Boston Marathon

The Boston Marathon is an annual long-distance footrace held on Patriots' Day in the greater Boston area of Massachusetts. It is hosted by eight cities and towns in greater Boston and is traditionally held on the third Monday of April. The Boston Marathon is the world's oldest annual marathon and ranks as one of the world's best-known road racing events. It is one of seven World Marathon Majors. Organized by the Boston Athletic Association (B.A.A.) every year since its debut in 1897, the race draws elite competitors and amateur runners alike from across the globe, tracing a point-to-point course through some of eastern Massachusetts's most storied communities before concluding on Boylston Street in Boston. As of 2026, the race has been held 130 times and typically attracts approximately 30,000 registered participants and 500,000 spectators annually.

Origins and Founding

The Boston Marathon was the brainchild of Boston Athletic Association member and inaugural U.S. Olympic team manager John Graham, who was inspired by the marathon at the first modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896. The Boston Athletic Association (B.A.A.) had been established on March 15, 1887, with the purpose of promoting physical activity and athletic competition more broadly. Graham, serving as coach and manager of the B.A.A. athletes at Athens, was a keen observer of the Marathon-to-Athens Race and returned to Boston with plans to institute a strikingly similar long-distance run the following spring.

With the assistance of Boston businessman Herbert H. Holton, various routes were considered before a measured distance of 24.5 miles from Metcalf's Mill in Ashland to the Irvington Oval in Boston was eventually selected. On April 19, 1897, John J. McDermott emerged from a 15-member starting field and captured the first B.A.A. Marathon in 2:55:10. The race was originally called the "American Marathon" and served as the closing event of the B.A.A. Games, a broader athletic festival.

In 1924, the course was lengthened to 26 miles, 385 yards to conform to the Olympic standard, and the starting line was moved west from Ashland to Hopkinton. The standardization of the marathon distance itself traces back to the 1908 Olympic Games in London, where organizers arranged for the race to begin at Windsor Castle outside London so that the Royal family could view the start. The distance between the castle and the Olympic Stadium proved to be 26 miles, and organizers added 385 yards to the finish so that runners would complete the race in front of the royal box. That distance was formally adopted as the international standard in 1921.

The race has been held annually on Patriots' Day — originally observed on April 19 and, from 1969 onward, on the third Monday of April — which commemorates the Battles of Lexington and Concord (1775) in the American Revolutionary War.

The Course

Both the start and finish lines have been moved over the years, but much of the course remains essentially as it was originally designed more than a century ago. Since 1924, the race has started in the town of Hopkinton and from there descends through Ashland, Framingham, Natick, and Wellesley. Upon entering Newton, the course gradually rises through a series of hills culminating in the famous Heartbreak Hill. As participants reach the top of Heartbreak Hill, they can see downtown Boston for the first time, roughly four miles in the distance. After running through Brookline, the course enters Boston and finishes on historic Boylston Street.

The last of Newton's hills was given the nickname "Heartbreak Hill" by Boston Globe reporter Jerry Nason. In the 1936 race, when John A. Kelley caught eventual champion Ellison "Tarzan" Brown on the Newton hills, Kelley made a friendly gesture of tapping Brown on the shoulder. Brown responded by regaining the lead on that final hill, and as Nason reported, it broke Kelley's heart. Located between miles 20 and 21, the hill rises 91 feet — modest in isolation, but formidable after more than 20 miles of racing. Despite its fearsome reputation, the course's net elevation is actually a descent overall, dropping roughly 450 feet from Hopkinton to Boston.

One of the race's most beloved traditions occurs near the midpoint of the course. At Wellesley College, a historically women's college, students line the course for about a quarter of a mile in what is traditionally called the Scream Tunnel, cheering loudly and offering kisses to passing runners. The noise generated by the crowd is so intense that runners commonly report hearing it from well over a mile away. The Scream Tunnel is located roughly half a mile before the halfway mark of the race.

Spectator culture along the entire course is a defining feature of the Boston Marathon. Crowds gather throughout all eight host communities, and it is a longstanding local tradition for spectators to create handmade signs cheering on specific runners by name, offering encouragement at particularly difficult stretches of the route. The stretch through Kenmore Square in the final miles is known for its particularly dense and enthusiastic crowds in the closing stretch before Boylston Street.

Participation, Qualification, and Growth

Starting with just 15 participants in 1897, the event has grown to an average of approximately 30,000 registered participants each year. With approximately 500,000 spectators, the Boston Marathon is New England's most widely attended annual sporting event.

