How the Impact of the New Boston Marathon Qualifying Times Vary by Age

There’s an old saying that if you want to qualify for Boston, you don’t have to get faster. Just get older.

When I analyzed the qualifying times last year, I found that to be generally true. The qualification rate – the percent of runners in a given age group who meet their qualifying time for Boston – increased with age. In other words, older runners had an easier relative time qualifying.

Since then, BAA announced new qualifying times. They dropped the times by five minutes for runners under 60 and left them alone for runners 60+. How do these changes impact the qualification rates?

I wrote up a thorough analysis of the new qualifying times in Runner’s Life on Medium, and if you’re not a Medium subscriber you can request a special link to read the analysis here.

But continue below for a synopsis of my findings and some of the data.

How Do Qualification Rates Vary by Age Group?

This is the main question here. What percentage of each age group qualifies for Boston?

The bar chart below shows the qualification rate for each age group, from under 20 to 80+. It’s split between men on the left and women on the right.

The colors group each age group into broader age groups – under 35, 35-49, 50-59, 60-69, and 70+.

Note: The underlying data is the dataset used by my Boston Marathon Cutoff Time Tracker, and it includes races from September 1, 2024 through February 16, 2025.

A few things are fairly obvious at first glance.

1. Qualification rates rise with age, to a point. The peak is 60-64, and it tapers off from there.
2. The general trend is the same for men and women.
3. There is a huge gap between the 55-59 age group and the 60-64 age group.

If you compare the men and women closely, you’ll find that the women often qualify at a slightly higher rate. But the differences between age groups far outweighs any differences between gender.

There’s a fairly rapid rise in qualification rate from under 20 through 30-34. All of these age groups have the same qualifying time – 2:55 for men and 3:25 for women. However, I think this points to the fact that younger runners – especially those in their early 20’s – are often underdeveloped aerobically. You’d expect to see rapid improvements as runners age and as they string together multiple years of running and racing.

What’s Out of Line Here?

There are three parts of the graph that stick out to me as most problematic.

The first is the 45-49 age group. This is the first age group with a ten minute gap, and it’s followed with a five minute gap as you age up to 50-54.

As a result, there’s a big jump in qualification rates from 40-44 and 45-49, followed by a drop from 45-49 to 50-54. While the effects of age are starting to set in when a runner reaches their 40’s, there’s nothing to suggest that there’s a precipitous drop between their early forties and late fortes. If anything, this data suggests the opposite. A five minute bump from 40-44 to 45-49 would keep the qualification rates in a nice, gradual increase.

Second, the 60-69 age groups are far out of line with the other age groups. They already had the highest qualification rates under the old qualifying times, and this is exacerbated by the fact that their qualifying times did not drop at all.

There’s now a 15 minute jump from 55-59 and 60-64. As a result, the qualification rate for me goes from 12% to 18.3%, and for women it goes from 12.9% to 18.1%. Even if these times were lowered by five minutes, the qualification rates for these age groups would far exceed any other age group.

Third, the qualification rates for runners 70+ drop precipitously.

If you start with the assumption that either a) the rates should increase to reward runners for staying in the sport or b) the rates should increase because older runners are more likely to be long term, durable runners … then the rates should continue to increase past 69.

Instead, runners in their late 70’s and early 80’s face increasingly steep odds of qualifying.

Does the Cutoff Time Make It Worse?

I explore this topic in depth in the full analysis. But in short: yes.

As it is, younger runners have the toughest times qualifying. When an equal cutoff time is applied across the board, it hits them the hardest.

For a young man running 2:55, there simply isn’t a lot of daylight left. Cutting off five minutes is a significant task, and the further you go beyond that the further you get from “serious amateur” and closer you get to sub-elite. A five minute cutoff at 2:50 narrows this group down to the top 5-6% of runners in their age group.

For an older man in his 60’s, the difference between 3:50 and 3:45 is minimal. There’s simply more room for improvement, and five minutes means far less. Even with a five minute cutoff, about the top 15% of this age group would make the cut.

If you explore the data in my Boston Marathon Cutoff Time tracker, runners in their 60’s are more likely to have big buffers, while the buffer for runners in their early 30’s drops significantly after 5-10 minutes.

Are Older Runners Just More Likely to Be Fast?

I’ve had multiple people offer this hypothesis: as runners age, the weak are weeded out by injuries and disinterest. Only the strong survive, and older runners are more likely to be fast. So you’d expect them to have a higher qualification rate.

This makes some intuitive sense, but I think it’s also easy to overstate the case.

When you look at the distribution of runners – of all ages – there are fast and slow runners. People don’t drop out just because they’re slow, and the distribution of runners 60+ doesn’t look all that different from runners in their 30’s and 40’s.

I’m going to dive into this more deeply in the future. But here’s a preview of my future analysis.

If you use age grading to calculate equivalent times for a 30 year old man and a 60 year old man, a 3:00 marathon is equivalent to approximately 3:41-3:42. In 2024, just under 10% of men 30-34 hit three hours … and 12% of men 60-64 hit 3:42.

So are older men more likely to hit an equivalent time? Slightly.

But the difference – between the two extremes – is about 2 to 3 percentage points. The difference in the qualification rates above is about 10%.

This may explain a small component of why qualification rates rise with age … but it hardly explains it fully.

Would Recalibrated Qualifying Times Eliminate the Need for a Cutoff?

No.

I’ll explore this more in a future analysis, too, but making it harder for older runners to get in will do little to alleviate the push towards a steep cutoff time.

It’s a simple numbers game. There are far more runners today than there were two years ago. And its increasingly looking like these new runners are on the younger end of the age spectrum.

Runners 60+ make up a small share of the overall field at Boston. If you pushed down their qualification rates significantly, you might reduce the cutoff time by a small amount. But it wouldn’t have a huge impact. We’re talking seconds, not minutes.

What Would You Change?

Personally, I’m ok with their being some disparities. I don’t think it’s problematic per se that qualification rates rise with age. It rewards longevity in the sport, and it gives people something to aspire towards in the long term.

But I think the increase should be mild and methodical – not arbitrary.

If it were up to me, I’d change three things:

1. I’d reduce the qualifying times for the 45-49 age group by five minutes. They are over-represented in the Boston field, and this group is large enough to have an impact on the cutoff time numbers.
2. I’d reduce the qualifying times for the 60-64 age group by 5-10 minutes, and the 65-69 age group by 5 minutes. It’s fine for them to be more likely to get in, but the disparity right now is just too glaring to be considered fair and equitable.
3. I’d raise the qualifying times for runners 75-79 and 80+. This is such a small group … and if they’re still running, I want to celebrate them at Boston.