Context for those not following running news, The Boston Marathon lowered qualifying times for most prospective runners for 2026 race [0]. Because the Boston Marathon has limited capacity, you can only run if you either:
1) raise $5k+ for a charity (limited spots)
2) run a full marathon below* a qualifying time
The reason it's below* is because even if you run under a qualifying time, there may be enough people even faster than you that fill up the available spots.
This results in some years where you needed to be many minutes faster than the posted qualifying time to guarantee a spot, and every few years, the BAA (group in charge of Boston Marathon) drops the qualifying times.
Note, even though the qualifying times have been dropping, they have been even faster in the past (see the 1980s)[1]
As someone that's done the Boston Marathon a few times, I am glad they are trying to find a good balance of reasonable qualifying times for the most participation without dramatically expanding the field. I'm also always surprised with how popular and well known this marathon is given the NYC marathon (and others) are harder to get into, only about 2 of the miles are actually in Boston [2], and the start/finish are so far away making participating a logistic headache. But that could be what gives it the charm and why I'm now thinking about doing 2026
I can't answer this for everyone, but as someone who has run 5 marathons and is running my 6th in 5 weeks (Frankfurt).
Boston has some kind of mythical status among marathoners. You're _not_ really there until you've qualified for Boston. I do not know where this comes from, but what I do know is that QUALIFYING for Boston as a male (33) is a BHAG that's fun to chase after.
Boston is the 6th of the 6 Abbot Marathon that are considered the "big" 6.
New York, London, Chicago, Boston, Berlin and Tokyo. All the others you either win the lottery our you've 4 of the other ones. Nothing you can really do in 6 conseq years.
It's not even the fastest course, but it's the course for those who are "serious" about running as a hobby. Running a marathon isn't enough. Running Boston separates you from the try-hard crowd, with a lack of a better word.
A while back I thought maybe, just maybe, if everything went in my favor, I could qualify at 3:10. Then they lowered it to 3:05, and that might as well be the far side of the moon.
According to TFA it's now 2:55. There is no way in the universe I would ever run a sub-3 marathon. (I'm no longer in that age bracket, but the time for my bracket is similarly impossible.)
That's fine with me. It's awesome that so many people are running marathons that the most prestigious one is utterly full. It's a really absurd hobby, and the best thing about race day is all of those people going "Wow, we're about to do something incredibly stupid together."
There are plenty of other fun marathons to do. This year mine is gonna be the Dramathon -- which will end with bottles of scotch.
The carbon-plate shoes (starting with the Nike Vaporfly, then AlphaFly) have resulted in faster race times. The Boston Athletic Association is reacting accordingly.
> Our mission is to understand fitness so you can achieve your athletic dreams. Recently, athletes have been gathering lot of data, but nobody has been able to fully leverage these sources to help people become more fit.
Strava has an entire data scientist dep devoted to analysing the captured data.
They also publish a lot of their thinking around Relative Effort (RE) and other performance metrics.
I can't say to much because we are trying to keep our methods stealth, but I think it's better to be last than first in this race. Strava isn't the only company in this field: Garmin, Kaizen, and AI Endurance are just a few. For a while, our race predictions were a lot more accurate than the biggest of these (Garmin, which has a lot more data than Strava), which is probably telling of the difficulty. There isn't an obvious company you go to to tell you about your fitness, but if there was we would have never started our mission.
I have a friend who is something like a 6-hour marathoner and has run Boston a couple times for charity. The experience is pretty subpar to hear her tell it. The college students are pretty intoxicated by that point, the organizers are starting to clean up the course and move the runners to the sidewalks, and the course is full of trash where they haven't cleaned up yet.
The porta-potties don't have a lot to recommend them either once 30-something-thousand people have come through ahead of you too.
Ran Boston and sub3’ed multiple times and have to say it was worth it. But the training process is all consuming especially if you aren’t naturally talented, like running 75 miles per week, so keep things in perspective
This is the kind of information that would be better presented in a simple table.
For every age group up to 60 the window between 0% and 100% chance is under 5min.
Maybe the question is: should you run the Boston Marathon
In 2016, a systematic medical review found that the risk of sudden cardiac death during or immediately after a marathon was between 0.6 and 1.9 deaths per 100,000 participants, varying across the specific studies and the methods used, and not controlling for age or gender. This translates to a few published marathon deaths worldwide in a typical year, although the authors lamented the lack of a central registry for the information.
