
| Grandma’s | 6,333 | 1144 | 18.06% | 5,785 | 695 | 12.01% |
| Houston | 6,903 | 575 | 8.33% | 7,637 | 997 | 13.05% |
| Light at the End of the Tunnel |
271 | 57 | 21.00% | 335 | 76 | 22.70% |
| Miami | 3,484 | 369 | 10.59% | 3,906 | 260 | 6.66% |
| Mississauga | 1,066 | 258 | 24.20% | 814 | 136 | 16.70% |
| National | 2,877 | 419 | 14.56% | 3219 | 158 | 4.90% |
| Ojai 2 Ocean | 256 | 72 | 28.10% | 800 | 188 | 23.50% |
| Ottawa | 4,071 | 695 | 17.07% | 4,178 | 640 | 15.70% |
| Pittsburgh | 4,265 | 398 | 9.33% | 4,608 | 287 | 6.23% |
| Pocono Mountain Run For The Red |
630 | 184 | 29.20% | 968 | 151 | 15.60% |
| Rock ‘n’ Roll Arizona | 5,062 | 703 | 13.89% | 3,863 | 284 | 7.35% |
| Run Charlevoix | 330 | 68 | 20.60% | 331 | 49 | 14.80% |
| Sugarloaf | 381 | 128 | 33.60% | 563 | 99 | 17.60% |
| The San Francisco | 5,999 | 468 | 7.80% | 6,440 | 436 | 6.77% |
| Vancouver International | 3,218 | 447 | 13.89% | 4,232 | 481 | 11.37% |
| Total | 108,151 | 18987 | 17.56% | 104,312 | 9527 | 9.13% |
| (without Boston) | 81,395 | 8194 | 10.22% | 82,758 | 6822 | 8.12% |
(3.9 mi. run; 146#)
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Thank you for the intriguing analysis.
Regarding the Light at the End of the Tunnel marathon, the increase in BQ percent from 2011 to 2012 was due to the weather, warm and sunny in 2011, cool and cloudy with a little drizzle for 2012. Also, total finisher count in 2012 was 351, not 337, and percentage of BQ % was 21.9% based on 77 runners qualifying.
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So, I have the Boston QT -10 what do you think my chances of getting a place are given that I’m travelling from the UK and have already booked flights and hotel?
If you register as soon as you can, good. Everyone with a BQ-10 who registered when their window opened got in last year, even with the less-stringent standards.
Thanks Ray
How about a QT-3? This is my first BQ and its getting depressing realizing I may not even get to run the event.
marathonguide.com did not adjust their BQ indicators for the new, faster standards, at least for some age groups. Click on a race and see how they mark times between 3:05 and 3:10 as BQs for men under 35.
Which race did you look at?
http://www.baa.org/news-and-press/news-listing/2012/september/registration-for-the-2013-boston-marathon-will-continue.aspx
With the new standards, Boston 2013 didn’t fill up in the initial two week registration period.
Ray,
I’m following the 2013 Boston field size closely.
I think it’s ~13k-14k, at the moment.
Have you run the Cape before?
I ran my PR at the Cape in 2002.
Registration for Boston 2013 closed at about 11AM ET today.
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