Earlier today, BAA announced how many people applied for Boston 2025: Over 36,400 - a sizable increase from last year where the cut-off was -5:29. Simultaneously, they announced that the standards for 206 for all of the age groups under 60 years of age were being tightened by 5 minutes. Clearly, the cut-off for this year is going to be more than 5 minutes. But, the dread comes in not knowing precisely how much, yet.
There are still some people whose times have not yet been verified, and BAA is loathe to send out the acceptances until they have finished that verification process -- at least for those people who would potentially have made the cut.
Scuttlebutt is that they will announce the cut-off, and send acceptance/rejection notifications by mid-week next week.
Will BQ-7:36 be good enough? This is my first time truly feeling like a "squeaker," and it's very tense. I need to get into Boston this year to continue my streak and come that much closer to being part of the group that no longer has to worry about the buffer, rather "merely" meeting the qualifying standard -- for those people who have run Boston 10 consecutive years, they get this privilege. (And running the 2020 COVID virtual counts as part of the streak.) 2026 would be my 10th consecutive year, if all goes well.
And given the tightened standards for 2026, I can't sit on ceremony and expect my time from Erie this year will be good enough for the 2026 application, with it turning into a BQ-2:36. So, I have one or two races next year where I will need to run for time, aiming yet again for a 3:15 or better. Hopefully I can accomplish that in Little Rock so that I don't have to worry about doing it in Erie next year, and I'll be able to run that as a pacer instead.
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