Running the Boston Marathon
The grandaddy of major marathons, Boston Marathon takes you through 26.2 miles of beautiful, passionately supported New England countryside, over the infamous ‘Heartbreak Hill’ and into the wonderful city of Boston
The Boston Marathon is the world’s longest running marathon race, first held in 1897. Starting in the town of Hopkinton, Massachusetts on the third Monday in April — Patriots Day — it winds 26.2 miles through eight towns and cities on its way to Boylston Street in Boston, taking in the stunning rolling hills of New England and the breath-taking support of residents, family and friends along the way.
Boston is also one of the Abbott World Marathon Majors, an elite collection of six marathons sponsored by Abbott that are arguably the most prestigious marathon races in the world.
What really sets running the Boston Marathon apart from other races is the challenge of qualifying in the first place. You either need to run a good marathon time on an officially-certified course and beat the dreaded ‘cut-off’, or raise huge sums of money for charity — typically around $10,000!
So if you’re thinking about running the Boston Marathon, you’ll need to be super-well-prepared and be thinking about it at least 18 months in advance of the Patriot’s Day running in April each year. Here’s what you can expect.
Qualifying for the Boston Marathon
Unlike most marathons, you can’t just book a place for running the Boston Marathon. You can’t even enter a ballot for a random drawing, unlike if you wanted to run the New York Marathon or the Chicago Marathon. Virtually everyone running the Boston Marathon has to either time-qualify at another officially-certified marathon race, or raise around $10,000 for a charity bib offered by an official Boston Marathon charity. So either way, getting into the Boston Marathon is tough, as you either need to be fast for your age/ gender or be prepared to do a LOT of work fundraising.
The qualifying standards for running the Boston Marathon vary depending upon your age and gender on race day. Running as a 41-year-old male, I needed a sub-3:10 marathon time ran within the qualifying window to stand any chance of qualifying. The qualifying window ran from two Septembers before my race to the September beforehand. So running the Boston Marathon in 2023 meant I needed to clock a sub-3:10 qualifying time between September 2021 and September 2022.
But that’s not all.
As demand for running the Boston Marathon is huge, just meeting the qualifying standards doesn’t automatically give you a place — it only gives you the right to enter. After all race applications are in and have been verified by the race organiser the Boston Athletics Association (B.A.A.), the qualifying times are analysed and then a ‘cut-off’ is applied that tightens the race qualifying times even further.
So if your qualifying standard was 3:10 and you ran a 3:09 time in a qualifying race, it would give you a 1-minute buffer in the cut-off. This means if the cut-off is less than 1 minute you’ll get a place to run the Boston Marathon, but if it is more than 1 minute you’ll miss out.
I actually ran two Boston qualifying times — known as ‘BQs’ — during the qualifying window, running a 3:08 at the Athens Authentic Marathon and then a 3:05 at the Dorney Lake Marathon a few months later, giving me around a 5-minute buffer.
For the 2023 Boston Marathon, thankfully there was no cut-off — everyone who met the qualifying standards got a bib to run — however over the past decade cut-offs have ranged from 1:02 minutes to 7:47 minutes, meaning a 5-minute buffer is usually good enough to beat the cut-off but that occasionally, you need a few minutes more.
The charity route is another way many people get into Boston, but charity entries are expensive. You need to apply through an official Boston Marathon charity and commit to fundraising around $10,000. Even the lowest fundraising amounts are still in the region of $7,000, so whichever way you look at it, it’s tough to get a place to run the Boston Marathon.
Outside of time qualifying and charity places, you may find other niche ways of getting a bib to run the Boston Marathon, but they’re more down to luck than anything else.
Abbott now runs a draw for people who have run all five of the other World Marathon Majors (Berlin, Chicago, London, New York and Tokyo), but there are only 150 places. Meanwhile, you may be lucky enough to get a bib through one of the Boston Marathon sponsors if you or someone you know works for one, but again, there are extremely few bibs available via this route.
So you’ll need to be prepared at least 18 months in advance of when you’d like to run the Boston Marathon, either by time qualifying or gearing up to raise thousands of dollars for a charity.
Pre-race Organisation
There’s a lot of good information on the B.A.A. website about qualifying for the Boston Marathon and when race applications open. Due to the prestige of the race, you’ll also find it hard to miss other publicity when applications open. But be aware, the Boston Marathon application window is very short — just a few days — and if you miss it you’ll need to start again from scratch with time qualifying.
You can apply at any time during the application window, which is usually mid-September, so there’s no need to enter an online queue or be the first to apply. You’ll need to enter details of your qualifying race (if you’re applying as a time qualifier) so that the B.A.A. can verify your time, then there’s the agonising wait of a couple of months to discover if your BQ is good enough to beat the cut-off.
