Boston : an impossible dream?

The announcement that the cut-off time for the 2021 Boston marathon, to be held in Oct 2021, was 7:37 made me realise that running Boston again may now be a fading dream .  The qualifying times are already quite tough (3:50 for my age group) - bettering it by nearly 8 minutes seems an impossibility at least for now. Given my current FM time of about 4:30 even getting to sub 4 hrs is going to take time. I should probably plan on qualifying in the next age group where the BQ time is 4:05. However, by 2023, when the qualifying window will open, it is very likely that the qualifying times are likely to be more stringent . The trend has been for it to get stricter every few years due to the growing number of aspirant runners and he fixed field size. The cut off times have also varied - below 2 minutes in 2012-2014 and 2020, between 2 and 5 minutes in 2016-2019 and now above 7 minutes in 2021! The spike in 2021 cut-off time can probably be attributed to the reduction in field size from 30K to 20K runners and the pent up increase in demand due to the 2020 race being cancelled. Hopefully from 2022 onwards the cut-off will go back to below 5 minutes. For now I am thankful that I was able to get in and run the 2014 race and will focus on progressively going sub 4 hrs and staying there at least till early 2023!!