Will I run Boston 2026?

In the meantime, if you're at all curious about the kinds of levels to which people go with trying to predict the cutoff check out this blog[1]. This is from Brian Rock [2], who every year collects data about a lot of marathons all over the world and then tries to guess the official cutoff for the Boston marathon. Very cool stuff!

[1]: https://runningwithrock.com/boston-marathon-cutoff-time-trac... [2]: https://runningwithrock.com/about-me/

Re: Will I run Boston 2026?

#5

Post by rconti » Tue, Sep 16, 2025, 4:58 PM UTC

Context:

There's a limit on how many people can run the Boston Marathon.

To qualify to "run Boston", you have to run another marathon in a qualifying time[1], prior to applying. For example, the qualifying time for a male 40-44 is 3h05m. For a female of the same age, 3h35. Non-binary, 3h35.

You submit your application and qualifying race and time, and then some time _later_, based on the number applications received that are within the cutoff (and it's always more than they can accept), they adjust the cutoff time downwards even further. That additional cutoff delta is the what's being calculated on the slider here. So if your published cutoff is 3h05, and the slider predicts a 6min delta, you need to have run 2h59, not 3h05.

1. https://www.baa.org/races/boston-marathon/qualify

Re: Will I run Boston 2026?

#6

Post by rconti » Tue, Sep 16, 2025, 4:58 PM UTC

Finnucane wrote: post #3

No. The answer is no.

Betteridge's law of Boston qualifying times.

Re: Will I run Boston 2026?

#7

Post by steadyelk » Tue, Sep 16, 2025, 4:59 PM UTC

Finnucane wrote: post #3

No. The answer is no.

We have a friend who has qualified three times but has never run it due to the cutoff. Maybe the BAA should consider a separate bucket for these runners.

Re: Will I run Boston 2026?

#8

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Sep 16, 2025, 5:01 PM UTC

davidgomes wrote: post #4

As someone with a 5:38 delta, I'm very anxiously waiting for BAA to announce the official cutoff. In the meantime, if you're at all curious about the kinds of levels to which people go with trying to predict the cutoff check out this blog[1]. This is from Brian Rock [2], who every year collects data about a lot of marathons all over the world and then tries to guess the official cutoff for the Boston marathon. Very c…

[deleted]

Re: Will I run Boston 2026?

#9

Post by steadyelk » Tue, Sep 16, 2025, 5:01 PM UTC

davidgomes wrote: post #4

As someone with a 5:38 delta, I'm very anxiously waiting for BAA to announce the official cutoff. In the meantime, if you're at all curious about the kinds of levels to which people go with trying to predict the cutoff check out this blog[1]. This is from Brian Rock [2], who every year collects data about a lot of marathons all over the world and then tries to guess the official cutoff for the Boston marathon. Very c…

Brian Rock's tracker is great. It's a ton of work to collect and maintain that estimate throughout the year, so we hope he keeps it up!

Re: Will I run Boston 2026?

#10

Post by abeppu » Tue, Sep 16, 2025, 5:06 PM UTC

rconti wrote: post #5

Context: There's a limit on how many people can run the Boston Marathon. To qualify to "run Boston", you have to run another marathon in a qualifying time[1], prior to applying. For example, the qualifying time for a male 40-44 is 3h05m. For a female of the same age, 3h35. Non-binary, 3h35. You submit your application and qualifying race and time, and then some time _later_, based on the number applications received…

Methodologically, why would you have one cutoff vs a different cutoff per group (as there are different qualifying times per group)?

I am not a marathoner, but I'd imagine that a 6 min decrease from the stated qualifying time cuts out a larger proportion of younger runners (i.e. decreasing the threshold from 2h55 to 2h49 for men 18-34 seems like a much sharper cut than decreasing 4h20 to 4h14 for women 60-64). I would have thought you'd want to pick the delta by looking at the distribution within each gender x age pool.