The Boston Marathon does a good job of communicating with participants in the build-up to the race. Official race information is emailed out in February, with regular bulletins sent via email in the lead up to the race. The social media channels start to ramp up over this time too.
Race packet emails come out mid-March and are very clear to follow. The app was also good and allowed friends and family to easily track your progress on race day, giving split times at 5k intervals and halfway along with estimates of finishing times.
All in all, the Boston Marathon has good pre-race communication.
Boston Marathon Expo
The Boston Marathon expo takes place at the Hynes Convention Center, just a short walk from the race finish line on Boylston Street. At the expo you collect your race bib and gear check bags and can check out the official Boston Marathon merchandise on offer, along with offerings from other companies.
The expo opens on the Friday morning before the race, and in 2023 by all accounts it was extremely busy early on, however by the time I arrived mid-afternoon the queues for security were flowing and I had zero wait to collect my bib. I returned on the Sunday morning to have another look around and it was even quieter.
I had also signed up to run the B.A.A. 5k on the Saturday morning and I collected my bib for that race at the same time — again, without queueing.
At the expo itself, I was rather disappointed. There was a massive Adidas store with mountains of official merchandise (including Spike the unicorn — which sold out quickly!), but other than the Abbott World Marathon Majors stand and the stand for Maurten, there was very little else of interest. There were no other clothing vendors, with the rest of the expo made up of sponsor stands and stalls selling running trinkets and gadgets. It was poor, if I’m honest.
When I returned on the Sunday morning, I did discover that a bunch of major brands had actually set up pop-up stores in the adjacent Newbury Street. This place was bouncing, and with stacks of cafes, restaurants and other boutique stores, it was well worth visiting.
So while the Boston Marathon expo was relatively quick and easy, the lack of merchandise on offer was disappointing.
B.A.A. 5k
On the Saturday before race day, the B.A.A. hosts a 5k race around Boston, starting in Boston Common and heading out to Brookline, before joining the last half-mile or so of the Boston Marathon, taking you under the glorious finish arch and back to Boston Common. I’d signed up to run it with my son, and we were two of 10,000 people taking part.
Being able to tackle the final underpass of the Boston Marathon under Massachusetts Avenue and experience the incline of “right on Hereford, left on Boylston” taking you through the finish line was extremely useful. When running the Boston Marathon on the Monday it was great to know what the final push would feel like, and certainly running in such a big crowd with my son was an incredible experience!
The B.A.A. 5k is fairly flat — other than an underpass that you go through twice on an out-and-back segment — so you may be tempted to push for a 5k PB, but after all the time, effort and expense you’ve put in to get to the Boston Marathon, I’d strongly recommend taking it easy and enjoying the experience.
The B.A.A. 5k isn’t cheap, however — $50 for a bib, and they sell out fast on a first-come-first-served basis. Entries opened in the February before the Boston Marathon and were gone within a couple of hours. For your money you do, however, get a nice technical t-shirt (which you can pickup in Boston Common before the race to avoid the disappointment of them not having your size by the time you’ve finished), and the goodie pack was pretty decent with food, drinks and unicorn stickers.
So I’d say it’s worth doing to round off your Boston Marathon experience, but you’ll need to be quick to apply.
Getting to the Boston Marathon Start Line
One of the unique experiences of running the Boston Marathon is getting to the start line in Hopkinton. Sure, you can make your own way there, but when you could also ride in a yellow school bus from Boston Common, that’s an experience few non-US citizens get!
The lines to get on to the buses at Boston Common were fairly long — I must’ve waited about 45 minutes — but that’s probably because I came directly from the bag check area along with thousands of others. There were no queues when entering from other directions, so if you’d like to get seated fast it’s probably worth approaching the buses from Park rather than Arlington.
You must bag check before boarding the buses, as nothing is transported from Hopkinton to Boston. You must use the transparent plastic bag given to you at the expo — no other bags can be checked — which is big enough to fit another pair of shoes and a bunch of warm clothes. You’re also given a smaller transparent bag to take on the bus with you for pre-race nutrition and other items you intend to discard and this is the only thing you can take on the bus.
The drive to Hopkinton takes about an hour, where you’re let off into Hopkinton High School and the start village.
The Boston Marathon start village is split into two main areas: the first, at Hopkinton High School, and the second on Main Street about 0.7 miles away (about 1km). One very welcome change in 2023 was the introduction of cavernous tents on the fields at Hopkinton High School, meaning you could shelter from the elements until it was time to head to Main Street.
