Wednesday, September 30, 2015

It's official 2:28 was the cutoff.

Wow.


The rejection letter...




From BAA (http://www.baa.org/news-and-press/news-listing/2015/september/2016-boston-marathon-qualifier-acceptances.aspx):
 Notification to applicants on Wednesday, September 30

BOSTON – The Boston Athletic Association (B.A.A.) today continued its notification to applicants of their acceptance into the 2016 Boston Marathon®. In preparation for the 2016 Boston Marathon, the B.A.A. implemented the same registration process for qualified runners as it used in the 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015 Marathons, allowing the fastest qualifiers to register first. The 120th Boston Marathon will be held on Monday, April 18, 2016 and will mark the 31st consecutive year that the event will have John Hancock Financial as its principal sponsor.

In cooperation with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the eight cities and towns along the Boston Marathon route, the B.A.A. has set the field size for the 2016 Boston Marathon at 30,000 official entrants. More than 80% of the field will be comprised of athletes who have met the qualifying standards. The balance will consist of invitational entrants, many of whom run for local charitable organizations. Since 1989, between the B.A.A.’s Official Charity Program and principal sponsor John Hancock Financial’s Non-Profit Bib Program for the Boston Marathon, more than $234 million has been raised for charity. 

Registration for runners who met the B.A.A.’s Qualifying Standards for the 2016 Boston Marathon began on Monday, September 14 at 10:00 a.m. ET using a “rolling admission” schedule and continued through Saturday, September 19 at 10:00 p.m. ET. Registration re-opened on Monday, September 21 at 10:00 a.m. and application submissions were received through Wednesday, September 23 at 5:00 p.m. ET.

Qualifiers who were two minutes, 28 seconds (2:28) or faster than the Qualifying time for their age group and gender were accepted into the 2016 Boston Marathon.

    28,594 applications were received during the registration period for qualifiers.
    24,032 Qualified applicants have been accepted to date or are in the process of being accepted, pending verification of their qualifying performance.
    4,562 applicants were unable to be accepted due to the large number of eligible qualifiers who submitted an application for entry combined with field size limitations.
    Details of the B.A.A.’s registration process for Qualifiers can be found on the following web page: http://www.baa.org/races/boston-marathon/participant-information/athlete-registration.aspx

During the registration period, the breakdown of accepted Qualifiers was as follows:

    4,744 Qualifiers met their qualifying time by 20 minutes, 00 seconds or faster.
    7,495 Qualifiers met their qualifying time by 10 minutes, 00 seconds or faster.
    6,849 Qualifiers met their qualifying time by 05 minutes, 00 seconds or faster.
    4,540 Qualifiers met their qualifying time by 02 minutes, 28 seconds or faster.
    404 Qualifiers were accepted based on finishing 10 or more consecutive Boston Marathons.

During the second week of registration, 5,252 Qualifiers were accepted.

Those who submitted a verified qualifying performance that was 2 minutes, 28 seconds or faster than the qualifying standard for their age and gender have been accepted into the race. Qualifying performances for the 2016 Boston Marathon must have been run between September 13, 2014 and September 19, 2015.  Notices via e-mail to those accepted will be issued by the B.A.A. beginning today.

Of the registered athletes, 404 Qualifiers who have an active streak of ten or more consecutive Boston Marathons completed entered during a pre-registration period in August and have been accepted. In the coming months, qualified elite athletes and athletes with disabilities will be added to the field.

For reference, Qualifiers needed to be one minute, 02 seconds or faster for their age group and gender for the 2015 Boston Marathon, and one minute, 38 seconds or faster for their age group and gender for the 2014 Boston Marathon.  

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Whatever will be, will be


Thank you all for your kind words over the course of this blog, and especially the last week.

To all us squeakers, we will find out tomorrow.

I'm confident I know which of the two emails BAA will be sending me. There will be more runs in the future.

Congratulations everyone.

