I usually reserve these deep dives for the Majors and a handful of other really big races. While Grandma’s Marathon is a big race, it’s not that big. But there were a few things that made this year’s race particularly interesting.
It’s the 50th anniversary of the race, and it sold out in less than twenty four hours. It was also significantly bigger than previous years. It’s generally known as a fast race, with a larger than usual number of men going sub-3:00.
But when I checked the results to update the Boston cutoff time tracker, I was surprised to find that the number of BQ’s at Grandma’s had only risen by a small amount. Someone reached out to me on Instagram to point out that the weather had been less than optimal, and I later saw a similar discussion on Reddit.
Were times slower than usual this year because of a) the weather, b) the people who signed up, or c) some combination of both?
Let’s dig in and see what the data says.
How Is the Composition of the Field Changing?
Grandma’s Marathon is always in high demand, and over the past few years it has been one of the races signaling the trend towards faster sellouts. With this year set to be the 50th anniversary, the organizers expected even greater demand and they shifted some bibs from the half marathon over to the full marathon.
In 2024 and 2025, the field included about 7,500 runners each year. This was already the largest in Grandma’s history, paralleled only by the 40th anniversary race back in 2016. Typically, the race had 5,000 to 6,000 finishers. When the dust settled, this year’s race had a whopping 9,600 finishers.
How did this sudden increase impact the composition of the field – and does it look different from recent years?
The visual below shows the total number of runners in each age group over the past three years, with men and women separated out into two sets of bars. The overall gender distribution remained about the same – 57-58% male in each year.
The race tends to be tilted towards younger runners, with relatively few Masters runners beyond 45. In each year, the 25-29 age group was the largest age group for each gender, followed by 30-34. The 20-24 age group, which is typically much smaller, was similar in size to 35-39.
From 2024 to 2025, things shift slightly towards younger runners. The overall field size remains the same, but those younger age groups grow. From 2025 to 2026, though, it’s a bit hard to understand how the relative proportions are changing. Each age group does grow – but there’s a noticeable increase among some of the older age groups as well.
The visual below shows the same data, but it norms each bar to show the size of each age group as a percent of the entire gender.
Here, it’s easier to see that the size of the younger age groups shrank relative to the older age groups this year. Using the 30-34 age group as the dividing line, the share of runners under 35 increased from 2024 to 2025 – and then shrank back below those 2024 levels.
It’s still close to 50% runners under 35, but this year’s race did have relatively more runners in their 40’s and 50’s.
How Did This Year’s Weather Compare?
This year’s weather did not originally appear to be that bad on paper. But reports from the race suggest that while it wasn’t terrible, it may have been humid and windy enough to take a toll on many a runner – especially if they hadn’t made adjustments to their race plan.
At the start line in Two Harbors, it was in the mid-50’s but the dew point was also in the low 50’s. So it was fairly humid, but not insanely so. By the time finishers reached Duluth later in the morning, the temperatures had risen to the mid-60’s, with a dew point of around 54-55. There was also a steady wind coming from the northwest.
Last year was comparatively worse. The starting temperature in Two Harbors was in the mid 60’s with a dew point in the mid 60’s. That’s very humid. Three hours after the start, they had risen to the mid-70’s, and they continued to rise into the early afternoon. There was some wind on and off, but it wasn’t quite as steady.
If you go back one more year to 2024, the temperatures were still warm – around 60 throughout the morning. And it was humid, with a dew point in the low to mid 50’s. But there was a light mist of rain, cloud cover, and a steady wind from the north and the east. Unlike this year’s headwind / crosswind, runners would have had a tailwind for much of the race.
Really none of these three years had excellent conditions. The temperature was warm and humid in each. It was the hottest in 2025, but with the humidity in the other years the milder temperatures could still be problematic. The other big variable, though, seems to be the wind.
Two years ago there was a tailwind and this year there was a headwind. Like Boston, this is a point to point course. And if we learned anything from this year’s Boston Marathon, it’s that a steady wind along a point to point course can have a pretty big impact on a race.
How Did the Boston Qualifying Rate Change?
So conditions were less than ideal. On paper, it’s hard to say for certain whether they were better or worse than last year. It was cooler, but still humid, and there was a headwind. But conditions were pretty definitively worse than in 2024 when there was a steady tailwind.
Two years ago, over 1,200 finishers qualified for Boston – a rate of 16.4%. Of course, that was also before the qualifying times changed.
Last year, only about 850 finishers qualified – a rate of only 11.4%. Part of this drop was surely because of the new qualifying times, but part would also have been because of the weather conditions.
This year, there was a huge bump in finishers – over 2,000 or 27%. If the Boston qualifying rate stayed the same as last year, that would have meant 2-300 additional BQ’s. Instead, I ran the numbers and I was surprised to see that the number of BQ’s increased by less than 100.
The visual below shows the Boston qualifying rate across different age groups over the last three years. Note that I combined the age groups for the purpose of this visual but the individual qualifying times were used for each runner.
In each case, there’s a big drop off from 2024 to 2025, and this is to be expected. This is primarily a result of the new qualifying times. However, those qualifying times didn’t change for runners 60+. So the fact that the qualifying rate dropped for those runners is a hint that the conditions in 2025 were worse. The drop among men 60+ is shockingly large – but the fact that it was so much higher in 2024 than every other age group suggests this was something of an outlier for those older men.
When you then go from 2025 to 2026, the qualifying rate drops across the board. In some cases (men under 35 or 50-59, women 50-59), that drop is minimal. But in no case does it increase. For some age groups, especially runners in their late 30’s and 40’s, that drop is significant.
Overall, the Boston qualifying rate dropped to 9.7% – quite a bit lower than last year.
How Did the Distribution of Finish Times Change?