About 45 minutes before your start time you’ll head out of the school and walk through the town of Hopkinton to a CVS Pharmacy on Main Street, where there is a second holding area, before being called to your start wave a minute or so down the road.
There were plenty of toilet facilities at both Hopkinton High School and CVS, although the only refreshments were water, Gatorade and bananas. In 2023, we also got extremely lucky at the CVS Pharmacy, as when it started to rain quite heavily, the wonderful souls working at the store opened it up so runners could get shelter and warmth before heading out to the start line. It was such a nice touch!
The Boston Marathon has a rolling start, so things happen very fast after the gun sounds for the start of your wave. I was supposed to start at 10:28–3 minutes after Corral 1 — but it was more like 30 seconds after the gun. So you really need to be in your corral on time, otherwise you’ll miss your start.
However, unlike when running the Chicago Marathon, where the corral access is tightly controlled, at Boston it was rather lax, so you won’t necessarily have an issue starting from a subsequent corral.
Boston Marathon Course
The Boston Marathon course is a wonderful technical challenge, and one that’s tough to get right even for the elites (in 2023, Eliud Kipchoge didn’t alter his training plan to compensate for the Boston Marathon terrain, went out too fast and finished 6th). Don’t let the fact that it’s net downhill fool you — where the major downs and ups occur they are perfectly located to beat up your legs in the most brutal way!
The Boston Marathon course is a point-to-point race that can best be described as ‘undulating’. Until you hit Boston itself, there are rarely sections of any significant length that are flat — everything is either up or down. You may have heard of the infamous ‘Heartbreak Hill’ around Mile 21, and while it does deserve your respect, your race will either be going well at this point so the hill is manageable… or you’ll have blown up due to mistakes made very early on and will be cursing every last bump.
I found it useful to break the Boston Marathon down into four segments based on their terrain.
The first 5 miles from Hopkinton through Ashland and into Framingham are steeply downhill. The elevation drop in Mile 1 is an insane 96ft — almost 30m — so it’s very easy to go out too fast and blow your quads in the first few miles.
From Framingham through Natick and Wellesley the course is ‘mildly undulating’, which if you’ve trained on enough hills and done your strength work, you’ll find it possible to settle into your target marathon pace along this 11-mile stretch.
At Mile 16 start the Newton Hills — four progressively bigger hills over a 5-mile section, culminating in Heartbreak Hill.
But once you’re through Newton, it’s all downhill from there on in — literally. Mile 21 to 24 drop in elevation about 200ft (~65m) through Brookline, before flattening out into Boston for the last couple of miles. Just be aware of the sneaky underpass with about half a mile to go going under Massachusetts Avenue, and of course the famous “right on Hereford, left on Boylston” to the finish stretch, which is also a short incline.
So the trick with running the Boston Marathon well is to avoid going out too fast to ‘bank time’ as you’ll trash your quads, struggle through the Newton Hills, then find you can’t take the pace in the final 5-mile downhill sections as your legs are on fire.
Water stations are every mile after Mile 2, serving both Gatorade and water. Gatorade always comes first and is served in green cups, while water is afterwards in white cups. In the 2023 edition of the race there were three Maurten hydrogel stations, the first at Mile 12 just before you reach Wellesley, the second just before Mile 17 prior to the start of the Newton Hills and the third just after Mile 21 once Heartbreak Hill is in your rear-view mirror. So hydration-wise, the Boston Marathon is extremely well stocked, however you’ll certainly need to carry your own nutrition to get through the first 12 miles as taking your first gel that far into the race is way too late.
Here’s a more detailed overview of what you can expect in these four sections, followed by the race strategy that got me through it.
Hopkinton — Ashland — Framingham
From the rolling start on Main Street in Hopkinton, the Boston Marathon takes you through the rest of town down an extremely steep first mile, where you lose 96ft (~29m) of elevation. With the excitement and adrenaline of finally starting the Boston Marathon after 18+ months of preparation it’s very easy to go out too fast, but it’s absolutely crucial you hold back… otherwise you’ll blow up later in the race.
While this is true for all races, running the Boston Marathon really takes no prisoners — just ask Eliud Kipchoge, who clocked an incredible 14:17 first 5k split (average pace: 4:36 mins/ mile!) and led the pack for most of the way before fading badly after Heartbreak Hill and finishing 6th.
Even Mile 2 has an elevation drop of 55ft (17m), followed by 69ft (21m) in Mile 3 and 72ft (22m) in Mile 4, before flattening out somewhat in Mile 5.
