Recently, the Chicago Marathon announced that it was changing the qualifying times for guaranteed entry beginning with the 2025 Chicago Marathon.
The qualifying times have been reduced across the board, but the magnitude of the change varies with age group. The age groups have also changed.
Previously, qualifying times applied by decade (i.e. 20-29, 30-39, etc). Now, the age groups mirror those used by the BAA for the Boston Marathon. The youngest age group is 18-34, followed by 5 year age groups, and capped off with the 80 and up catch all.
Below, you’ll find a collection of visuals, articles, and data sources related to the topic. All of these are available for reuse for any purpose, provided that attribution is made in the form of a link to this post or this website.
Chicago Qualifying Times Data Source(s)
The 2023 Marathon Results dataset on Kaggle includes the results of every individual finish at a marathon in the United States in 2023.
This includes approximately 429,000 finishes across 641 races. I’ve used this dataset to understand approximately what percentage of runners meet the Chicago qualifying times – and how much the changes will impact each age group.
The 2010-2019 Marathon Results dataset on Kaggle includes a large sample of individual marathon results.
This sample includes all American marathons with over 500 finishers that took place in September, October, or November, from 2010 to 2019. The sample should be representative of American marathoning as a whole. The sample includes approximately 2,000,000 individual finishes from around 100 different races.
Chicago Qualifying Times Articles on Medium
I’m in the process of writing a series of three articles on this topic, and they’ll be published in Runner’s Life on Medium.
Here’s the first one: How Will the New Chicago Marathon Qualifying Times Change Your Odds of Running the Race? It focuses on how much the qualifying times changed and what percentage of runners (based on marathon results from 2023) would or would not qualify under the new system.
The future articles will focus on: a) whether more runners are meeting the qualifying times over the past decade and b) whether more finishers at Chicago are capable of running the old qualifying times.
Chicago Qualifying Times Visuals
Here are a collection of visuals hosted on Flourish. You can use the link to embed the visual on most web publishing platforms.
Change in Chicago Qualifying Times from 2024 to 2025
This visual shows the qualifying times used in the 2024 Chicago Marathon (blue dot) and those that will be used in the 2025 Chicago Marathon (purple dot). The filter in the top left allows you to toggle between men and women.
If you hover over an individual dot, the pop-up includes the change in minutes and the change as a percent of the 2024 qualifying time.
Number of Finishers Meeting the 2024 / 2025 Qualifying Times
This visual is based on an analysis of all marathon finishes in American marathons in 2023.
The blue bar represents the number of finishers who would qualify for the Chicago Marathon under the 2025 qualifying times. The purple bar represents the number of finishers who qualified under the 2024 qualifying times but would not qualify under the new standards.
Number of Finishers Meeting the Qualifying Times
This visual is based on an analysis of all marathon finishes in American marathons in 2023.
The blue bar represents the number of finishers who would qualify for the Chicago Marathon under the 2025 qualifying times. The purple bar represents the number of finishers who qualified under the 2024 qualifying times but would not qualify under the new standards. The pink bar represents the remaining finishers who would not qualify under either standard.
If you hover over a bar, the pop-up also includes the total number of finishers in that particular age and gender group.
Percent of Finishers Meeting the Qualifying Times
This visual is based on an analysis of all marathon finishes in American marathons in 2023.
The blue bar represents the percentage of finishers who would qualify for the Chicago Marathon under the new 2025 qualifying times. The purple bar represents the percentage of finishers who qualified for the Chicago Marathon under the old 2024 qualifying times.
The dropdown in the top left allows you to toggle between men and women.
Number of Finishers Meeting 2018 Qualifying Standards
The visual above shows the total number of finishers, by gender and year, that met the 2018-2024 qualifying time for the Chicago Marathon. The data sample includes all runners at American marathons that occurred in September, October, or November – approximately 200,000 finishers per year.
Percent of Finishers Meeting 2018 Qualifying Standards
The visual above shows the percent of finishers, by gender and year, that met their 2018-2024 qualifying times for the Chicago Marathon. The data sample includes all runners at American marathons that occurred in September, October, or November – approximately 200,000 finishers per year.
Number of Finishers Meeting 2014 Qualifying Standards
The visual above shows the total number of finishers, by gender and year, that met the 2018-2024 qualifying time for the Chicago Marathon. The data sample includes all runners at American marathons that occurred in September, October, or November – approximately 200,000 finishers per year.
Percent of Finishers Meeting 2014 Qualifying Standards
The visual above shows the percent of finishers, by gender and year, that met their 2014-2017 qualifying times for the Chicago Marathon. The data sample includes all runners at American marathons that occurred in September, October, or November – approximately 200,000 finishers per year.
Number of Finishers Meeting 2014 / 2018 Qualifying Standards
The visual above shows the number of finishers, by gender and year, that met their qualifying times for the Chicago Marathon. The qualifying times in place at the time were used. So from 2013 to 2016, the 2014 qualifying standards were applied; from 2017 to 2019, the 2018 qualifying standards were applied.
The data sample includes all runners at American marathons that occurred in September, October, or November – approximately 200,000 finishers per year.
Percent of Finishers Meeting 2014 / 2018 Qualifying Standards
The visual above shows the percent of finishers, by gender and year, that met their qualifying times for the Chicago Marathon. The qualifying times in place at the time were used. So from 2013 to 2016, the 2014 qualifying standards were applied; from 2017 to 2019, the 2018 qualifying standards were applied.
The data sample includes all runners at American marathons that occurred in September, October, or November – approximately 200,000 finishers per year.
Feature image courtesy of photoguy1212 on Wikimedia Commons, used under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