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Bonus Stats - Year vs Minutes to Spare



Here's some additional data (you might need to click the image to make it clearer). Of all the finishers of the Feeder Races (minus Berlin, because I still think that's an outlier), here are the breakdowns of how many people finished per cutoff category.

As you can clearly see, for races run this year vs last year, despite fewer total finishers, more people beat the various cutoffs.

Bonus Update - with the last 5 minutes expanded in 15 second intervals (from the data pool of 24 feeder marathons)




FAQ
Believe it or not, I started this thing as a way to ease my mind. I had the post-marathon depression, and needed something to occupy my time. I had a BQ with 67 seconds in the bank, and I wanted to try and prove to myself that I would get in. ... this data exercise has morphed into something much larger. With nearly 100,000 views, I did not expect this blog to get so much attention.

Q1. How accurate were you in predicting last year's cutoff?
A1. I did not do this exercise last year

Q2. Can you run the numbers for last year and see how close your method would be?
A2. No Friggin way! It has taken hours and hours and hours to assemble all the finisher data so far. It would be a neat project, if you want to pay me to do, I will consider it :-)

Q3. Do you still think your method is correct?
A3. Yes. Based on the assumptions; however, the biggest assumption is that the same proportion of people apply for Boston as did last year - I do not know if that is true or not; moreover, I do not know if more Faster people are applying this year vs last year.

Q4. Do you still think the cutoff will be 91 seconds?
A4. No. I think it will be closer to 2 minutes and 10 seconds. [Edit to add: I think it was a mistake to carry the Berlin Marathon through the analysis. It was clearly an outlier, and although listed as one of the top feeder races, is likely not proportionally representative of the BAA application field. The analysis without Berlin is probably accurate, hence my 2:10 prediction].

Q5. Are you going to do this next year?
A5. No!

Q6. What about Erie and Lehigh and marathon X that are "double-qualifiers"?
A6. Yes, I know about that. I only counted them once. Yes, it might be a source of error. But: These marathons were also "double-qualifiers" the year before so by only counting them once and comparing them against each other, I think it smooths the results and keeps a consistent methodology.

Q7. What about people who "age-up"? (i.e. were 44 when they qualified, but are running Boston as a 45 year old - hence different standard)
A7. Yes, again, a source of error... But: The methodology is applied consistently, and there would have been people who "aged-up" the previous year too. As long as the same percentage of people "age-up" across categories, this error will smooth itself out.

Q8. Can I get a copy of all your data?
A8. I'm not sure. Technically I think it is copyrighted by the various races and/or timing companies. I have "screen-scaped" it into a nice tidy database for my own use, which I'm pretty sure is not in contravention of the copyright laws.  Perhaps I can send it to you with names removed? I don't know. It's a large data file with over 500,000 records. Let me think about it and I'll get back to you.

And now, let me ask you this... I've seen my blog posted on Facebook and Forums. Every time, people refer to me as "he". Why is this? ;-)








Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Final Projected Boston Marathon 2016 Cutoff at 91 seconds*


With all of the top 25 feeder marathons complete, the current trend for the 2016 Boston Marathon Cutoff is 91 seconds (90 if you're an optimist).

*Or, it could be higher (see the heading "Dirty Little Secret")

The Caveats:
The analysis assumes a lot of assumptions. I have outlined the objective and methodology on this page. Basically, I look at the number of people who qualified for the 2015 race, using the "feeder marathons". To qualify for the 2015 race, participants needed a BQ minus 1m2s. These races were all run last year. I then look at the same races for this year, and see how many people would qualify using the same cutoff.  If fewer people qualify, then I decrease the cutoff (make it easier to qualify), until the same number of people qualify as did last year. Conversely, if more people make the 1m2s cutoff than last year, I increase the cutoff (making it harder to qualify) until the same number of people qualify.


