How do you qualify for the Boston Marathon?

This year’s Boston Marathon will take place on Monday, April 17. This will be the 127th iteration of this race. The action gets started at 9:02 a.m. ET on Monday with the men’s wheelchair division. ESPN will provide national coverage of the event from 8:30 a.m. ET until 1 p.m. ET. Many runners spend several months preparing for this race. How does one qualify for the Boston Marathon?

There are standards, found here, that participants have to meet in order to be considered and they are based on someone’s age and gender they identify with. Potential runners for the 2023 marathon had to submit a time from a completed certified full marathon between September 1, 2021, and September 16, 2022. Meeting the standards with their marathon time, they were able to apply to be included in the Boston Marathon. Not everyone that applies is accepted to participate, with preference given to those runners that beat the standard by the largest margin of time. Completed marathons had to be the full distance and in-person. Once racers completed all of that and had their application submitted, they were eligible to be selected to be one of the 30,000 entrants for this year’s race.