Threads has been my go-to app for all sorts of running discourse lately. In the last two weeks, I saw a couple of posts in passing along the lines of “there goes another runfluencer with a Boston bib who doesn’t deserve it.”
My nosy ass went into the comments section to see who it was, given that I hadn’t seen anyone in my feeds on any of the 3 main apps I use (Threads, IG and TikTok) who had been offered one. Nothing came up, so I forgot about it.
Then, Molly Seidel and her sister Izzy took to their podcast I Hate My Thoughts with Molly & Izzy Seidel to jump in on some hot takes. The BQ drama came up, and Molly had some choice words.
If you’re taking spots away from people who are working really, really, hard to qualify for Boston, I’m sorry. Get the fuck out of here.
Molly Seidel, Professional Marathoner & 2021 Tokyo Olympics Bronze Medalist, Women’s Marathon
Her comment didn’t sit right with me. I understand her intention was to stand up for the runners who busted their asses to make the cutoff but didn’t. However, in the process of doing this, she slammed content creators for essentially taking advantage of an opportunity from a sponsor, that they otherwise would not have had access to.
That was a bit spicy to hear from someone who appeared in my social media feeds, just a few months ago, having fun with Puma & Rihanna at F1 in Las Vegas. That’s a big sponsor perk if I ever saw one. She got to take advantage of an experience due to her connections with Puma, as a perk of being good at her job (which so happens to be running fast).
People love to forget that creators are also working hard at a job. It’s very easy to discount their efforts, because they’re using the same tools & platforms to make a living that most of us use for mindless entertainment. Planning content, editing, keeping up with the joneses, feeding the algorithm… building a big platform/community and hanging onto it is NOT light work.
I’m going off on a tangent. I’ll be back for this one. Back to the running part.
The qualifying standard may be getting faster, but so are the runners.
Distance running has increased in popularity over the years, and BQ applicants were on a steady rise all the way up until 2019. To mitigate, Boston tightened it up and moved the goalposts for the 2020 marathon, so that men and women both had to run 5 minutes faster in order to qualify. The BQ standard (Open Division) was now 3:00 for men, 3:30 for women. It seemed to cut the number down by a little.
As you can see, the yellow line took a downturn for 2020’s race.
After the 2020 field was set (you know, in precedented times), we all know what happened next. The pandemic wiped out in-person events across the globe. Boston 2021 held a virtual event in the Spring, and an in-person race in October 2021, with a reduced field size. The full-scale event returned to Boylston Street in 2022.
For the following two years, 2022-2023, 100% of time qualified applicants were accepted, something that hadn’t happened since 2013.
The pandemic (and consequently in-person opportunities to prove oneself) had fueled the downward trend in applications for 2 years. But, once the world and races seemed to go back to operating under “normal” after the great interruption, the number of applicants to Boston increased.
2023 saw a slight uptick, 2024 blew the doors wide open.
The amount of time-qualifiers skyrocketed, and was above and beyond the maximum capacity of the race itself for the first time since before COVID.
2019 saw 30,458 applications. In 2024, the B.A.A. received 33,058.
There must be something in the water, because the qualifying standard was NOT relaxed. Runners are getting faster, the race is getting more popular, or both. The number of applicants for 2024 increased by 8,729 over the average number of applicants in the years since the standard was tightened (24,328), a 35% jump.
“Some influencer stole my friend’s bib.”
Here’s the spicy take that I ruminated over 10 miserable miles yesterday. Molly Seidel, someone who I’ve been a fan of and respected for years, went off and took the “be fast or get off my lawn” approach. She took the stand, and doubled down on it in her Instagram story. That’s how I heard the quote in the first place. Directly from the source.
Here’s the thing. In each press release that I scrounged for data, the B.A.A. always included this line:
The remainder of the field will consist of invitational entrants, including runners participating as part of the Bank of America Boston Marathon Official Charity Program, as well as invited professional athletes and Para athletes.
