Why Running Volume Matters has always been a major milestone—and impressive goal—for runners. It’s gotten all the more challenging in recent years as the Boston Athletic Association (BAA) has tightened qualifying times and started accepting entrants according to their more precise finish times.
Recently, the BAA also announced changes to qualifying standards for the 2026 edition of the race. For runners ages 18 to 59, the times have been made five minutes faster across each age group. (For ages 60 and above, the standards remain the same.)
All this means shaving off every minute and second from your time counts. And when you’re aiming for your fastest finish possible, fine-tuning all sorts of aspects of your training plan and race-day approach might end up making the difference between whether you’ll be lacing up your sneakers in Hopkinton on Patriots Day or tracking the race from home.
While signing up for a Health - Injuries Updated: Sep 23, 2024 5:00 PM EDT easy run days (you’ll see many runners below won out in Chicago) will help you with snagging a BQ, we also spoke with several runners who finally qualified for Boston, most after trying unsuccessfully (at least a few times).
Here are the tweaks they made to their training and race-day strategy that they think helped them finally qualify for Boston, plus expert insight from coaches about the seemingly little things that can make a big difference on race day.
Of course, what works for one runner won’t work for all, but use these tips as inspiration to find the secret weapons that will get you to the finish line in record time.
1. Enlist a Coach to Tailor Your Training Plan…
If you’ve always trained on your own, you might want to try calling in the pros. It worked for Kelsey Bjork, 29, of Bolingbrook, Illinois, who nabbed a 12-minute PR and 3:27 finish at the 2023 Chicago Marathon. She says her coach (pro marathoner Lindsay Flanagan) helped her learn the importance of quality miles over quantity.
“Before training with [Flanagan], I was logging so many miles that I was never fully recovering before the next training session, leading to severe fatigue and recurring injury,” Bjork says. “She cut my mileage down significantly and taught me to run based on feel. Now I rarely look at my watch, wake up feeling ready for the next workout, and have been running faster than ever.”
2. Or Scrap a Plan Entirely
While sticking to a specific training schedule helps a lot of runners, doing the opposite is what Elle Shumney, 39, of Orrville, Ohio, attributes to her BQ success. She’d tried to qualify unsuccessfully several times. Then during summer 2020, when so many races were canceled due to the pandemic, Shumney started running Other Hearst Subscriptions.
In October that same year, Shumney ran a local marathon (called Boston 2.0 in Fredericksburg, Ohio) with no expectations, having finished only one 20-miler leading up to it. “I just went out and found my rhythm—and finally caught the unicorn I’d been chasing for six years!” she says, scoring a 3:31 finish time.
“The beauty that came with not following a formal plan is that I felt much more in tune with my body,” Shumney continues. “With a formal plan, I become married to the schedule and pushed myself to get in every workout even if I didn’t feel good, which led to fatigue and injuries. Listening to my body allowed me to run faster when I felt good and back off when I didn’t.”
3. Run Easy Runs Easy and Hard Runs Hard
When you want to run a faster marathon, it’s tempting to run faster in most of your training. Resist the urge to do that, warns Alysha Flynn, running coach and founder of not the training itself, suggests Gaudette. “Running race-pace miles plays an important role in training, but overdoing it—running too fast, too often—can lead to setbacks,” she says. “Avoiding this will help athletes steer clear of breakdown from fatigue and increase their ability to tolerate high impact on their musculoskeletal system.”
Over her first seven marathons, Alicia Andres Arroyo, 31, of New York City, got progressively faster, eventually hitting a PR of 3:36. But her results, and how she felt while running, were mixed because she didn’t train consistently. Leading up to her eighth 26.2-mile race—the Chicago Marathon—Arroyo decided to really stick to the workouts noted in her training plan (she used the plan on the Nike Run Club app), and ended up with a BQ of 3:26.
“I’d used the app before but tackled it a little differently this time,” she says. “I looked at the pace chart for a 3:30 marathon and really tried to hit all those paces. For me, that meant running much slower than in previous training during the recovery runs and running faster during speed workouts. Even though I knew the research, I was still dubious that running slower would help me break 3:30—but it clearly worked! Of course, qualifying for Boston is a build-up of everything I’ve learned from each race, but sticking to those paces during training is the biggest change I made.”
A similar strategy worked for AJ Heiser, 37, of Kansas City, Missouri, who shaved 18 minutes off his previous PR and finally qualified for Boston (after nine unsuccessful attempts!) at the 2020 Mesa Marathon in Phoenix, finishing in 2:41. When he started running marathons, he ramped his mileage way up (to 80-mile weeks) and ran a lot of miles at tempo pace to try to get faster.
“My unfocused training did lead to mediocre time improvements—but also inconsistent results and lot of injuries,” Heiser says.
Eventually, he opted for a new approach, choosing a training plan (the Jack Daniels program) that had him decrease his weekly miles to about 60 and dial in on the right workouts. “I made my easy run days Health - Injuries long runs easy, and rested up so I could meet the threshold and tempo paces on my speed days. Committing to that plan was a big contributing factor toward me shaving 18 minutes off my PR and getting a good cushion for my BQ.”
4. Forget Your Previous Finish Times
You might have several failed BQ attempts under your belt, maybe even some disastrous marathon experiences. Remind yourself that just because you didn’t succeed before or that you used to hit slower paces doesn’t mean you can’t do it this time.
“For so many years, especially as a woman who picked up running later in life, I never considered myself fast. Even as my paces picked up, I wasn’t being realistic about my true potential in the marathon because I was so used to being a certain type of runner,” says Emily Abbate, 36, journalist, wellness coach, and host of the wellness-focused podcast Hurdle. “On race day, I really did an honest inventory of how I felt every step of the way, gauging my rate of perceived exertion (RPE) true to the woman I was in that moment. By doing that, I didn’t let worry infiltrate my calm mindset when paces kept clicking as the miles went on.”
