Each year, thousands of runners aspire to toe the line at the Boston Marathon . In order to do so, they need to run a qualifying race at a USATF-sanctioned marathon in the 12 months preceding Boston registration in September.

In truth, for Boston hopefuls, it’s not enough to beat the qualifying time for their age group and gender. You have to beat it by quite a hefty margin (known as the Boston “cutoff time”) to actually secure a spot in the race.

For the 2022 and 2023 races, as runners returned to events after the pandemic, there was no cutoff time. Then, in 2024 , the cutoff jumped to 5:29, then 6:51 in 2025.

Because of that, the qualifying times for the 2026 race were adjusted, and now runners had to be 4:34 minutes faster than the listed time—and still nearly 9,000 runners didn’t make it into the race.…