113th Boston Marathon and Boston Qualifying Times

Last Monday the 113th Boston Marathon took place. As is common, Kenyans and Ethiopians did well with 8 of the top 10 men and 6 of the top 10 women. One thing I found interesting was that both an American man and woman took third place. The woman, Kara Goucher, took third place with a finish time of 2:32:25 (only 9 seconds behind first place). Ryan Hall finished third with a time of 2:09:40 which was less than a minute behind first place.

Runner's World has its usually comprehensive coverage of last Monday, and Marathon Guide has the full list of finish times. Some interesting stats: Finishers: 22849, Males - 13547 , Females - 9302, Average Finish Time: 3:49:34.

Earlier this month, Amby Burfoot published this very interesting article looking at the history of the Boston qualifying (BQ) times. A table of the current BQ times are listed here. Amby noted some interesting findings from Jim Fortner. One is that only 10.4% of marathon finishers achieve a BQ. The percentage varies by age group. The group with the largest percentage is men 65-69. 17% of that group finish with BQ times (4hrs 15min).