Last weekend was the Philly Marathon. This is the last large race in the fall marathon season.
I didn’t run this year, although I did run the race back in 2022. But I happened to be in the city, and I got a chance to spectate for a change.
The weather was beautiful – slightly chilly, but not too cold or too windy. One of the great things about Philly is that – as long as you don’t get hit with an early winter burst of cold weather – you’re very likely to get good running weather.
As I’ve done with other races, I collected the results afterwards and put together an analysis. You can read the full analysis in Runner’s Life on Medium, and if you’re not a Medium subscriber, you can request a special link to read the article here.
But in the meantime, I’ll share a few key data highlights below. If you’ve got more questions or you want some more depth, make sure you read the full analysis on Medium.
This Was the Largest Philly Marathon Ever
This has been a year for growth among marathons – with London, Berlin, Chicago, and New York all reaching record high levels of participation. The same is true at the Philadelphia Marathon.
The visual below is a simple line graph with the number of finishers in each year, going back to 2000.
In the case of Philly, there’s actually a big drop off following the previous peak (2012). Many races saw smaller fields post-COVID, but Philly’s field had declined quite a bit in the mid-2010’s.
This year, there were 12,381 finishers – which is the largest field since 2012 (11,641 finishers).
If you dig deeper into the finisher numbers, there are two things worth noting:
- Philly has a significant gender imbalance compared to other large American races. This year, less than 40% of the finishers were women.
- The gender gap is particularly glaring among runners in their 30’s.
There’s some more detail on the finisher stats in the Medium article.
Average Finish Times This Year
How fast were the runners at the 2024 Philadelphia Marathon?
Pretty fast.
Among young runners – under 40 – men had an average finish time of just under 4:00 and women had an average finish time of around 4:20-4:25. That median finish time increases with age beyond 40.
In addition to the average finish times:
- 8.5% of men under 40 finished under 3 hours
- 9.7% of women under 40 finished under 3 hours
Fewer Runners Qualified for Boston
While runners did pretty well overall, fewer of them met their qualifying time for Boston.
In part, this is due to the new qualifying times. Last year, the BAA reduced the qualifying times for the 2026 Boston Marathon – and with stricter times, one would assume there would be fewer qualifiers.
Last year, around 1,500 runners met their qualifying times. This year, it was less than 1,000.
But even if you applied the new times to last year’s runners, there would be a drop off.
The visual above shows the number of runners in 2023 (blue) and 2024 (purple) who met the new qualifying times.
On the left – the women’s field – things are fairly constant with just a little variation here and there.
But on the men’s side, there are quite a few age groups with significant drop offs between 2023 and 2024 (25-29, 40-44, 45-49). Collectively, these account for over 150 fewer qualifiers.
While this is just one race – it’s good news for people who are hoping for a softer cut off this year.
Want More Running Data?
This is just a little taste of the analysis of the 2024 Philadelphia Marathon. You can find a deeper analysis in the full article on Medium.
And if you’re interested in this kind of data deep dive, fill out the form below and subscribe to our newsletter. Every week, I share a feature article with data driven analysis of marathon running.