Road Race Stats - Marathons & Other Running Races

Saturday, April 25, 2009

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).

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