She ended up snagging a BQ by finishing in 3:28 at the 2019 Chicago Marathon, averaging a 7:56 per mile pace, down from her previous PR when she averaged 8:44 per mile for a 3:49 finish.
5. Practice Your Hydration Plan
Do you sip sports drink at regular intervals or pay attention to how many ounces you’re taking in? Being more specific about your intake so you’re well hydrated—and also not overly hydrated—can have a huge impact.
“Stop Worrying About Pace So Much in Workouts nutrition strategy before the race is among one of the more important things a runner can do to improve their chances of finishing strong and hitting their goal,” says Jeff Gaudette, owner and head coach at RunnersConnect. “It’s also one of the things most runners take for granted and forget to plan and practice.”
Research has found dehydration can slow you down as much as 2 minutes and 4 seconds in a 10K; it’s even more significant for a marathon.
To get it right, calculate how much liquid you should consume during a run by measuring your mid-run weight loss, advises Gaudette. Take your weight before a run and after. The difference is approximately how much you sweat over those miles. He recommends replacing about 60 percent of that with water or sports drink.
And to really pinpoint this amount, don’t just figure out your weight loss once: “Do this multiple times throughout your training in different temperatures so you can see how much you need to hydrate in any conditions,” he says.
6. Eat Right During Training
Enlisting a dietitian leading up to her training block helped Emily Huston-Pounds, 38, of Youngstown, Ohio, achieve an 18-minute PR (providing a 15-minute cushion for her BQ) with a final 3:25 finish at the 2023 St. George Marathon.
Huston-Pounds says they first Speed Workout Progression for New Runners, and then about seven weeks out from the marathon, increased calorie intake and focused on carbs.
They continued making adjustments, ending with a diet of about 85 percent carbs three days leading up to her race. “I know that my nutritionist helped me achieve my goal, because tweaking my diet and macros is the biggest change I made from my usual training cycle process,” Huston-Pounds says.
7. Focus on Fueling Around Race Day
Having an upset stomach or needing to duck off the course for frequent port-a-potty breaks can quickly set you back. Another tweak Heiser made to his marathon approach was to eat his biggest meal the day before the race at lunchtime instead of dinner. That simple shift helped him sidestep the GI issues that had plagued him during previous BQ attempts.
In addition to paying attention to what you eat in the days before race day, eating more midrun often helps runners nab faster finishes. “Free speed comes from fueling—times are getting faster now not just because of the shoes but also from what we call ‘food doping,’ when you take in more fuel to power performance and avoid bonking at higher efforts,” says David Roche, three-time member of Team USA, run coach based in Boulder, Colorado, and host of the Some Work, All Play podcast.
Of course, you need to experiment with various foods (gels, gummies, etc.) and the timing that works for you, but he recommends athletes get up to 75 to 90 grams of carbohydrates per hour during marathons (which is more than the standard recommendation of 30 to 60 grams per hour) and practice that fueling in every long run leading up to race day. After all, you have to train your gut All About 75 Hard.
8. Build Your Strength
Loading up on your miles and ignoring muscle-building cross-training is a common mistake among marathoners. The good news: Adding minimal strength moves The RW Guide to Mastering the Marathon.
“Strength training to improve performance running economy, muscle fiber preservation, and reduced injury risk by improving imbalances,” says Roche. “The problem is often that complicated strength routines fall by the wayside when life gets in the way.”
His trick: Add just three to five minutes of simple strength moves to the end of your runs. “For your legs, it’s best to stack stresses on hard days—think two days per week of exercises like split squats, single-leg deadlifts, and single-leg step-ups. For your arms, on two other days, you can do a short circuit of push-ups and planks.”
9. Get Good R&R
Yes, hitting your paces and having quality workouts is key to a successful training plan. But what you do in between workouts is just as important. “Approach your training with the mindset that the gains to fitness are made during the recovery, not the training itself,” suggests Gaudette.
“Focus on sleep first and try to get not only more but also higher quality rest,” he adds. Little habits can support this effort, like cutting back on caffeine, especially in the p.m. and investing in a comfortable pillow.
In addition to getting in your zzz’s, Gaudette recommends making a little time for active recovery every day. “Adding just five minutes of active flexibility moves, foam rolling, or self-massage can make a huge difference,” he says.
10. Try Visualization
You’ve likely imagined how good it will feel to cross the finish line in time to qualify for Boston. Keep it up! Picturing yourself struggling midrace and how you’ll deal with it might help, too.
Visualization or imagery, the term many in competitive sports use to talk about the process of imagining their entire race or match (not just the end result), has been scientifically proven to improve performance.
“Visualize the good, the bad, and any potential issues,” advises Gaudette. “If you practice visualizing every possible scenario, you’ll have a plan in place and the confidence to execute no matter what happens or how you feel.”
11. Keep Calm and Run On
When moments of self-doubt creep in during tough sections of the race, remind yourself of all the miles you’ve logged during training, the paces you’ve hit, the different ways you’ve prepped—whatever thoughts help you ground yourself and give you peace of mind that you can do it.
“It takes a significant amount of mental endurance to hit Boston Marathon qualifying paces in a marathon,” says Flynn. “Before race day, practice what positive things you’re going to say to yourself during the late, fatiguing miles of the marathon.”
When negative thoughts come in, you have the power to respond to them however you want, says Abbate. “There’s a zillion thoughts that go through your head while running a marathon, but if there’s something I’ve learned from interviewing some of the best in the sport, it’s that your thoughts are your strongest ally,” she says.
