The Boston Marathon is unlike other marathons, which is part of its appeal. You can’t just sign up whenever you wish – most runners need a qualifying time from another marathon, and that qualifying time has to have been run with a set date range on a certain type of course.
What everyone's reading
Below are questions and answers about what we know today about registration for the 2019 Boston Marathon:
Endure Relays: The four-hour running event for all?
The race will be held on Monday, April 15, 2019, which is Patriots’ Day in Massachusetts. It will be the 123rd running of the marathon.
Related: The best UK marathons that aren’t in London
Best wireless headphones?
The 2018 field size will be announced in the summer of 2018. For the four most recent editions, the field size was 30,000, and about 80 percent of entries were reserved for time qualifiers.
Published: 16 May 2018?
Registration typically opens for time qualifiers in the second week of September for the following year’s race. For the 2019 race, registration opens on Monday 10th September 2018 at 10 a.m.
Best Garmin deals?
As it has in recent years, registration occurs on a “rolling admission” schedule, beginning with the fastest qualifiers, and remained open until all qualifier spots had been filled. Preference was given to those who had run the fastest under their age and gender qualifying standard (see below for the 2019 standards).
For the last several years, some runners with a qualifying standard did not gain entry, because more than 24,000 (the rough number of qualifier spots) tried to register. For the 2018 marathon, 5,062 time qualifiers were not accepted. For the 2018 race, runners needed to better their age and gender standard by at least 3:23.
Until registration opens, there is no way of knowing whether some time qualifiers will be shut out and, if so, how much faster than one’s standard it will be necessary to run to ensure gaining entry.
A version of this article appeared on Runnersworld.com
