The Boston Athletic Association (BAA) announced on Thursday, November 18 that the cutoff time for the 2022 Boston Marathon is—drumroll, please—0 minutes and 0 seconds.
For the first time since 2013, everyone who ran a verified qualifying time for their age group and gender during the qualifying window will get to run Boston next April. All runners must be fully vaccinated to run.
The field size—which includes qualified, charity, and special-invitation runners—is 30,000 runners, which is almost the size of the race pre-pandemic. In 2020, before COVID-19 forced the cancellation of the race, the race was set to have 31,500 runners.
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But runners for the 2022 race had fewer opportunities to run a qualifying time, as the pandemic wiped out most marathons after mid-March 2020. The qualifying window for 2022 runners opened on September 1, 2019, and ran through the close of registration on November 12, 2021.
Only about 24,000 runners applied for the 2022 Boston, according to the BAA, down from 27,288 who applied for the 2020 Boston Marathon.
“I am delighted to share that everyone who applied with a valid qualifying time will be joining us for the 126th Boston Marathon,” Tom Grilk, President and CEO of the BAA, said in a statement. “It will be a historic return to Patriots’ Day and I am pleased to welcome this dedicated group of qualifiers back to the roads of Hopkinton to Boston on the third Monday in April for the first time in three years.”
The Boston Marathon cutoff time has been a topic of conversation among runners for years. Simply running a qualifying time hasn’t been enough to get into the race; there have been more qualified applicants than there were spots in the field, so the BAA has been filling the field with the fastest qualifiers first.
For the 2019 race, the cutoff time was 4:52, and more than 7,000 runners were denied entry. In 2020, the BAA tightened the qualifying standards, making them 5 minutes faster for every age group.
The cutoff time for the 2020 race, which never happened, was 1:39.
The 2021 race was an anomaly in race history. It was moved from its annual April date to October for the first time, due to the pandemic, and the cutoff time was an astronomical 7:47. That’s because the field size was capped at 20,000 runners, due to COVID restrictions.
Sarah Lorge Butler is a writer and editor living in Eugene, Oregon, and her stories about the sport, its trends, and fascinating individuals have appeared in Runner’s World since 2005. She is the author of two popular fitness books, Run Your Butt Off! and Walk Your Butt Off!
