We are recycling this post from a few years back with updated statistics. Not only is our marathon fast – it is fun, and the community is over the top welcoming!

Back when I was racing marathons (1986-1996) I wanted to run fast, but it was a lot harder then to research courses and figure out which races gave me the best chance to run a good time. You couldn’t just call up a race’s webpage and look at the course profile. You could find race results for a lot of races in Runner’s World, New England Runner, Running Times, etc., but it would only be for the top finishers. A lot of it back then was word of mouth, or I’d ask my coach what he knew because he raced a lot.

Today, it’s so much easier to do the research. If you’re like me and you want to race fast courses, here is your proof that the People’s United Bank Vermont City Marathon is the race for you!

In 2018, VCM was the 35th largest marathon in the US with 1941 finishers, up from 41st in 2017. All things being equal, you’d expect that races that have more finishers than VCM would have faster winning times and more fast runners. We’re proud to say that this is not the case. The winning time of 2:17:44 posted by Tyler Andrews was the 17th fastest winning time in all US marathons last year. Of the seven US marathons with greater than 10,000 finishers, only five had faster winning times than VCM.

What about deeper down in the results, runners under 2:20, 2:30, 2:45, 3:00? By any metric Vermont City is extremely competitive for runners in those ranges.

Sub 2:20 - VCM had two under 2:20, 15 US marathons had 3 or more. California International was the leader with 61 finishers under 2:20. Sub 2:30 - VCM had six under 2:30, 15 US marathons had 7 or more. California International was again the leader with 165 finishers under 2:30. Sub 2:45 - VCM had 18 under 2:45, 18 US marathons had 19 or more. California International was again the leader with 435, which surprised me. I expected NYC, with nearly seven times as many finishers, would have more sub 2:45 finishers than Cal Intl, but NYC was a distant 4th at this data point with 285 under 2:45 (Chicago had 359 and Boston, even with the severe rain and wind had 298). Sub 3:00 - VCM had 58 under 3:00, only 22 US marathons had more than that. No surprise, Boston, Chicago, and NYC were far ahead of anyone else regarding the number of sub-3-hour finishers.