Boston puts a price on downhill BQs, Garmin buys TrainingPeaks

On July 22 the B.A.A. confirmed that this September's registration will be the first to add time to Boston qualifiers run on steep downhill courses. It has not published a list of which races those are.

Here is the week of July 20 through 26.

Boston puts a price on the downhill, without naming the courses

The B.A.A. announced registration details for the 2027 Boston Marathon on July 22. Registration runs September 14 to 18, 2026.

The adjustments are not new, but September is the first registration that applies them. Times from courses with 1,500 to 2,999 feet of net downhill get 5:00 added. Courses dropping 3,000 to 5,999 feet get 10:00 added. Anything at 6,000 feet or more is not eligible for qualifying.

Knowing which bucket a race falls into is the hard part. The B.A.A. defines net-downhill as the difference in elevation between a course's start and finish, does not publish a list of affected events, and points athletes to World Athletics, USATF, or the race's own website instead.

Those sources do not always agree. FindMyMarathon's net-downhill list puts the Deseret News Marathon at 1,474 feet, just under the threshold, and Jack & Jill's Downhill Marathon at 952 feet. The same site's guide to the adjustments lists Deseret News at 3,178 feet and Jack & Jill's at 2,038 feet, which would put one in the 10:00 tier and the other in the 5:00 tier. Five or ten minutes rides on which figure the B.A.A. accepts, and right now the runner has to work that out.

The B.A.A. also added a Boston Qualifier Selection: about 1,000 entries awarded by random draw among applicants who hit their standard but missed the cut-off. You can run your number, miss the cut, and still get in.

The 2028 qualifying window opens September 19, 2026, the day after 2027 registration closes. Our Boston Qualifier index tracks eligible races by next confirmed date, and the qualifying times page has the standards by age group.

Deseret News runs downhill on Pioneer Day

Salt Lake City holds its marathon on Pioneer Day, so Deseret News went off Friday, July 24, descending Emigration Canyon to Liberty Park. Jonathan Kotter, 41, of Riverton won in 2:39:48. Zaylie Paras, 21, of South Jordan took the women's race in 2:50:51. It remains a small field for a race with this much history: 273 men and 127 women finished.

Allie Ostrander won the 10K in 30:50 on the same net-downhill profile, taking 23 seconds off Grayson Murphy's 2021 course record. Jack & Jill's ran the next morning outside North Bend, Washington, on a course that leaves the Snoqualmie Tunnel around mile 13 and descends the rest of the way. Anyone who qualified at either race this weekend is one of the runners who now has to pin down an elevation number before September.

The sub-two marathon is now in the record book

On July 23 World Athletics ratified Sabastian Sawe's 1:59:30 from London on April 26, the first sub-two-hour run in a record-eligible marathon. The same batch ratified Tigst Assefa's 2:15:41 women-only world record from the same morning, nine seconds under her own 2025 mark.

Ratification is usually paperwork. This one closes a chapter that opened in Vienna in 2019, when Eliud Kipchoge went under two hours behind rotating pacers and a pace car in a run everyone called extraordinary and nobody could enter in the book. Sawe did it in an open race, eleven seconds ahead of Yomif Kejelcha, who went 1:59:41 on his marathon debut.

Bogota breaks a record that had stood since 2011

Bogota had the fastest race of the weekend. Kenya's Erick Sang won Sunday in 1:01:59, taking down Geoffrey Mutai's 1:02:20 course record from 2011 and becoming the first man under 1:02 in the race's 26 editions. Bogota sits around 8,500 feet, altitude most elite road fields go out of their way to avoid.

The women's race was the closer one. Ethiopia's Melal Siyoum won in 1:12:27, four seconds ahead of Kenya's Gladys Kwamboka and five ahead of Ethiopia's Aynalem Desta. Susan Chepkemei's 1:10:29 from 2003 still stands. Organizers counted more than 40,000 runners across the 21K and 10K. Official results.

The rest of the weekend

More than 30,000 runners took on the 49th San Francisco Marathon on Sunday, the biggest field of any race on our board that weekend. Timing review is still open, so we are linking official results rather than calling podiums early.

Saturday was the busiest race day of midsummer, fifteen races on our board in a single day. Speedgoat 50K packed 3,450 meters of climbing, about 11,300 feet, into its course out of Snowbird. Burning River 100 crossed northeast Ohio, Never Summer 100K worked the high country above Gould, Colorado, and Oregon Cascades 100 ran point to point from Bend to Sisters over about 10,700 feet of climbing.

The marathons filled in the rest: Aspen Valley, Grand Island on its Lake Superior island, Maah Daah Hey through the North Dakota badlands, Juneau, the Königsschlösser Marathon beneath the Bavarian castles, and the Australian Outback Marathon at Uluru, where July falls in the middle of the Northern Territory's winter. All of it is linked from our results archive, and if you ran one of them, tell us how it went.

Garmin bought the software your coach probably uses

The B.A.A. was not the only organization making an announcement on July 22. Garmin said the same day that it had acquired TrainingPeaks and TrainHeroic, bringing 120 people in Louisville, Colorado into the company. Terms were not disclosed.

If you train with a coach, there is a decent chance your workouts show up in TrainingPeaks every Sunday night. The question that matters to those runners is whether the platform stays open to everyone else. Garmin says it will continue to operate as a cross-platform ecosystem. Ray Maker at DC Rainmaker is not sold, and points at Garmin's handling of FirstBeat analytics, which was licensed to competitors before Garmin closed it to new customers. His open question is whether Wahoo and other third-party devices will still upload to TrainingPeaks in three years.

Strava bought Runna last year. Garmin owns TrainingPeaks now. If you picked your watch and your coaching platform separately, that decision is partly Garmin's from here.

What's next

Badwater 135 starts Monday evening in three waves out of Badwater Basin, 280 feet below sea level, and finishes 135 miles later at Whitney Portal. Ninety-eight runners are entered, and organizers cut the time limit from 48 hours to 45 for 2026, which the back of the field will feel in July heat. There is a live webcast.

Next Saturday is the busy day. Waldo 100K runs the Cascades above Oakridge, Oregon, the Canadian Death Race covers 118K out of Grande Cache, Alberta, Lean Horse 100 crosses the Black Hills out of Custer, and the Taupo Marathon goes in the middle of a New Zealand winter. Sunday's ET Full Moon Marathon starts at 12:01 a.m. on State Route 375 outside Rachel, Nevada, the road the state named the Extraterrestrial Highway in 1996.

Sunday also brings the Bound for Boston Marathon in Denver, a multi-loop road qualifier. Courses under 1,500 feet of net drop take no adjustment at all, which is a useful thing to know about a race before you enter it this year.

Falmouth moved on July 24, doubling its prize money for the top American finishers in partnership with the Massachusetts State Lottery. First through fifth American now pay $5,000 down to $1,000, alongside the $10,000 that goes to the overall winners. Most road prize structures concentrate at the front, so five deep on the American side is unusual. The 54th ASICS Falmouth Road Race runs August 16.

A new five-question Marathon Scout Weekly goes up this week, and plenty of the above is fair game.

Then circle September 14. For years the advice to a borderline qualifier was to find the steepest downhill course you could stand. Starting this September, the spreadsheet runs the hill back up.