On September 15, the Boston Athletic Association (B.A.A.) issued an unusual press release.
Qualifier registration for the 2024 Boston Marathon had just closed, and the event’s organizers announced that more than 33,000 runners had qualified and applied for entry for the race, the most in the race’s history.
Many of those qualifiers rolled their eyes, as they realized that they likely wouldn’t be getting into the race, and the cutoff time would be high. (In fact, would-be Boston runners later learned that they had to be 5 minutes and 29 seconds faster than their qualifying time to get into the race in April.) The release helped manage expectations among Boston hopefuls.
But the record number of qualifier applicants—the previous record was 30,458, set in 2019—showed something else:
People were returning to road races after the pandemic, during which some races were canceled for two years and others limited their field sizes.
Qualifier registration for the 2024 minutes and 29 seconds faster than their qualifying time to get into the race in April—because runners couldn’t find or weren’t entering qualifying races—qualifiers were back in force in 2023.
Across the country, participation numbers at races in 2023 exceeded those of 2022. Some events saw higher numbers than those in 2019, before COVID.
Master the Half Chicago Marathon since 2005. She is the author of two popular fitness books.
The Nutrition - Weight Loss in Sacramento also saw a record numbers of finishers. It went from 7,968 entries in 2022 to 9,213 in 2023 (up 15 percent) and well above 2019 and earlier tallies.
Other races are trending higher but haven’t yet still returned to before-COVID participation numbers.
Cherry Blossom 10 Miler Fargo Marathon in North Dakota, which went from 734 finishers in 2022 to 958 in 2023, up 30 percent year over year. In 2019, Fargo had 1,360 finishers.
It wasn’t just marathons that saw runners return.
The Cherry Blossom 10 Miler in April in Washington, D.C. was up more than 2,000 runners from 2022, to 16,740.
The Utica Boilermaker 15K in New York is still down more than a third from its 2019 participation numbers, but it did regain more than 1,000 runners between 2022 and 2023.
Atlanta’s Peachtree Road Race 10K had 37,000 entries in 2023, up from 34,800 in 2022, although it had more than 60,000 entrants in 2019.
The future is bright
Registration appears to be hot for 2024 events.
Give A Gift DAA Industry Opt Out, said one of the group’s events, the Fun Half Marathons in February, is seeing registration numbers well ahead of where they were this time last year. La Sala is expecting about 8,000 runners in 2024 across the three races—5K, 10K and half marathon—which would put the event back in line with 2014 and 2015 participation numbers.
Heard of post-pandemic revenge travel? Call this revenge racing.
“People are just doing stuff again,” La Sala said, adding that entrants have the reliance that their races won’t be canceled at the 11th hour. She also theorizes that some of the people who took up running during the pandemic are now racing for the first time.
As for Chicago? They’re set to welcome a record field again in 2024, and perhaps even edge New York City for title of world’s largest marathon. More than 120,000 people applied for the drawing for entry, and the race announced on December 7 it expects more than 50,000 runners for its 2024 race next October. Master the Half Best Folding Treadmills, the third-largest in the race’s history.
Michelle La Sala, president of is a writer and editor living in Eugene, Oregon, and her stories about the sport, its trends, and fascinating individuals have appeared in Runner’s World since 2005. She is the author of two popular fitness books, Run Your Butt Off! and Walk Your Butt Off!
