HOW TO ENTER and RUN ALL THE WORLD MARATHON MAJORS - LONDON BOSTON NEW YORK BERLIN CHICAGO TOKYO

Hello everybody and welcome back to the channel. I've got a really fun and informative video for today, all about how to enter and secure your place in all six of the marathon majors. You can scroll around below here and look at various different sections, the races that you are particularly interested in. But first of all we'll start out with what are the marathon majors. So there are six marathon majors in the world. We've got three in America, Chicago, New York and Boston, two in Europe in London and Berlin and one in Asia in Tokyo, Japan. These are incredibly high profile events attracting big international fields to them and huge numbers of regular runners like myself and you that want to run in the races as well. Around 7,000 people in the world have completed all six of these races and if you do that you get a special six star medal when you cross the finishing line of your sixth race. As I say there's currently six races, there is speculation that Cape Town or Chengdu will be added on to the list in the next few years but for now as we sit here it is six races in the marathon major series. Right let's get stuck in to talking about the first of the major marathons which is Chicago. So Chicago marathon is usually around about October time. It's famous for being a very flat, very fast course, great BP, that's me, PB or PR potential. Some things to note, the GPS can be particularly bad during this race because of all the tall skyscrapers but it is probably the easiest of all the majors to secure an entry into and actually not too bad pricing. It's around about US$200 for US residents or around about US$230 for international runners. There's lots of different ways that you can qualify. There is a good for age style system, I'll put the times up on the screen now, where if you can run those times and prove to Chicago you ran those times then you can get a guaranteed entry into the race. If you aren't quite that fast then you can just enter in to the regular ballot and it's around about a 50% chance success rate on whether you'll get in. A point to note that you do have to enter your card details when you enter the ballot and if you get in you will be charged straight away. There are official Chicago Marathon charity partners as well and you can link up with one of them and that's going to cost you or cost in your fundraising around about US$2,000 for that place. For international runners you can partner up with one of the main tour operators. The two main ones and I'll talk about these throughout the video are in the UK it is 209 Events or Sport Tours International. I've used both of them in the past and they've been fantastic along the way. There are a couple of other little anomalies of ways you can get in. You could have run it five times in the past 10 years. I'm sure you know how to get in the race if you've done that but once you have done that then you can get in guaranteed entry for every year where you have run it five times in the last 10 years. And finally the last way you can get in is if you've completed the Shamrock Shuffle 8k four times since that race started in 2008 and you are running the current years at Shamrock Shuffle then you can get a guaranteed entry into the Chicago Marathon. Right let's move on to New York. Right New York Marathon probably the hardest course out there. It is very undulating we'll say. You have to go over quite a few bridges. They are a lot hillier than you would think but it is probably joint top for the best atmosphere out of any of the major marathons. It is usually around about November time every year. It's about US$250 for New York Roadrunner members around about US$300 for American citizens and touching up to nearly US$400 at Crikey for international runners. Right there's lots of different ways that you can enter. The main one that people do is enter the ballot but it is incredibly unlikely to be able to secure a place around about anywhere between about 3% to 10% chance of securing your place through the ballot. There are three separate draws. One for New York residents, one for American residents and one for international residents just to keep that proportion nicely and as far as I'm aware it's a completely random draw as well. They do have good for age places but you have to have run those qualifying times during a New York Roadrunner's official event. I'll put those times up on the screen now so there's not many people that do qualify. They do have another very small section for people that have run qualifying times not in a New York Roadrunner's event and they are first come first serve. You've got to get your time in very quickly for that. They do have something called the 9 plus 1 program where if you have run nine different New York Roadrunner's events during the previous calendar year and volunteered at one then you can secure your place in the event but yeah a lot of hard work. Moving on you can enter through some of the official New York Marathon charity partners. Those places tend to ask for a minimum sponsorship of around about 5,000 US dollars so pretty expensive to go down that route. Of course you've got the international tour operators that you can use as well to secure your place. Last time I looked something like 209 events it was around about £1,250 for your race entry and flight so again it's an expensive race in New York. And finally for all the experienced people once you've done 15 New York Marathons then you can just keep entering every year. Quickly guys if you are following this video you should please like and share with a friend who might be wanting to run one of the world's major marathons. And if you don't already please subscribe for more great videos coming up very soon. Right moving on Boston Marathon. The oldest marathon pretty much in the world. First started in 1897. Been going on an incredible amount of time. Very famous for its BQ or qualifying criteria that we'll come on to very shortly. It is definitely an undulating course. Anyone that's run it would know all about Heartbreak Hill and it's also a point-to-point course as well. Great if you've got a tailwind on the day but not so good if you have a headwind. Boston is usually around April time although it hasn't changed this year but it will be going back to its regular April slot. And also famously it's run on a Monday Patriots Day for the people of Boston. It is around about $180 US dollars for American citizens and around about $250 US dollars for international runners. Now it's very simple if you are a faster runner to get in to the Boston Marathon you have to run your BQ time to be able to go in to the drawing process and then they simply take the fastest runners and fill up the race until the race is full basically. Last year you had to be 7 minutes 47 seconds underneath the qualifying time to secure your entry. Now