Table 1: Year vs Year, By Marathon
2015 Qualifying Year2016 Qualifying Year
MarathonFinishersBQBQ2015BQ2015%FinishersBQBQ2015BQ2015%
Big Cottonwood1,30826224419 %1,52728425217 %
Erie 97831228029 %95931728930 %
Berlin 36,1225,7695,45515 %29,0274,5304,30815 %
St. George 5,8181,1981,13720 %5,80699793916 %
Twin Cities 8,8551,01095311 %8,8531,04196711 %
Portland 6,9455044707 %6,4294293956 %
Chicago 38,8543,5273,3149 %40,5814,0043,7629 %
Steamtown 2,16537735917 %2,18443140819 %
Columbus 5,52361156110 %5,44562058111 %
Toronto Waterfront 3,60448745313 %3,97165460115 %
Baystate 1,30430127121 %1,53137835023 %
Marine Corps 23,3851,1701,0735 %19,6877186623 %
New York City 50,1343,9803,7257 %50,4333,6293,4007 %
Indianapolis Mon'tal 3,52151848314 %3,72559455215 %
Richmond 4,8424414189 %5,09552048710 %
Philadelphia 10,9141,3411,25211 %10,3331,3371,23512 %
California International 6,2381,2921,19519 %5,7931,2911,18520 %
Houston 6,9456986519 %7,1336986489 %
Boston 31,21010,56410,04632 %26,63512,79212,21846 %
Bayshore2,01731430015 %2,00834132916 %
Ottawa5,32481274514 %4,50180675017 %
Mountains 2 Beach1,61739937023 %1,58645241926 %
Grandma's 6,1731,1081,04717 %6,0751,1341,06618 %
Santa Rosa1,23125822218 %1,43634131822 %
Lehigh Valley1,13923521519 %91818616818 %
TOTAL266,16637,48835,23913 %251,67138,52436,28914 %
Notes:
1. BQ = Number of Runners who met the minimum Boston Qualifying Standard
2. BQ2015 = Number of Runners who met the Cutoff for the 2015 Boston Marathon (BQ minus 1m 2s)
3. BQ2015% = Percentage of finishers meeting the BQ 20015 cutoff time.
4. AG = Age Group on the day of the feeder race, not the subsequent year's Boston Marathon.
   This is a small source of error, as a person may "age-up" for the subsequent year's Boston Marathon.

Analysis
Looking at the table above: 266,166 runners finished a 2015 "feeder" qualifying race, whereas 251,671 finished a 2016 "feeder" race: 14,495 fewer people. However, more people met the minimum BQ standard 38,524 for the 2016 qualifying year versus 37,488 for the 2015 qualifying year. Moreover, 1050 more people met the 1 minute and 2 second cutoff in the 2016 qualifying year so far than did in 2015.

Now that the Boston Marathon registration is open - assuming the same proportion of qualified runners apply for the race (see objective and methodology) - there wouldn't be enough spots for everyone. We have to increase the cutoff so that we whittle the 36,289 people (who met the 2015 cutoff in a 2016 qualifying race) down to 35,239 the number of people who met the Cutoff for 2015.

Through a numerical modelling approach, the answer to the solution, of what the cutoff should be becomes 91 seconds.

At 91 seconds, 35,230 people will make it into the marathon. (only 9 fewer than this year). For the optimists, at 90 seconds: 35,266 people will make it (27 more than last year).