One of the features that distinguishes the Boston Marathon from most other major marathons is that participants must qualify to enter. Qualifying standards were introduced in 1970, originally requiring certification that each runner could finish in under four hours. Today, qualifying standards are tiered by age and gender, ranging from three hours for men ages 18–34 to five hours and 20 minutes for women and non-binary individuals ages 80 and older. The so-called "BQ" — Boston Qualifier — has become a meaningful benchmark in recreational distance running, and achieving it is considered a significant accomplishment among amateur marathoners worldwide.

The all-time record for the world's largest marathon was established at the centennial race in 1996, when 35,868 finishers out of 36,748 official starters completed the 100th running of the Boston Marathon. The centennial race had 38,708 entrants in total and was recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest marathon field ever assembled at the time.

For most of its history, the Boston Marathon was a free event, and the only prize awarded for winning the race was a wreath woven from olive branches. Corporate-sponsored cash prizes began to be awarded in the 1980s, when professional athletes declined to participate without financial compensation. The first cash prize for winning the marathon was awarded in 1986. The race is also a major philanthropic engine; more than $50.4 million has been raised through the Bank of America Official Charity Program, supported by over 10,000 volunteers annually.

Inclusion and Social Progress

The Boston Marathon has played a significant role in the evolution of distance running as an inclusive sport. Women were not permitted to enter the race officially until 1972. In 1966, however, Roberta "Bobbi" Gibb became the first woman to run the entire Boston Marathon. Her attempt to register had been refused by race director Will Cloney in a letter claiming women were physiologically incapable of running 26 miles. Gibb nevertheless ran unregistered, concealing herself in the bushes near the start until the race began, and finished in three hours, 21 minutes, and 40 seconds — ahead of approximately two-thirds of the field. She was later officially recognized by the B.A.A. as the first woman to complete the Boston Marathon.

The following year, Kathrine Switzer officially entered the race using her initials and famously faced an attempt by race official Jock Semple to physically remove her from the course. Her defiance, and the widespread media attention it generated, helped pave the way for women's official inclusion in 1972. Nina Kuscsik became the first official female winner of the Boston Marathon that year.

The Boston Marathon became the first major marathon to include a wheelchair division when it officially recognized Bob Hall in 1975. Hall finished in two hours and 58 minutes; race director Will Cloney had promised that if Hall completed the course in under three hours, he would receive an official B.A.A. Finisher's Certificate. American wheelchair competitors Jean Driscoll and Jim Knaub subsequently helped to establish and popularize the division over the following decades.

Kenya's Ibrahim Hussein finished one second ahead of Tanzania's Juma Ikangaa in 1988 to become the first African to win the Boston Marathon — or any other major marathon — a milestone that ushered in an era of sustained East African dominance at the race. In 2022, Kenya's Peres Jepchirchir became the fourth woman and fifth athlete to win both the Boston Marathon and the Olympic Marathon titles. With her Boston victory, Jepchirchir also became the first athlete in history to hold Olympic, Boston, and New York City Marathon titles simultaneously across a career.

The 2013 Bombing and "Boston Strong"

No account of the Boston Marathon is complete without acknowledging the tragedy of April 15, 2013. Two pressure-cooker bombs exploded near the finish line on Boylston Street approximately five hours after the race started, killing three people and injuring more than 260 spectators and participants. The bombings were carried out by brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev. The subsequent manhunt led to a deadly confrontation with law enforcement, the death of an MIT police officer, and a shelter-in-place order that effectively shut down the greater Boston area for the better part of a day.

In 2013, the overall finish rate was just 65.58%, as 5,633 runners were stopped on the course and did not cross the finish line. The attack became a defining moment for the city of Boston, giving rise to the phrase "Boston Strong" as a rallying cry for unity and resilience. The race returned in 2014 with record participation, heightened security measures, and an outpouring of public support that reaffirmed the event's central place in Boston's civic identity. Security protocols at the finish line and along the course were substantially expanded in the years following the bombing and have remained in place for subsequent editions of the race.

COVID-19 Disruptions

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 Boston Marathon was initially rescheduled from April 20 to September 14, 2020 — the first postponement in the race's more than 100-year uninterrupted history. On May 28, 2020, the B.A.A. announced that even the rescheduled September date would be canceled, making 2020 the first year since World War I that the Boston Marathon did not take place in its traditional form. A virtual edition was held instead, with 16,183 runners around the world completing 26.2 miles on their own courses and submitting their results electronically.

Because of ongoing pandemic conditions, the 2021 Boston Marathon was the first in-person edition not held in April, taking place instead on Monday, October 11, 2021. The race returned to its traditional Patriots' Day timeslot in April