So it’s essential for your race that you hold back these first few miles and don’t trash your quads. And when the support is as outstanding as it is through these towns — on a course that’s just two lanes wide — it’s tough!
Framingham — Natick — Wellesley
The ‘middle section’ of the Boston Marathon takes you from Framingham through the towns of Natick and Wellesley. This section is ‘relatively flat’, but better described as ‘mildly undulating’. There are still ups and downs — I had an elevation gain of 41ft (12.5m) in Mile 11 but then a drop of 48ft (~16m) in Mile 12 — but by and large there’s nothing that should concern you if you’ve done a decent amount of hill training and strength work in the build-up to the race.
While the scenery is still very much quaint New England countryside, the Boston Marathon does start to get more urban through this section, with the towns getting larger and the crowds getting louder. And of course nothing can top the infamous Wellesley ‘Scream Tunnel’ outside Wellesley College.
You know you’ve arrived in Wellesley as one of the first things you’ll experience is literally hundreds of Wellesley College girls screaming support at you as if you’re their favourite rock star! It is nothing like anything I’ve ever experienced before! The girls also offer the runners kisses (male and female, they didn’t seem to mind!) if you care to stop for a few seconds. It’s incredible!
You pass halfway through Wellesley, before heading into a steep 108ft (33m) descent at Mile 16 and then the start of the Newton Hills.
Newton Hills
It’s the thing that everyone talks about when running the Boston Marathon — Newton Hills, and the infamous ‘Heartbreak Hill’.
From Mile 16, you’ll experience four consecutive and progressively tougher hills, culminating in Heartbreak Hill at Mile 21. Each hill is roughly one-third to half a mile in length, and then either flattens out or dips slightly before the next hill hits. It’s a truly brutal part of the course and coming at the point where many marathoners are really feeling it. This is why it is so crucially important that you don’t go out too fast over the first 5 miles, as by this point your legs will be toast if you did.
You can’t miss the top of Heartbreak Hill as there was a massive archway announcing it plus practically every spectator sign informed you that you were almost there. Once you’re over the top of Heartbreak Hill, your inclines for the Boston Marathon are pretty much finished, and it’s all downhill from there on it.
Well, almost all downhill!
Brookline — Boston
The final 5 miles of the Boston Marathon pass through Brookline and into Boston itself down some fairly steep declines. Mile 22 has an elevation loss of 81ft (25m), Mile 22 loses 51ft (16m), Mile 23 declines 64ft (20m) and Mile 24 drops 43ft (13m). So if you’ve followed a sensible marathon strategy, didn’t go out too fast at the start and gave the Newton Hills the respect they deserve, this section can be rapid.
The crowds also start to get even larger as you enter Boston, heading under Massachusetts Avenue with about half a mile to go (which can be pretty tough with the steep-ish down-then-up), then it’s a right turn on to Hereford Street (and up a gentle incline), left onto Boylston Street, and you can see the finish line a few hundred metres in front of you.
Holding back on a sprint finish for just a little while longer you can zoom through the field, take the rapturous applause and pick up your converted unicorn medal to signify that you’ve completed the Boston Marathon!
Race Strategy
The Boston Marathon is a tough course.
I heard several people say that it’s at least 3–4 minutes slower than other, flatter marathon courses, and with the big downhill segment at the start, undulating middle section, Newton Hills coming at precisely the wrong point in the race then the huge final downhill section, running the Boston Marathon is a tough technical challenge.
Despite all of this, I planned to use running the Boston Marathon as a London Marathon Good For Age (GFA) qualifying attempt. I actually set myself four race goals:
A: Sub-3 hour finish
B: London GFA qualifying time (sub-3:05)
C: New personal best (sub-3:05:52)
D: Finish to get my Abbott World Major Marathons 4th Star
After following an incredible marathon training plan put together by my running club the Sutton Striders, which included four local tune-up races at the Chessington Valentine’s 10k, Wokingham Half, Kingston Spring Raceday 20-miler and the Thames Riverside 20, I agreed with the coach to split my Boston Marathon race strategy into the four segments outlined above, with different target paces for each. I also agreed to set my target marathon pace during training at slightly faster than what I needed to hit my sub-3 hour A Goal, training at 6:37 mins/ mile.
This is what my Boston Marathon race strategy looked like:
Hopkinton — Ashland — Framingham: don’t go out too fast, take it easy through the first 5 miles and settle into an average pace of 6:45 mins/ mile.
Framingham — Natick — Wellesley: settle into my target marathon pace of 6:37 mins/ mile through this section of mildly undulating hills, knowing at times I’d be running a little slower going uphill, a little faster downhill, but that it’d even out over the course of 11 miles.