quite controversially as well if you can't run your BQ time or you want to use one of the other ways of getting in you can go obviously through one of the big tour operators or they do have charity places as well and again similar to New York they're going to cost anywhere between five up to around about $10,000 US dollars for one of those places. It's always controversial whether you should run Boston Marathon if you don't have your BQ. What are your thoughts on that? Let me know down in the comments below. Right guys moving on to my favourite marathon of course London Marathon as I sit here in Greenwich the start place of the London Marathon. Probably it has to be the best marathon in the world for atmosphere just an incredible day out there that you will experience on the streets of London. There's a very big emphasis on charity and fundraising as part of the London Marathon effort and it is a notoriously difficult race to get into for UK residents and even more so for international runners. It's usually around about April time although it had been moved this year and it will be different again in 2022 where it will be in October again and then it will revert to its usual place in April. It's about 49 pounds to enter the UK ballot or to enter the race once you've been approved around 99 pounds for the international ballot. There's lots of different ways that you can get in if you are a fast runner and a UK resident you can enter what's called the Good4Age qualifying criteria where if you've run the time again we'll put those up on the screen now then you can enter into that and similar to Boston they fill up these places with the fastest people first until they've reached their allocation which is 3,000 men and 3,000 women. If you're a particularly speedy runner then you can look at what's called the championship entry. You have to be a UK citizen and also a member of a club that is a member of British Athletics as well and this is a race within a race basically so it's the UK marathon championships. Again we'll put the qualifying criteria up on the screen now for that. Moving on you can enter the ballot. Very easy to do you don't have to enter any card details or anything and it is a completely random draw. There's two ballots there's one for UK residents and one for international residents. Now it is incredibly oversubscribed around about half a million people are competing for about 17 to 20,000 places. There's around about a 3% chance of getting in through the ballot. Moving on a lot of people choose to run the race for one of the official charity partners. Now they will be asking people to raise anywhere between £1,500 to £2,000 as a bare minimum. They have to buy these places off the London Marathon at quite a considerable expense so they ask you to raise those minimum things. A lot of people choose to run London Marathon and raise a lot of money for charity which is fantastic. Finally they do give out a lot of places to running clubs. Every running club in the UK is likely to have one or two spots so speak to the people in your running club. They sometimes give these away as charity prizes in ballots and things like that so speak to your running club about those places. And finally of course there are international tour approaches that can get people into the UK and entered into the race as well. Today's question of the day is of course what is the best major marathon? Tell me about your experiences that you've had at the races. What do you think is the best one out there and if you haven't done one which one do you want to do? Which do you think will be the most exciting and the best experience? Moving on over the channel to Berlin in Germany. An incredibly popular fast flat course and maybe the best PB potential out of all the courses on this list. The vast majority of people choose to enter the ballot or the lottery here. There's around about a 16% chance of getting in this way and that's the same for local residents in Germany or international residents around the world. If you're a particularly speedy runner then you can enter into Berlin's fast runners section. We'll put the qualifying criteria up on the screen now and this is the same for anybody anywhere in the world. You can get your guaranteed entry if you've run one of the qualifying times up on the screen. And finally obviously all the tour operators will operate packages to take you to Berlin from around the world and there are always charity places especially here in the UK that offer packages to go to Berlin or lots of charities already in Germany that are looking for people to come and run and represent them as well. And moving on to the sixth major, Tokyo. A relatively recent addition in to the world marathon major series. Now unfortunately with everything that's going on in the world at the moment it's going to be incredibly difficult to get into Tokyo to run this race any time soon. Who knows when it'll be back open to international runners but yeah this is just some guideline of when that does happen hopefully soon. So Tokyo like the others it is a very fast flat course and it is usually around about February time and does usually attract a big international field especially people from Australia going over as well as people yeah as I say from all around the world that descend on Tokyo to run this incredible race. Now most people will choose to enter through the regular lottery to try and get your place there. Again like all the other lotteries it is completely random. They do have what's called a Run As One campaign or sort of series for faster runners to get in where they offer 300 places to people that have run a qualifying time. Again we'll put those up on the screen now in a IAAF gold silver or bronze race where you must have run that time. Also if you are already a resident of Japan then they do have more entries available through the One Tokyo Scheme. All of this type of stuff that we've talked about in the video today we'll link to the official websites down below where you can look up that sort of thing. For people in the UK the vast majority of people that I know that have run Tokyo have gone through one of the official tour operators to get there so that's by far the most popular way for people in the UK to run the race. So there we have it guys that's my little sort of some facts and figures about how to enter these marathon majors. They are really difficult to get in but when you do you will have an incredible experience so it's worthwhile trying to run those qualifying times putting your name into the ballot every year for these races or speaking to some of the charities or the official tour operators to get your place secured. So that's it guys thank you so much for following along with the video thank you to all the Patreon legends and the supporters here on YouTube for making all of these videos possible and happen. 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