2025 Boston Marathon Cutoff Time Announced: Lessons Learned

And what it means for the 2026 Boston Marathon

Photo courtesy Boston Athletic Association

This week, the Boston Athletic Association officially announced the cutoff time for the 2025 Boston Marathon: 6:51.

As they have done in the past, they included with this announcement a collection of data and statistics that tell some of the story of the applicant pool and the field of qualifiers. Absent a full release of the applicants and their qualifying times, these clues are all that we have to try and understand what factors are at play — and what future cutoff times could be like.

Not a Medium subscriber? Click here, and I’ll email you a special link to get behind the paywall and read this article.

This year, I analyzed a bunch of data. I initially predicted a cutoff time of 7:03, and I ultimately settled on a range of possible times: 6:30 to 7:30.

So, on the one hand I was right. But it was sort of like the math problem you get right … despite doing it wrong.

Although much of the modeling was sound and I was in the right ballpark, there were a couple factors that differed from the past and threw a wrench in the process of predicting a cutoff time.