The Boston Marathon is fast. How fast? A new look at more than 100,000 Strava uploads reveals that the field at the Boston Marathon is significantly faster than the New York City Marathon, and that runners train differently once they secure that Boston qualifier (BQ).
This year, 53 percent of the runners in the Boston field uploaded their data to Strava, for around 16,000 uploads. (Strava or it didn’t happen, right?)
We dug into the data from the Boston and New York City marathons to see how the two compared. To compete at the Boston Marathon, the majority of runners (with the exception of 5,000-7,000 runners who qualify via fundraising) must hit a qualifying standard, a benchmark that just over 10 percent of all marathoners reach. That means many of the athletes lining up in Hopkinton have run at least one marathon previously (with the exception of the charity bibs) to qualify, and have finessed their pacing over time.
Roughly 55 percent of runners at Boston finished in 3:30 or faster, compared to just 20 percent of the field at NYC. Almost three-quarters of Boston runners (73 percent) paced for a sub-four-hour…