Table 2: Projected qualifiers, from this years races, by AG based on an 91 second cutoff.
AGFeeder Race FinishersFinishers who met minimum BQBQ minus 91s% of AG meeting BQ minus 91s% of Total Boston 2016 Field
F18-34 42,914 5,437 4,975 12% 14%
F35-39 17,300 2,551 2,348 14% 7%
F40-44 16,693 2,578 2,320 14% 7%
F45-49 12,459 2,618 2,375 19% 7%
F50-54 8,244 1,644 1,510 18% 4%
F55-59 4,127 888 823 20% 2%
F60-64 1,690 400 379 22% 1%
F65-69 542 116 112 21% 0%
F70-74 158 32 30 19% 0%
F75-79 30 5 5 17% 0%
F80+ 6 3 3 50% 0%
M18-34 41,531 5,229 4,832 12% 14%
M35-39 22,569 2,760 2,510 11% 7%
M40-44 25,197 3,303 2,991 12% 8%
M45-49 21,937 4,006 3,653 17% 10%
M50-54 17,314 3,066 2,765 16% 8%
M55-59 10,266 1,965 1,801 18% 5%
M60-64 5,396 1,162 1,080 20% 3%
M65-69 2,253 543 513 23% 1%
M70-74 788 173 163 21% 0%
M75-79 212 35 32 15% 0%
M80+ 45 10 10 22% 0%
Totals 251,671 38,524 35,230 14% 100%

* And now for a dirty little secret...

Dirty Little Secret

As was noted earlier in this analysis, the Berlin Marathon for this year appears to be a large outlier, with a massive influence on the cutoff time. It is keeping the cutoff lower than it probably should be.

2015 Qualifying Year2016 Qualifying Year
MarathonFinishersBQBQ2015BQ2015%FinishersBQBQ2015BQ2015%
All 25 Feeder Races266,16637,48835,23913 %251,67138,52436,28914 %
(Minus) Berlin 36,1225,7695,45515 %29,0274,5304,30815 %
New TOTAL230,04431,71929,78413 %222,64433,99431,98114 %

If I run the numerical model again without the Berlin numbers and a new cutoff such that the number of qualifiers is equal to 29,784... the result is ....

... Pause for effect ...

131 seconds (2 minutes and 11 seconds!!!)


Lehigh Valley Marathon Results Comparison 2014 vs 2015

AG2014 Event2015 Event
FinishersBQBQ 2015BQ%FinishersBQBQ 2015BQ%
F18-34179413723 %144252317 %
F35-3993242326 %73111515 %
F40-4467141421%6516625 %
F45-4959101017 %488617 %
F50-54385513 %348524 %
F55-59245521 %175829 %
F60-6452240 %101110 %
F65-6954480 %62233 %
F70-74
0 %0 %
F75-790 %0 %
F80+0 %0 %
M18-34194393320 %134302622 %
M35-3996211922 %96181619 %
M40-4492151516 %80131216 %
M45-4992181620 %77222229 %
M50-5488121014 %649714 %
M55-5959131222 %37121132 %
M60-64358623 %234417 %
M65-69134431 %72229 %
M70-74
0 %3000 %
M75-79


0 %
0 %
M80+


0 %


0 %
Total1,13923521521 %91818616820 %
Notes:
1. BQ = Number of Runners who met the minimum Boston Qualifying Standard
2. BQ2015 = Number of Runners who met the Cutoff for the 2015 Boston Marathon (BQ minus 1m 2s)
3. BQ% = Number of Runners who met the minimum Boston Marathon Standard.
   This is a small source of error, as a person may "age-up" for the subsequent year's Boston Marathon.

Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Field size set at 30,000

Field size will be 30,000 official entrants for the 120th running of event.

BOSTON -- Registration for the 2016 Boston Marathon opens on Monday, September 14, 2015 at 10:00 a.m. ET. The B.A.A. will use the same process to register qualified runners as it used in the 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015 Boston Marathons, allowing the fastest qualifiers to register first.BOSTON -- Registration for the 2016 Boston Marathon opens on Monday, September 14, 2015 at 10:00 a.m. ET. The B.A.A. will use the same process to register qualified runners as it used in the 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015 Boston Marathons, allowing the fastest qualifiers to register first.

The 2013 Boston Marathon had 27,000 official entrants, the special 118th Boston Marathon in 2014 featured a larger field size of 36,000 entrants, and the 2015 Boston Marathon had a field size of 30,000 official entrants.

More: http://www.baa.org/news-and-press/news-listing/2015/september/registration-for-the-2016-boston-marathon-opens-monday-september-14.aspx