Boston Rejects Qualifying Times From the Wicked Fast Poconos Marathon Over a Short Course

For a lot of the runners who lined up at the Wicked Fast Marathon in the Poconos on Sept. 13, the race was a last shot at Boston, run on a gentle downhill trail with only days left in the qualifying window. This week, a number of them opened an email from the Boston Athletic Association telling them the course had come up short of 26.2 miles, and that their times won’t count toward the 2027 Boston Marathon.

“It has been determined that the event’s course did not cover the certified 26.2-mile distance on race day, which therefore makes the race ineligible for qualifying purposes,” the email reads. Copies started appearing late last week in a LetsRun forum thread and under the race’s own social media posts, where runners compared notes and tried to work out what had gone wrong. The B.A.A. hasn’t said how much distance was missing, or how it found out.

The race came just five days before qualifier registration closed on Sept. 18, the last day of the qualifying window, which left no room at all to run a backup marathon. The B.A.A. is giving affected runners until 5 p.m. ET on Monday, Sept. 28, to send in a different certified marathon from the window, which opened Sept. 13, 2025. Without one, the B.A.A. says it will not process their registration.

That window opened on the very day of last year’s edition, and at least one 2025 finisher has written on Reddit’s r/AdvancedRunning that Boston rejected that time as well. According to MarathonGuide, 208 people finished the marathon in 2025 and 260 did this month, though it isn’t clear yet how many of them had submitted a qualifier.

What the Course Certificate Shows

The point-to-point course follows the Lehigh River on the D&L Trail, starting in Lehigh Gorge State Park and passing Jim Thorpe before a finish at the Lehighton Outdoor Center, and nearly all of it is unpaved. It belongs to the Wicked Fast series run by USA Endurance Events, which designs each of its courses to fall short of the 1,500 feet of net descent where Boston’s new downhill time penalties kick in.

This one sits comfortably inside that line on paper. Its USATF certificate, PA24006DNB, took effect on Aug. 3, 2025, after a bicycle measurement, and puts the start at 273 meters above sea level and the finish at 142.95 meters, a net drop of about 427 feet. The race’s own pages are less tidy: the homepage and the RunSignup listing still show a different certificate number, PA24004DNB, alongside an advertised 680-foot drop, while the course page on the same site carries PA24006DNB.

Some runners think the turnaround on an out-and-back section near the start was placed in the wrong spot. (A runner’s account of the 2025 race puts that section at about 5K.) Others on Facebook and Reddit have pointed to the certificate mismatch, in case the wrong number reached the B.A.A. Neither theory has been confirmed. A LetsRun poster whose Strava track read 26.11 miles said he had blamed his watch at the time. With the certified drop so far below 1,500 feet, and the email mentioning only distance, the downhill rule doesn’t appear to have played a part.

Boston Has Done This Before

This summer, 13 runners lost their qualifiers after the Edmonton Marathon admitted its course ran 674.7 meters long, and Boston refused the adjusted times. The 2025 Atlanta Marathon measured 554 feet short after construction forced a late reroute and cones near mile 20 ended up in the wrong place, and the Atlanta Track Club gave the runners affected a year of free race entries. Back in 2017, Boston also turned down corrected times from The Woodlands Marathon in Texas, where about 120 runners were affected.

The B.A.A. is also drawing about 1,000 extra places by lottery this year for runners whose times are under their standard but not fast enough for the cutoff, so anyone whose time has been thrown out loses both routes into next April’s race. Decisions are due in early October.

As of Sunday, the Wicked Fast website had posted nothing about the ruling. For runners who can’t find another qualifier by Monday, the next chance is the 2028 race, whose qualifying window opened Sept. 19, so any certified marathon they run this fall will count toward it.

Marathon Handbook has reached out to the Wicked Fast race organizers for comment.