That said, the Boston Marathon has a lower presence in the marathon-death-tables, the bombing aside: That's really not relevant to this. So, if you want to take the aggregate risk (which is between the risk of fatal insect sting, and lightning) of all the Marathons to chose to run, Boston is one of the better ones.
The Boston Marathon is not open to the general public - you cannot simply "choose" to run it like you can other marathons.
It's likely that more people suffer health issues from overexertion by trying to qualify for the Boston Marathon, because it's a difficult goal. Once you're already running in the Boston Marathon there is less drive to push yourself over the limit.
kibitzor|1 year ago
1) raise $5k+ for a charity (limited spots)
2) run a full marathon below* a qualifying time
The reason it's below* is because even if you run under a qualifying time, there may be enough people even faster than you that fill up the available spots.
This results in some years where you needed to be many minutes faster than the posted qualifying time to guarantee a spot, and every few years, the BAA (group in charge of Boston Marathon) drops the qualifying times.
Note, even though the qualifying times have been dropping, they have been even faster in the past (see the 1980s)[1]
As someone that's done the Boston Marathon a few times, I am glad they are trying to find a good balance of reasonable qualifying times for the most participation without dramatically expanding the field. I'm also always surprised with how popular and well known this marathon is given the NYC marathon (and others) are harder to get into, only about 2 of the miles are actually in Boston [2], and the start/finish are so far away making participating a logistic headache. But that could be what gives it the charm and why I'm now thinking about doing 2026
[0] https://apnews.com/article/boston-marathon-qualifying-times-...
[1]https://www.baa.org/races/boston-marathon/qualify/history-qu...
[2]https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/boston-marathon-route-ma....
erksa|1 year ago
Boston has some kind of mythical status among marathoners. You're _not_ really there until you've qualified for Boston. I do not know where this comes from, but what I do know is that QUALIFYING for Boston as a male (33) is a BHAG that's fun to chase after.
Boston is the 6th of the 6 Abbot Marathon that are considered the "big" 6. New York, London, Chicago, Boston, Berlin and Tokyo. All the others you either win the lottery our you've 4 of the other ones. Nothing you can really do in 6 conseq years.
It's not even the fastest course, but it's the course for those who are "serious" about running as a hobby. Running a marathon isn't enough. Running Boston separates you from the try-hard crowd, with a lack of a better word.
jfengel|1 year ago
A while back I thought maybe, just maybe, if everything went in my favor, I could qualify at 3:10. Then they lowered it to 3:05, and that might as well be the far side of the moon.
According to TFA it's now 2:55. There is no way in the universe I would ever run a sub-3 marathon. (I'm no longer in that age bracket, but the time for my bracket is similarly impossible.)
That's fine with me. It's awesome that so many people are running marathons that the most prestigious one is utterly full. It's a really absurd hobby, and the best thing about race day is all of those people going "Wow, we're about to do something incredibly stupid together."
There are plenty of other fun marathons to do. This year mine is gonna be the Dramathon -- which will end with bottles of scotch.
canucker2016|1 year ago
erksa|1 year ago
Strava has an entire data scientist dep devoted to analysing the captured data. They also publish a lot of their thinking around Relative Effort (RE) and other performance metrics.
Where do you differ?
tmulc|1 year ago
lilfrost|1 year ago
mauvehaus|1 year ago
The porta-potties don't have a lot to recommend them either once 30-something-thousand people have come through ahead of you too.
zeroonetwothree|1 year ago
twobitshifter|1 year ago
qmatch|1 year ago
charliebwrites|1 year ago
Is this actually accurate or did I find a bug?
If not, such a weird 5 minute window
ack210|1 year ago
nextworddev|1 year ago
aeyes|1 year ago
tmulc|1 year ago
createaccount99|1 year ago
Though perhaps I'll stick to attempting a 25min 5k first. Catch Boston some other year weep
w1|1 year ago
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
raldi|1 year ago
ggm|1 year ago
jerlam|1 year ago
It's likely that more people suffer health issues from overexertion by trying to qualify for the Boston Marathon, because it's a difficult goal. Once you're already running in the Boston Marathon there is less drive to push yourself over the limit.
khuey|1 year ago
(1 death per 1 participant according to the tale of Pheidippides.)
philipwhiuk|1 year ago
And what's the cardiac risk for no exercise at all?
You're not controlling for the fact you have to exist.