Boston Marathon Boston qualifying times by age, and the plans that get you there

Boston Marathon qualifying times for 2027 and 2028

Dick and Rick Hoyt ran Boston unofficially for two years, Dick pushing his son's wheelchair, before asking for an official number. The answer, the Boston Globe later recalled, was that "he would have to qualify like everyone else." So they did. In 1983 they finished the People's Marathon in Washington, D.C., in 2:45:23, and Team Hoyt went on to become part of the race's story.

Everyone qualifies the same way, by age group and gender. These are the B.A.A.'s standards for the 2027 race, and the B.A.A. has confirmed the same times for 2028.

Source: B.A.A., 2027 Boston Marathon qualifying standards (unchanged for 2028). Your age group is your age on race day, not on the day you qualify.

A few rules matter as much as the times. Your time is your chip time, from a certified full marathon run inside the qualifying window. If you're chasing a BQ now, you're chasing 2028: that window opened on September 19, 2026, and runs through registration week in September 2027.

Courses with a big drop get a time added. Boston adds 5 minutes to times from courses that drop 1,500 to 2,999 feet from start to finish, and 10 minutes for 3,000 to 5,999 feet. Courses that drop 6,000 feet or more don't count, and the B.A.A. says these adjustments may change before 2028 registration. If you have a downhill race in mind, check the qualifying page first.

Why the real cutoff is faster than the posted time

In September 2024, the B.A.A. made the standards 5 minutes faster for every runner under 60. "The sport of marathoning is growing and athletes continue to get faster," Jack Fleming, its president and CEO, said at the time.

Even with faster standards, more people qualify than the race has room for. Boston takes about 30,000 runners, and qualifiers apply during one week each September. The B.A.A. then accepts the fastest runners relative to their own standard, until the qualifier spots are full. How far under you needed to be is the cutoff, and it's the same for every age group.

Source: B.A.A. cutoff history. 2021 had a smaller field of 20,000. 2026 and 2027 used the tighter standards.

For 2027, 33,649 qualifiers applied. The cutoff landed at 5:17, so a man aged 18 to 34 needed 2:49:43 or faster, the first time the fastest cutoff has dropped under 2:50.

There's some good news in that year, too. The B.A.A. added a random draw, the Boston Qualifier Selection, for qualifiers who beat their standard but missed the cutoff. About 1,000 runners got in that way, out of the 9,000 or so who missed. The B.A.A. hasn't said yet whether the draw returns for 2028, so treat it as a bonus, not a plan.

Here's the takeaway. Since 2024, the cutoff has run between 4:34 and 6:51. If you want to get in on your time, aim to beat your standard by at least 5 to 7 minutes, and more is better.

Your real target: goal pace and a plan for each standard

Jeannie Rice started running at 35, and her first marathon, Cleveland in 1983, took her 3 hours and 45 minutes. In 2023, three days after her 75th birthday, she ran Boston in 3:33:15, a world record for women 75 and older. That's faster than today's standard for women 40 to 44.

Few runners will run like Rice at 75. But her story shows why the standards loosen with age, and why it's worth knowing your own number exactly. The table below starts from each standard, takes off the 2027 cutoff of 5:17, and shows the pace that time needs and the Buena Vida plan with the closest goal.

Paces are even splits for the full 26.2 miles, rounded to the nearest second. Plans link to the 16-week version; each goal also comes in other weekly schedules.

Every plan in that column comes in 16 weeks. From Sub-2:50 to Sub-3:50 you can pick 4, 5, or 6 days a week, and from Sub-4 to Sub-4:40, 3 to 5 days. Sub-3, Sub-3:30, Sub-4, and Sub-5 also come in 18 and 20 weeks, if you want more time.

Pick a goal you can honestly reach from where you are now. A recent half marathon or 10K is a better guide than hope, and if the gap is big, a first build toward a closer goal is still progress toward Boston.

What BQ training looks like

Pete Pfitzinger won the 1984 US Olympic Trials marathon and ran the Olympic marathon twice, then worked as an exercise physiologist and wrote Advanced Marathoning, a book many runners use when they move from finishing marathons to racing them. Its plans are sorted by weekly miles, from under 55 to over 85, because the right plan starts from how much you already run.

That idea holds for any BQ plan. Start near the miles you run now and build from there, not from the peak you're aiming for. Most of those miles stay easy, so the hard days can be hard: runners tend to improve more by keeping easy days easy and saving effort for a few clearly hard sessions. In a typical week, that's two harder days. One is often a threshold run, a hard but steady effort, and the other is a run at goal pace, and both are reasonable ways to train.

Then there's the long run, which grows toward 20 miles or more. Marathoners with longer long runs tend to finish faster, and in many good plans the later long runs carry miles at goal pace, so you learn what 7:48 a mile (or your number) feels like when your legs are tired. Add a short strength session or two, since strength work cuts injury risk more than stretching does, and lighter weeks every so often so your body can catch up.

A BQ build is also where tracking pays off. Your goal-pace runs tell you whether the target is realistic. If 8:00 a mile feels steady in week 6 and your heart rate is settling at that pace, you're on track, and an Apple Watch is accurate enough to show it. If it still feels like a race in week 12, that's useful too. It's better to adjust the goal than to fall apart at mile 20.

How to eat through a BQ build

In 2014, an International Olympic Committee panel led by Margo Mountjoy of McMaster University replaced the "Female Athlete Triad" with a broader name for underfueling in sport: Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport, or RED-S. The new term, they wrote, points to "the complexity involved and the fact that male athletes are also affected." Underfueling can catch any runner putting in big miles.

A BQ build is big miles. A 50-mile week burns roughly 5,000 calories for a 150-pound runner, and the long runs and goal-pace days need the most. So match food to the day: more on big days, normal on rest days, never starved. After long runs and workouts, refill with carbs and protein, since runners need more of both than people who don't train, and spread protein through the day, some every 3 to 4 hours, so your legs can repair. Don't save calories to get lighter for a fast time: too little food over weeks wears down your training. (Practice your race-day gels on the long runs with goal-pace miles, too.)

Underfueling rarely announces itself. It looks like legs that never feel fresh, goal-pace runs that get harder instead of easier, paces that stall, more colds, bad sleep, and a shorter temper. The IOC's 2023 update names each of these, from a weaker training response and slower recovery to more illness and poorer sleep. Weeks of low energy also undermine your bones, raising stress-fracture risk, and bigger miles make it easier to fall short. See those signs? Look at your food before adding miles.

Race day for your qualifier

NASA astronaut Sunita Williams qualified for Boston with a 3:29:57 at the Houston Marathon. On April 16, 2007, she ran Boston on a treadmill aboard the International Space Station, with an unofficial time of about 4 hours and 24 minutes. "I would like to encourage kids to start making physical fitness part of their daily lives," she said. The qualifier was the race. Boston was the celebration.

Your qualifier works the same way. It's the day all the training points at, so set it up well. The last few weeks of your plan get lighter on purpose, because cutting your miles while keeping some speed helps you race better. Keep eating normally while the miles drop.

On the morning, eat the breakfast you rehearsed, take your gels on the schedule you practiced, and start at goal pace, not faster. Runners with more racing experience tend to pace more evenly, and a tune-up half marathon during your build is good practice. Run the first half feeling controlled. At goal pace, it should. If you feel good at mile 20, that's when you spend it.

And give yourself a cushion. Five minutes under your standard would have gotten you in only once in the last four years. Seven would have gotten you in every time.