Wednesday, September 27, 2017

The Bar For The Boston Marathon (BQ) Gets Higher for 2018 - 3 Minutes and 23 Seconds


If you were hoping to get into the 2018 Boston Marathon this year, you had to beat your Boston Qualifier (BQ) time by 3 minutes and 23 seconds. Wowza! That's the biggest gap since the Boston Marathon established this new process five years ago, and the fifth year in a row you needed to run faster than your age-group standard BQ. Here's how it compares to previous years:
  • For 2017, you had to better your BQ by 2 minutes and 9 seconds.
  • For 2016, 2 minutes, 28 seconds.
  • For 2015, 1 minute, 2 seconds.
  • For 2014, 1 minute, 38 seconds.
And it appears Boston qualifying runners are getting even faster. Here's the breakdown compared to the fields in previous years:
  • 4,691 Qualifiers met their qualifying time by 20 minutes, 00 seconds or faster. (+7.5%)
  • 7,673 Qualifiers met their qualifying time by 10 minutes, 00 seconds or faster. (+7.9%)
  • 7,505 Qualifiers met their qualifying time by 05 minutes, 00 seconds or faster. (+10.3%)
  • 2,905 Qualifiers met their qualifying time by 3 minutes, 23 seconds or faster. (-35.4%)
  • 424 Qualifiers were accepted based on finishing 10 or more consecutive Boston Marathons. (+2%)

That's a fast field! Congrats to all of you who got in. Hopefully you had a great year, and I'll be seeing you in Hopkinton on April 16, 2018. 

- SD

1 comment:

  1. I had a poor showing at London this year (3:13). Off the back of that I wouldn't have made Boston 2018 (40-44 age group)! Worrying for my girlfriend's 40th (three years away) when we plan to go back and do it as we did for my 40th (2016).

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