I wrote recently about how the Boston Marathon is making most runners have to run a faster time to even qualify for the race, from the 2026 race and on. Today, the Boston Athletic Association revealed how fast the accepted runners had to actually be to get in to the Boston Marathon for 2025.
The Cut Off time for the 2025 Boston Marathon
There were 36,393 runners who had qualified and applied to run the 2025 Boston Marathon. That was the largest number ever and the Boston Marathon only accepted 24,069 of those runners, meaning they reject 33% of the runners who had applied. That means that 12,000 runners had run a Boston Marathon qualifying time but they weren’t fast enough to make the cut this year, due to the Boston Marathon’s field limit. The cut-off for this year? 6 minutes and 51 seconds faster than the qualifying time was the cut-off to make it into the 2025 Boston Marathon.
This is the reason that the BAA is requiring most runners to have to run 5 minutes faster just to qualify going forward. This will cut down on the amount of entrants that there are (possibly – we have gone down this same road before) and hopefully will get fewer runners’ hopes up that they will get in. I have not yet qualified for the Boston Marathon but I can imagine how difficult it has to be to run a qualifying time and then have to wait months to find out that you weren’t fast enough.
| Age Group | Men | Women |
|---|---|---|
| 18-34 | 2:55 | 3:25 |
| 35-39 | 3:00 | 3:30 |
| 40-44 | 3:05 | 3:35 |
| 45-49 | 3:15 | 3:45 |
| 50-54 | 3:20 | 3:50 |
| 55-59 | 3:30 | 4:00 |
| 60-64 | 3:50 | 4:20 |
| 65-69 | 4:05 | 4:35 |
| 70-74 | 4:20 | 4:50 |
| 75-79 | 4:35 | 5:05 |
| 80+ | 4:50 | 5:20 |
For runners 18-59, they will have to run 5 minutes faster just to qualify. This doesn’t mean that some runners won’t get rejected next year – it just means there should be fewer runners that are able to enter.
The change to the qualifying times really just made official what has already been going on and it gives people a more realistic goal to hit. My goal had been to run the 2027 Boston Marathon but I am now going to have to work a little bit harder to make the 3:15 goal (in reality, I probably will need a 3:13 or faster to get in). It has been a few years since I have really trained for a faster marathon so I kind of welcome the challenge! The last couple of years have been about longer races (50 mile – 100 mile races) or trail races. So, back to the road to get faster!
So, how much faster did the successful entrants run under their qualifying time for age groups and gender?
- 6,971 Qualifiers met their qualifying time by 20 minutes, 00 seconds or more.
- 11,199 Qualifiers met their qualifying time by between 10 minutes, 00 seconds and 19 minutes, 59 seconds.
- 5,873 Qualifiers met their qualifying time by between 06 minutes, 51 seconds and 9 minutes, 59 seconds.
Those are some fast runners!
If you got in to the 2025 Boston Marathon, congrats! If you had qualified for the 2025 Boston Marathon but didn’t make the cut-off, a huge congrats to you as well! No one can take away the fact that you did run a Boston Marathon qualifying time!
And, to those like me who have not yet qualified for the Boston Marathon, that is ok! You have done something that only a tiny percentage of people have done!
And, lastly, if you haven’t run a marathon but would like to, watch the site as I will be launching a course soon for anyone that wants to run a marathon!
Featured image courtesy Marcio Jose Bastos Silva via Shutterstock
I’m not surprised. In my running club, the same group of fast runners qualify every year and choose to run Boston as their spring marathon every year.