This week, the Boston Athletic Association dropped a bombshell of an announcement – that qualifying times from downhill marathons will be subject to an adjustment starting with the 2027 Boston Marathon. As the competition to get into Boston has become more intense, runners’ feelings about downhill marathons have become equally intense. Steep downhill races – … Read more
The dashboard below contains summaries of race reports from Reddit – specifically r/AdvancedRunning and r/Marathon_Training. It includes over 1,200 marathon race reports published since 2016. You can use the filters at the top to narrow down the list of race reports in the table on the left. Click on a specific race report in the … Read more
Feature Photo: By Whoisjohngalt – Own work, CC0, Link Last week, USATF announced the entry standard for the 2028 US Olympic Trials Marathon: 2:16 for men and 2:37 for women. The new men’s standard is two minutes lower than it was in 2024 (2:18). That was a minute faster than it was in 2016 and … Read more
Last week, I wrote up a summary and analysis of John Korir’s training for the 2025 Boston Marathon. He has a public Strava profile, so it’s all out there for someone with the patience to comb through it. One thing that I wasn’t able to see previously, though, was the details of his Tuesday workouts. … Read more
In November, I launched the Boston Marathon Cutoff Time Tracker to project the expected cutoff for the 2026 Boston Marathon. Since then, I’ve made regularly updates to incorporate additional race results as they become available. For those of you that are interested in making your own prediction and who are technically savvy, I’ve cleaned up … Read more
John Korir has had one hell of a year. He won the 2024 Chicago Marathon, and then he turned around and won the 2025 Boston Marathon. For someone who previously won LA in 2:09-2:12, ran Boston in 2:10, and ran Chicago in 2:05, it’s a big come up. From 2021-23, he was good. But in … Read more
Feature image by Martineric from Lille, France., CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons Like Boston, London, and Chicago, the New York City Marathon offers a method of guaranteed entry for faster runners. While the other three races have recently tightened their standards, NYRR has not followed suit. At least, not yet. I’ve been working on … Read more
Feature photo courtesy of erp3d on reddit A question I frequently get asked is, “How accurate was the Boston Marathon Cutoff Time Tracker in the past?” It’s impossible to answer that question directly, because the tracker itself is new this year. This is the first time that I’ve collected the results and made a continuing … Read more
My last major update on the Boston Marathon cutoff time projection came at the end of March. The projection was 5:20, and things had been moderating slightly for several weeks. But as I said then, April could prove to be an impactful month, with results from both Boston and London, along with many other races. And April did … Read more
Feature image by dorestbays on Flickr – CC BY-SA 2.0 Last month, I published an analysis of the impact of downhill marathons on the Boston Marathon qualifying process. As a reminder, here are a few of the conclusions I came to: That analysis was published before the 2025 Boston Marathon. I used the entry list … Read more