If we look at the distribution of finish times, we’ll get some more clues about why runners were slower this year than last year.
Typically, you see a clustering of runners finish just below certain target times – like 3:00, 3:30, 4:00, or a particular age group’s BQ. On a good day, that spike just under the target time will be high and the valley after the time will be low. On a bad day, things will be more randomly distributed as people suffer, miss their goal time, and then end up with some other time.
The visual below groups finishers in two minute increments – so 2:58 includes anyone who finished between 2:58:00 and 2:59:59. This particular graph focuses on men under 35, and common goals (3:00, 3:30, and 4:00) are marked on the graph.
In 2024, there were big spikes just below each of those three main goal times. There were particularly big spikes, compared to the other two years, at 3:30 and 4:00.
In 2025, those spikes are all still there, but they are much smaller. And this year, there was hardly a spike under 3:00, although smaller spikes did continue at 3:30 and 4:00.
The next visual shows the same data for women under 35. The only difference is that the benchmarks highlighted are 3:30, 4:00, and 4:30.
Again, there is a huge spike of finishers just under the first goal (3:30) in 2024. That moderates in 2025, and it’s almost non-existent in 2026. This year, there’s almost no evidence that women were targeting their BQ (3:25).
At 4:00, there was a larger bump in 2024, but it’s still there in 2025 and 2026. The slower time, 4:30, doesn’t actually have a bump in any of the three years. I really just highlighted it because it was similar to the 4:00 target time for men.
The visuals above just focus on the target times, but there’s a broader distribution of finish times out to 6:00 or 6:30. The visual below compresses things a bit by combining runners into five minute buckets (i.e. 2:55:00 to 2:59:00). The dropdown menu will flip through other age groups.
Among the younger runners, this just makes it more clear that there were fewer runners in the 3:00 / 3:30 area this year. It’s not that they just missed the time and finished in the next bucket. They’re not there at all – which suggests that the share of runners targeting fast times was lower.
The inflection point seems to be at about 4:00, with fewer men finishing under 4:00 and more finishing beyond 4:00. That seems more indicative of a different group of men signing up – rather than a race day impact from weather.
Among men 35-49, the biggest group were targeting 4:00 this year. The groups of runners targeting 3:00 and 3:30 seemed to be non-existent. For women 35-49, there also seemed to be a much bigger group around 4:30.
Among young men, there are also generally more runners along the long tail past 5:00. There’s a spike at 5:10 – maybe people who missed a 5:00 target – and then slightly more at each point than last year. Women under 35 also had an odd spike out around 5:20 and generally higher levels from 5:00 onwards.
When you combine it all, this year did seem to be worse than last year. And part of the story is likely that the weather conditions – namely the wind – impacted runners and caused them to miss their goal times. But I think there’s also a significant impact from slower-than-usual runners signing up for the race. It’s not just that people missed their goal of a fast time (i.e. 2:55 / 3:00) – there are fewer runners all along the left end of the distribution.
What About the Front of the Pack?
Another place to look is at the front of the field. Did the fastest runners perform better or worse than in recent years?
The men’s winner (Amanuel Mesel) finished in 2:11:21. That’s slightly better than last year’s winner (Joel Reichow, 2:11:58) and slower than 2024’s winner (Elisha Barno, 2:10:54).
Mesel ran the race in each of the past three years, and this was his fast finish. But Barno, the 2024 winner, was 2 minutes slower this year.
Seven of the other top 25 men ran this race in at least one of the previous two years. Of the six that ran last year, 3 were faster this year, 1 was about the same, and 2 were slower. Of the two that ran in 2024, one was faster and one was slower.
On the women’s side, Dakotah Popehn won in 2:28:51 – slower than the previous two winners (2:25:14 and 2:23:52) and her time from back in 2023 (2:26:56). Of the six women who also ran last year, four were faster this year, one was about the same, and one was slower. Of the two that ran 2024, one was faster and one was slower.
Based just on comparing those individual results, this year seems to have been at least marginally better than last year. But not universally so.
But there’s one other interesting tidbit from the men’s side of things.
The tenth man this year finished in 2:14:42 – compared to 2:16:59 / 2:16:43 in the previous two years. The top fifteen finished under the new OTQ standard (2:16:00) and the 25th man finished in 2:18:45 (compared to 2:23:08 / 2:25:15).
If you went all the way back to 2023 – the last year Grandma’s was eligible for use as an OTQ – the men’s lead pack was similar (15 sub-2:16 and 27 sub-2:18). This year’s women’s field, on the other hand, was much less competitive on that front than it was back in 2023.
What’s the Bottom Line on the 2026 Grandma’s Marathon?
When you look at the stats on paper, this year’s Grandma’s Marathon was slower than previous years. With the exception of the lead men, who busted out some impressive times in search of an OTQ, the rest of the field performed slower on average than in 2024 and 2025.
Despite a much larger field, which was also slightly older than previous years, the number of BQ’s coming out of the race only increased slightly. That’s good news for anyone who is concerned about the cutoff for the 2027 Boston Marathon, and it’ll further reduce the chances of a worst case scenario and soften things by at least a few seconds.
It’s hard to say for certain whether this change in finish times was caused by the weather conditions in Duluth or by a surge in less experienced runners. I think it’s safe to say that the weather conditions were subpar, and they certainly could have had an impact on some runners – especially those who aren’t already used to the humidity. But looking at the distribution of finish times, it also seems that it’s partially driven by a smaller share of runners targeting fast times at this year’s race.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens next year – whether the race still sells out quickly and whether the field reverts to a more experienced and faster group of runners.
In any case, if you ran this year’s race, I’d love to hear about it. Leave a comment below. How did your race go? Did you meet your goal – and do you think the weather played a role?