The 10 Largest Marathons in the US in 2023

Have American marathons bounced back from COVID?

Last month, I wrote an article about the largest marathons in the United States — through 2022.

After analyzing the data, one of the questions I was left wondering about was: Have marathons fully recovered from COVID in 2023?

So, today, we’re back at it with data about the largest marathons in the United States and the sport of marathoning in general.

A few questions I’ll attempt to answer with the data:

Have the top ten marathons changed since last year?
Have these ten marathons grown?
Have these ten marathons returned to their pre-COVID peak?
As a whole, have marathons grown or reached their pre-COVID peak?

So let’s dive into the data.

The Ten Largest Marathons in the US in 2023

The visual above shows the ten largest marathons in the United States in 2023 by the number of finishers.

For each race, there are four bars — the average number of finishers (2010–2019), the number of finishers in 2022, the number of finishers in 2023, and the peak number of finishers (2010–2019). So this gives you some sense of how many finishers there were in 2023 compared to 2022 and the ten years pre-COVID.

Nine of the ten races were in the top 10 list from 2022. The one race that is missing is Twin Cities — which was canceled this year due to extreme weather. The new race in the list is Grandma’s Marathon — which jumped from the #12 race to #10.

A few of the races shuffled their placements on the list. LA grew significantly from 2022 to 2023, and it leapfrogged Honolulu to be the #4 race on the list. MCM also grew significantly, and it jumped ahead of Disney for #6.

Each of these 10 races had more finishers in 2023 than they did in 2022. They continued to rebound from COVID.

But have they fully rebounded?

Chicago set a new record for attendance — with over 48,000 finishers. CIM also set a new peak with over 9,000 finishers. Philly and Grandma’s came close to eclipsing their previous peaks.

The 2023 Chicago Marathon By the Numbers

How does it stack up against previous years in the race’s history?

medium.com

At New York City and Boston, the number of finishers in 2023 exceeded the average from 2010 to 2019 — but neither race set a new record for attendance. NYC was still about 2,000 short of its previous peak, and Boston didn’t even come close to the 30,000+ finishers that participated in 2014.

When you look at the middle four races — LA, Honolulu, MCM, and Disney — each race is significantly below their previous peak and the 2010–19 average. All four races continued to grow from 2022 to 2023, but none of them really got back to their former glory.

LA saw the biggest growth — increasing from 12,000 to almost 17,000 finishers. But at this point, you ought to wonder if some of these races are going to drift down the top ten list and get replaced by the rising tide of Philly, CIM, and the like.

Zooming Out to the Big Picture

But what about the big picture? Individual races have continued to grow, but has the marathon industry as a whole fully rebounded from COVID?

The visual above shows the combined total number of finishers from the ten marathons in the previous visual.

If you look back before COVID, there’s one significant outlier — 2012. This year, the New York City Marathon was cancelled due to Superstorm Sandy. For the remainder of the decade, participation hovered around the 200,000 mark.

The peak year was 2014 — with 227,514 finishers. 2018 was close, but it did not quite get back to that peak.

In 2020, there’s an obvious drop-off. COVID resulted in the cancellation of most of these races — only Disney and LA were early enough in the year to have taken place.

In 2021, many of these races returned but with reduced fields. Total participation was a little under 100,000 — so slightly less than half of the peak level.

In 2022, that number increased to just over 180,000. This is much closer to the peak, but it’s still about 20% below the 2014 number.

Which brings us to 2023. The number continued to increase, and participation continued to rebound. However, the 212,000 finishers in 2023 was still lower than every year since 2012. It did not quite reach the level of participation in the years leading up to COVID.

Judging solely based on these top ten races, it would be accurate to say that these marathons have mostly rebounded from COVID. Some have fared better than others, but as a whole, they haven’t quite completely rebounded.

The Bigger Picture: All Marathons (with 500+ Finishers)

And what if you zoom out further and look at marathons as a whole?

This visual shows the same time frame — 2010 to 2023 — and it includes two related numbers. The blue line graph charts the total number of finishers per year, and the purple columns chart the total number of races per year.

This includes all marathons that had 500 or more finishers in a given year.

The peak year is the same as before — 2014. About 480,000 runners participated in a total of 156 different races across the country.

Since then, there has been a slow and steady decline. By 2019, that had dropped to just under 400,000 runners and 133 races.

Again, you can see the sheer drop in participation due to COVID and the steady climb back. In 2021 and 2022, the number of finishers and races increased.

But in 2023, those numbers are still significantly below the 2019 levels. This year saw about 365,000 finishers in 116 races. That’s about 10% fewer races and finishers than in 2019.

The cancellation of Twin Cities would explain a small piece of that, but that race typically has 6,000 to 7,000 finishers. So even if that race had occurred, the numbers would still be off from the 2019 levels by quite a bit.

What Does the Future Hold for Marathons?

The running industry — and especially road racing — was substantially disrupted by the COVID-19 epidemic.

It’s ironic that many people were brought into the sport because they suddenly had more free time — but at the same time, they faced fewer opportunities to race.

Things have continued to improve, and 2023 was a better year than 2022. Some of the biggest races continued to rebound, and a few — like Chicago and CIM — even set records for participation. But others continued to languish below their pre-COVID levels.

Some races will likely never return. New Jersey is a good example of this. The NJ Marathon attempted a comeback in 2021, but the organizers couldn’t secure permits from their host city, and the race is now defunct.

But these are also opportunities. In 2023, the Jersey City Marathon ran its inaugural race. Part of me wonders if they would have still organized Jersey City had the NJ Marathon not folded. Is NJ big enough to support three major races (including Atlantic City)?

And so the next year or two may be the story of new races blooming where old races failed. Now I’m curious to look back at exactly which races haven’t returned since 2019.

But long term, massive races like New York and Chicago can only get so big. They may already be at their limit with around 50,000 finishers. So a full rebound of participation will rely on sustaining — and growing — the small races with a few hundred or a few thousand finishers.

What have you noticed with your local races?

I’m an avid runner and a data nerd. I’ll be one of the 50,000 or so people participating in the 2024 Chicago Marathon. Follow me here on Medium for more data informed stories about running. Check out my blog, Running with Rock, for tips on choosing your next marathon training plan. You can also find me on Strava.