The BAA made two changes to registration for the 2027 Boston Marathon. The more subtle change involved the start of the qualifying period and eliminating the ability to use a small subset of races to qualify for two different Boston Marathons. The big news was the new rules for downhill marathons. For years now, (some) … Read more
The BAA announced two changes for registration for the 2027 Boston Marathon. The big headline was the downhill results index. The subtler change was the beginning of the qualifying period for the 2027 Boston Marathon – and the elimination of the double dipping period. For the last several years, the start of the next qualifying … Read more
Today’s the day we’ve all been waiting for. The Boston Athletic Association announced the cutoff time for the 2026 Boston Marathon: 4:34. If you made it in, congrats! The outcome was slightly lower than I predicted, so I’m sure there are some happy and relieved runners out there who made it through by a hair. … Read more
This morning, BAA announced the cutoff for the 2026 Boston Marathon: 4:34. Read a preliminary analysis of the data they released here. This morning, the Boston Athletic Association released the number of qualified applicants for the 2026 Boston Marathon: 33,267. Which begs the immediate question – what does this mean for the cutoff time? Throughout … Read more
The BAA released the number of applicants for the 2026 Boston Marathon: 33,267. Here’s a revised prediction that takes this new data into account. This evening, the registration period for the 2026 Boston Marathon comes to a close. After tracking data to project the likely cutoff time throughout the year, I published my final prediction … Read more
The BAA has announced the number of applicants for the 2026 Boston Marathon: 33,267. That’s slightly lower than expected, suggesting that the cutoff will also be slightly lower than prediction. Here’s a revised prediction that takes these numbers into account. It’s finally here: registration week for the Boston Marathon. For the better part of the … Read more
Feature image by Massachusetts Office of Travel – CC BY-ND 2.0 The BAA released the number of applicants for the 2026 Boston Marathon: 33,267. Here’s a revised prediction that takes this new data into account. Registration for the 2026 Boston Marathon is this week – September 8 to September 12, 2025. The final qualifying race … Read more
With the Boston Marathon registration period opening on Monday, I’ve been trying to tie up a few loose ends when it comes to predicting the cutoff time for 2026. One of those unanswered questions was how much the Sydney Marathon results would matter. Another is whether Canadian runners will choose to skip Boston. Earlier this … Read more
We’re getting to the end of the qualifying period for the 2026 Boston Marathon, and all signs are pointing towards a cutoff time in excess of five minutes. But there’s one big unanswered question that could influence where things actually land: how much do the results of the Sydney Marathon matter? On the one hand, … Read more
For the past nine months, I’ve tracked data about the number of finishers and qualifiers at marathons around the world to project the likely cutoff time for the 2026 Boston Marathon. With the qualifying period winding down, that projection has stabilized around 5:30. A common – and fair – critique of the methodology behind this … Read more