Newton Hills: run an average pace of 7:00 mins/ mile, slowing on the uphills then attacking again as each of the four hills flattened or declined.
Brookline — Boston: give it whatever I had left, ideally hitting 6:45 mins/ mile again or faster and taking advantage of the four downhill miles from Brookline. Having scoped out the finish line on Boylston Street, I also knew I had to hold off on a sprint finish until about 400m before the archway and not put my foot down as soon as I rounded the corner from Hereford.
I was good in Mile 1 and clocked a relatively conservative 6:53 min/ mile, which was also likely due to course congestion as well. As the crowds started to swell, my Mile 2 was a little too fast at 6:27 mins/ mile, but I managed to reign it in again and got through the first 5 miles bang on my target pace of 6:45 mins/ mile.
What wasn’t so good through this opening section was that I felt a twinge in my right quad around Mile 3, which persisted until the course flattened at Mile 5. As there wasn’t much I could do at this early stage, I decided to plough on through Framingham, Natick and Wellesley and the pain subsided, rearing only a little on some of the longer downhill stretches. I got through this 11-mile section again bang on my target pace of 6:37 mins/ mile and entered the Newton Hills.
At Mile 16, there’s a sharp drop in elevation of 108ft (33m), which is where my right quad started to flare up again. I persevered until I hit the first of the four hills at Newton, slowing quite significantly in Mile 21 going up Heartbreak Hill and clocking a 7:27 min/ mile. Overall through the Newton Hills, I managed to hit my average 7:00 mins/ mile target, although my mile splits were very much up and down depending upon how long the inclines and declines were in any one mile. The key thing was that I knew I planned to slow down here and run more by feel than pace, so I didn’t have any anxiety about my drop in pace.
But where my race strategy didn’t go 100% go to plan was in the last 5 miles, which I was aiming to run at close to 6:45 mins/ mile. My right quad wasn’t happy at all after I breached Heartbreak Hill, and with 5 miles still to go I decided to back off a little to avoid an injury. With 239ft (89m) of decline over the four miles after Heartbreak, it was a little disheartening not to be able to take full advantage of the terrain, but I was still on target to hit all four of my race goals if I was sensible and didn’t push it too much.
I crossed the finish line of the Boston Marathon in 2:58:30, ahead of all four targets I’d set for myself and clocked my first sub-3 hour marathon!
Reflections
Running the Boston Marathon was a truly incredible experience! I’ve run in big fields of 50,000+ runners and passionate crowds before when running the New York Marathon and even running the Great North Run through my hometown of South Shields in northeast England, but the passion and the energy of the support along 26.2 miles of stunning New England countryside was really something else!
There’s also the heritage and prestige of running the Boston Marathon. The 2023 race I ran was the 127th Boston Marathon, while the selective entry criteria means everyone has either ran a great previous marathon to qualify or raised thousands of dollars for a charity. Some may call it ‘snobby’, but what I experienced was 30,000 runners who were truly dedicated to running the Boston Marathon and had put in hundreds of hours of preparation through training (and fundraising) to earn the right to be there. It really is something special.
Perhaps the only gripe about the 127th running of the Boston Marathon was the official marathon merchandise. The Boston Marathon is famed for its ‘celebration jackets’, released each year to commemorate the race. For the past few decades, the Boston Marathon celebration jacket has been a mid-weight, embroidered drill top, and in alternating years in either the traditional B.A.A. blue and yellow or a different combination of colours. The 127th running should’ve been a ‘traditional blue and yellow’ year, but what we got from Adidas was… not what anyone was expecting.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice jacket, and for any other race I’m sure it would’ve been very well received, but it wasn’t a Boston Marathon celebration jacket.
The colours were wrong.
It was made of very lightweight materials that aren’t thick enough to use as a windbreaker and not water resistant enough to use in the rain.
The embroidery was also missing, but it came with the same $120 price tag as previous years.
Adidas had promoted the jacket as being their most eco-friendly with colours that reflected nature. And yes, as I said, it’s a nice jacket, but it’s not a Boston Marathon jacket. If Adidas released this for the Berlin Marathon, I’m sure it would’ve gone down a storm.
It’s just not what we were expecting for the Boston Marathon…
So other than that minor wrinkle, my experience of running the Boston Marathon was sublime, and I’d thoroughly recommend it to anyone who aspires to get a covered BQ or wishes to raise a lot of money for good causes.
You’ll love every minute of it!
If you’ve liked this race report, you can check out my other reports on Abbott World Marathon Majors Running the New York Marathon, Running the Berlin Marathon and Running the Chicago Marathon.
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