A 69-year-old man needs sub 3:52 for a 2027 London Marathon Good For Age place. A 70-year-old needs sub 4:52. One birthday, one extra hour.
Run both times through the Alan Jones 2025 marathon tables and that hour is worth 13.8 points of age grade. The 69-year-old's 3:52 grades 70.2%. The 70-year-old's 4:52 grades 56.4%. Same race, same entry route, and the older runner is asked for a performance about a fifth softer.
I've done this for Boston and for Chicago and NYC. For men, London is the most uneven of the four by a distance: 17.0 points across its closed bands, against 4.0 at Boston and 4.4 at Chicago and NYC. Applications close at 16:00 GMT on Thursday 29 October, so here is the table graded, band by band.
How does London's Good For Age system work?
It's a flat time per five-year band, checked against the age you were when you ran it. London Marathon Events puts it plainly: times are based on "the age you were when you ran your time" (londonmarathonevents.co.uk, checked 2026-10-22).
The rules for 2027, from the same page:
- Qualifying window: 1 October 2025 to 30 September 2026, on a certified marathon course at an in-person event.
- Who can apply: UK residents only.
- Places: capped at 6,000, split 3,000 men and 3,000 women.
- Allocation: if there are more eligible applications than places, they go "fastest first" within each age category. Meeting the standard only gets you the right to apply.
- Race weekend: in 2027 it's two days, with the men's competitions on Saturday 24 April and the women's on Sunday 25 April.
So the standard is the same kind of flat time Boston, Chicago and NYC use. Five-year bands always treat a runner at the bottom of the band and one at the top as identical. What differs from race to race is how big the steps between bands are. London's are big.
How hard is each London Good For Age band, age-graded?
Hardest at 55-59, softest at 70-74. Here is the full 2027 marathon table, graded on the Alan Jones 2025 road tables at the youngest and oldest age in each band. A higher percentage is a harder ask.
Men
| Band | Time | AG% youngest | AG% oldest |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18-39 | 2:52 | 70.1%* | 71.1% |
| 40-44 | 2:57 | 69.6% | 72.1% |
| 45-49 | 3:02 | 70.7% | 73.2% |
| 50-54 | 3:07 | 71.9% | 74.7% |
| 55-59 | 3:12 | 73.4% | 76.4% |
| 60-64 | 3:34 | 69.2% | 72.1% |
| 65-69 | 3:52 | 67.2% | 70.2% |
| 70-74 | 4:52 | 56.4% | 59.3% |
| 75-79 | 5:07 | 57.3% | 61.7% |
| 80-84 | 5:27 | 59.3% | 66.0% |
| 85-89 | 6:10 | 60.3% | 70.4% |
| 90+ | 7:20 | 62.0% | — |
Women
| Band | Time | AG% youngest | AG% oldest |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18-39 | 3:38 | 59.6%* | 61.3% |
| 40-44 | 3:43 | 60.2% | 61.6% |
| 45-49 | 3:46 | 61.3% | 63.3% |
| 50-54 | 3:53 | 62.0% | 64.7% |
| 55-59 | 3:58 | 64.1% | 67.6% |
| 60-64 | 4:23 | 62.0% | 65.7% |
| 65-69 | 4:53 | 59.8% | 63.6% |
| 70-74 | 5:53 | 53.7% | 57.4% |
| 75-79 | 6:13 | 55.4% | 60.9% |
| 80-84 | 6:38 | 58.7% | 67.6% |
| 85-89 | 7:10 | 65.3% | 80.9% |
| 90+ | 7:45 | 80.0% | — |
*The 18-39 band's softest point isn't 18. Runners under about 22 get an age allowance too, so I've used the softest age in the band instead: 22 for men, 26 for women. At 18 the same times grade 72.4% and 64.7%.
When I say "closed" bands below, I mean the ones with both a lower and an upper age, 40-44 to 85-89. The open 18-39 and 90+ bands are left out of every spread.
Every figure is the band's time graded as written, so sub 3:12 is graded as 3:12:00. The percentage itself is your time against the world best, adjusted for your exact age. For the marathon that starts from 2:00:35 for men and 2:09:56 for women.
Read the men's table top to bottom and the ask climbs steadily through the forties and fifties. 69.6% at 40, 70.7% at 45, 71.9% at 50, 73.4% at 55. Then it falls off at 60 and collapses at 70. The women's table has the same shape, smaller.
Where are the cliffs?
At 60 and at 70, in both sexes. Grade the standard at every single age and the steps are easy to see.
Inside a band the line climbs, because the time stays fixed while the age allowance grows every year. At each band edge the time jumps and the line drops. London's two big drops:
| Edge | Men | Women |
|---|---|---|
| 59 → 60 | 76.4% → 69.2% (−7.2) | 67.6% → 62.0% (−5.6) |
| 69 → 70 | 70.2% → 56.4% (−13.8) | 63.6% → 53.7% (−10.0)* |
*Unrounded it's 63.62% to 53.66%, so 9.96 points.
The 70 edge is the odd one. Below it, each band is 5 to 22 minutes slower than the one before for men, and 3 to 30 for women. Men's 65-69 to 70-74 steps up by a full hour, 3:52 to 4:52. Women's steps from 4:53 to 5:53. To hold the same age grade from 65 to 70, the tables allow a man 13 minutes and a woman 24. London gives both of them 60.
I wrote about Boston's cliff at 60 on 1 October. London has one too, smaller than its own cliff at 70.
