I've been tracking Boston Marathon finish times for years — and this year, the field was super fast, as advertised.
Last year was already the fastest on record with decent weather plus a tougher qualifying cutoff. But this year delivered incredible conditions and took things to another level: an extra 1,100 runners broke 3 hours, surging from 4,683 to 5,849.That means 20% of the entire field went sub-3:00 — up from 16% last year.
For context, even the strong 2023 weather year only reached 15%, and it fell to just 11% in the warm, humid 2024 race.
This year the top 1% ran about 3 minutes faster than last year on average, while the entire sub-3:00 group dropped their times by a stunning 3:20. Overall we've been incredibly lucky with Boston weather lately. The last truly brutal year was 2018 (we all remember that one). 2017 was actually slower with a mean temp of 72°. Perfect Boston conditions are rare — and this year felt like a once-in-15-to-20-year kind of day.