BMI goals

BMI is an interesting thing. Your body's fitness level boiled down into one, simple, easy to remember, meaningless number. I've always poo-pooed the number as too general to be useful.

Here's a research tidbit that got me thinking more about BMI's implications:
"The present work reports on the physical characteristics of the 392 (310 males, 82 females) starters and 270 (216 males, 54 females) finishers of the 2007 Western States Endurance Run, one of the largest 161-km trail runs in North America. Among the starters, mean (and 25th to 75th percentiles) body mass index (BMI) values were 23.2 (21.6 - 24.6) and 20.6 (19.4 - 21.9) kg . m (-2) for the men and women, respectively. ... Among the top-5 overall finishers, mean BMI values were 23.2 (range 22.4 - 24.7) for the men and 19.8 (range 17.3 - 21.1) for the women."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18401807

I am currently in the ~26 BMI range, and am heading steadily towards a near-term goal of 25. Which makes me happy, and I should be - I'll be healthier and run better. But it is a long ways away from my aspirational goals of finishing well in ultra marathons, and it looks like a BMI in the 23/24-range is required.