Is London harder or easier than Boston?
Harder in the middle, much softer at 70. Boston's men's standards are fairly flat in age-graded terms. The Boston post found its closed men's brackets between 63.3% and 67.3%, graded at the youngest age, a 4.0-point range. London's closed men's bands run from 56.4% to 73.4%, a 17.0-point range.
Line up the same bands. At 55-59, Boston's men's standard grades 67.1% and London's grades 73.4%. At 70-74 it flips. Boston grades 63.3%, London 56.4%.
Women show the same pattern, smaller. London's closed women's bands span 11.7 points (53.66% at 70-74 to 65.35% at 85-89, unrounded), against 6.2 for Boston. Leave out 85-89 and it's still 10.4.
London's gap between the sexes is bigger than Boston's too. At 55-59 the men's ask is 9.3 points harder than the women's, 73.4% against 64.1%. In the Boston table the same band is 3.5 points apart.
Neither gap is a judgement about runners. It's how London Marathon Events drew its bands. The tables are the same for every major. Only the entry rules differ.
What does "fastest first within each age category" mean for you?
It means you compete against your own band, not the whole field. London Marathon Events allocates places "on a 'fastest first' basis relative to age and qualifying time", within each age category. It doesn't say how many places each band gets.
Two things follow, whatever the split.
First, inside the standard isn't the same as in. In an oversubscribed band the real bar is the slowest accepted time, and nobody knows it until applications close.
Second, the band treats every age inside it as equal. A 55-year-old man's 3:10 and a 59-year-old's 3:10 are the same entry, though the older runner's grades 3.0 points higher (77.2% against 74.2%). If fastest-first means fastest clock time within the band, the youngest runners in each band have the easier draw.
Is the half-marathon route easier than the marathon route?
For men, it's about the same. For women 40 and over, it's harder. The half route only applies if your only marathon time is from the TCS London Marathon MyWay. You then need an in-person half from the same window as well.
Through Riegel's formula the two routes match within a few minutes. The men's 18-39 half, sub 1:23:37, projects to 2:54:20 against the 2:52 marathon standard. On the tables the sexes split. Graded at each band's youngest age:
Men
| Band | Half AG% | Marathon AG% |
|---|---|---|
| 45-49 | 70.6% | 70.7% |
| 50-54 | 71.7% | 71.9% |
| 55-59 | 73.1% | 73.4% |
| 60-64 | 68.2% | 69.2% |
Women
| Band | Half AG% | Marathon AG% |
|---|---|---|
| 45-49 | 62.9% | 61.3% |
| 50-54 | 64.4% | 62.0% |
| 55-59 | 67.1% | 64.1% |
| 60-64 | 65.0% | 62.0% |
For men the two routes sit within 1.3 points of each other in every band. The half is softest against the marathon at 18-39 (68.8% against 70.1%, both at 22). For women 40 and over the half asks 1.1 to 3.0 points more.
That's the tables, not London. Alan Jones expects older women to fade much less from half to full than men do, so an ordinary Riegel-style half standard grades harder for them. It's why your marathon age grade usually sits below your 5K, pointed the other way.
What this means for your application
Nothing, for getting in. A time clears the standard or it doesn't, and London checks a flat time against your band, not an age grade. What the grading shows is how much your band asks of you compared with the person one band over.
So if you're 55-59, you're in the hardest band in the table, and a 3:10 at 59 is a better run than the same 3:10 at 55, though London counts them the same. If you're 70-74, you're in the softest, and a qualifier grading in the mid-50s is enough.
Still, if you ran inside your standard, I'd apply. Nobody knows where the fastest-first line falls until the applications are in. Either way, the deadline is Thursday 29 October at 16:00 GMT.
Sources and what they said
Checked on the dates shown. Good For Age standards and rules change from year to year, so treat all of this as the 2027 cycle only.
- London Marathon Events, "Good For Age entry": the 2027 marathon and half-marathon standards by age band and sex, and the qualifying window (1 October 2025 to 30 September 2026). Checked 2026-10-22.
- London Marathon Events, same page, rules: the 6,000-place cap split 3,000/3,000, fastest-first allocation within each age category, UK residents only, certified courses only, age at the time of the qualifier, the half-marathon route for MyWay-only qualifiers, the 29 October 16:00 GMT deadline, and the Saturday 24 / Sunday 25 April race split. Checked 2026-10-22. https://www.londonmarathonevents.co.uk/london-marathon/good-age-entry
- Alan Jones, Age-Grade Tables, 2025 road edition: the marathon and half-marathon open standards and every age factor behind the percentages here, run through RaceRecords' own grading engine. Retrieved 2026-10-22. https://github.com/AlanLyttonJones/Age-Grade-Tables
- Boston Athletic Association, "Qualify for the Boston Marathon": the 2027 qualifying standards by age group (men 55-59 3:30:00, 70-74 4:20:00) behind the Boston comparison. Checked 2026-10-22. https://www.baa.org/races/boston-marathon/qualify/
- RaceRecords, "Are Boston Marathon Qualifying Times Fair by Age?": the Boston bracket figures used for comparison, on the same tables and the same youngest-age convention. /blog/boston-qualifying-age-graded
- RaceRecords, "Are Chicago and NYC Qualifying Times Fair by Age?": the 4.4-point men's spreads for Chicago and NYC quoted in the intro, on the same tables. /blog/chicago-nyc-qualifying-times-age-graded