Marathon Pace Calculator

It depends on your experience and age group. Many recreational runners finish between 4:00 and 5:00, and average finish times worldwide land around 4:20–4:40. A 3:30 marathon is a strong age-group result, and breaking 3:00 puts you in highly competitive territory — typically the top few percent of a big-city field.

A 4:00 marathon requires an average of 9:09 per mile, or 5:41 per kilometer, held for all 26.2 miles. Open the sub-4:00 calculator to see the cumulative time you should show at every mile marker.

Boston qualifying standards vary by age and gender. The fastest standard — men 18–34 — is 2:55:00, which works out to about 6:40 per mile, and standards get progressively slower with age. Find the calculator for your qualifying time in the chart above to see the exact splits you'd need to hit.