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
The London Marathon was about two weeks ago. It’s the last of the Majors for the spring – following the Tokyo and Boston Marathons. Those two races each saw a significant number of new Six Star Finishers. How many new finishers are there after London? As I did after Boston, I collected the raw data … Read more
Feature image by 4300streetcar on Wikimedia Commons – CC BY 4.0 We all know elite marathon runners run a lot. But exactly how many miles and hours do they put in during a typical week? The accepted wisdom is that the elites put in 100+ miles per week. Some have released training plans over the … Read more
It’s been a crazy couple of weeks for the Boston Marathon cutoff time. At the end of March, the projected cutoff time was around 5:20. Although the trend towards larger fields had continued – the number of qualifiers was still dropping slightly, moderating the cutoff time projection. Then along came Boston. Although I anticipated there … Read more
Last Monday was the Boston Marathon, and it was an exciting one. There were a record number of applicants for this year’s race, and there was incredible demand to be there on race day. After a miserable year last year, when the heat decimated the field, runners had near-perfect weather. The elites finished in blazing … Read more
Feature photo courtesy of erp3d on reddit Recently, I did two in depth analyses of data related to the six star finishers. I published the last one last week – in the lead up to Boston – and I thought it would be interesting to do a quick follow up to see what changed with … Read more
Yesterday was a huge day in Boston. Not only did the elites lay down some blazing fast times – Sharon Lokedi and the top three women all broke the previous course record, while John Korir now holds the third fastest time in Boston history and Conner Mantz narrowly missed becoming the fastest American ever – … Read more
Feature image by Julian Mason on Flickr. CC BY 2.0. A few weeks ago, I published an analysis of data that I collected from the Abbott World Marathon Majors Six Star Finisher Hall of Fame. It provided some insight into who the Six Star Finishers were – and the path they took to collect all … Read more
If you want to start a heated discussion with a group of runners, ask them how they feel about downhill races. To some, they’re tantamount to cheating — an easy way to boost your time by 5 or 10 minutes (or more), claim a new PR, and qualify for Boston. To others, they’re a perfectly … Read more
For the past few months, I’ve been tracking the results of marathon finishers around the world in an attempt to project the cutoff time for the 2026 Boston Marathon. I put together a live tracker, and I published an early analysis in December and a follow-up in January. The emerging picture suggested that the new qualifying times reduced the … Read more