Boston Marathon Race Pace Charts: Actual Race Results

The legendary Boston Marathon course is one of the more challenging races in the world. Finding the right mile-by-mile pace is key to running your best marathon in Boston. Easier said than done. 

Most marathon pace charts simply take a range of goal finish times and divide them by 26.2, suggesting each mile should be run at the same pace. That's fairly impossible at Boston. The course map's elevation chart barely hints at the difficulty of finding the right mile-by-mile race pace to achieve or beat your goal when you cross the finish line in Boston.

What Boston runners need, when developing their race strategy, are realistic pace charts, based on real mile-by-mile results. We've run Boston 13 times, and have experienced just about every kind of result on the course: from terrible, bad, painful to average, fast and fastest. Here's an overview of our better results. 


Now, the details: race pace charts from three of our best performances. Want to finish with a time around 3:41, 3:12, or 2:54? Here's how to do it, from start to finish.




For more, see our analysis and commentary of Mile-by Mile Splits at Seven Boston Marathon Finishes or see our Complete Boston Marathon Coverage.