Runners toward the faster end of the spectrum seem to have it stuck in their heads that Boston is supposed to be made up of an exclusively time-qualified field. It is not, and it hasn’t been for several years now. Predominantly time-qualified? Yes, but exclusively? Not a chance.
If the B.A.A. *truly* wanted to take the “be fast or you can’t play with us” approach, they would. But, they have been offering bibs to runners who fall in various categories outside of “time qualifier” for some time now.
Sponsor bibs? Not new. Charity bibs, accounting for ~10% of the field, have been around since 1989. After googling down the rabbit hole, I found that towns the race passes through (Wellesley, Hopkinton for example) may apply for and receive invitational bibs. Some may go to public servants in Fire/Law Enforcement. Some go to athletes who commit to raise money for charities specifically benefitting those towns.
Other methods of qualification outside of the traditional application process include:
- The B.A.A. Professional Development Program, for promising non-elites
- If you are a resident of MA, NH, VT, RI, then you can join the B.A.A. Running Club, which provides “Access into B.A.A. races including the Distance Medley & Boston Marathon.”
- 660 qualifiers were accepted into 2024’s race based on finishing 10 or more consecutive Boston Marathons. While they’ve had to BQ for a decade to get this designation, these bibs are not part of the time-qualifier pool.
Big Races = Big Business
Did I go as far finding myself on ProPublica looking at the B.A.A.’s tax forms yesterday afternoon? Yes. It cost them something like 13 million dollars to put the race on in 2019.
(Note: 2019 is currently the most “typical” filing year available. 2020-2021 were affected by COVID, Tax Year 2022 included operating expenses for both the Fall 2021 & Spring 2022 events, so it was inflated, and 2023 hasn’t been filed yet.)
They reported $13,067,064 in marathon-related expenses, and $9,763,492 in revenue.
Race entry that year was $200 for US residents and $250 for international runners. That equates to somewhere between 4.6 and 5.7 million dollars in revenue if it was solely based on entry fees alone.
Where do you think that extra $4-5 million is coming from?
Willing to bet it’s from their roster of corporate sponsors. Surely those sponsors aren’t dishing it out for the love of the sport. They’re doing it because they want something in return. Marketing. Eyeballs. Bibs to award to athletes of their choosing.
I personally am not pressed about sponsor bibs being given out, it’s all part of business. Big events need funding somehow, and if a few bibs here and there help secure it so that they can run the event, that’s what it is.
As for the Creators on the receiving end of invitational bibs, I am fully aware that this is a very unpopular take but going to say it anyway:
Creating content and building/maintaining a large following also takes hard work. It may not be “athletic” work, but it’s still work. It’s sometimes easy to lose sight of that, because the general population considers it a very unserious form of media.
Whoever is providing these bibs to them (either sponsors or the B.A.A. themselves) see value in what the creators bring to the table.
Is the percentage of bibs awarded in the time-qualifying process trending down? Yes. Is 2024’s allocation horrendously out of line with previous years, some LONG before the concept of a “runfluencer” existed? No.
I’d hazard a guess that the dip in 2022-23 was only due to the fact that the field size itself was larger than the number of BQ applicants. There HAD to be non-BQ bibs awarded to get to a full field. Bibs were likely handed over in multi-year deals made with sponsors/donors/partners that couldn’t be walked back once the number of BQ applicants exploded for 2024.
Looking at the numbers, I’m not sure the B.A.A. saw the surge in applicants coming, and made arrangements for non-BQ bibs accordingly.
It’s very easy to accuse a handful of invitational entrants for being the reason that your friend didn’t get into the Boston, especially the higher-profile ones, but invitational bibs are not new news.
Nobody seems to be coming for the Newton firefighter, B.A.A. Run Club Member, or 10x finisher who received an invitational bib outside of the traditional BQ method.
At the end of the day, what the B.A.A. chooses to do with their race is up to them.
See what the comments section had to say…
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