Cloudy with a Chance of PRs
Tailored insights for your taper brain
Welcome to Tailwind. If you’re reading this, you might be training for the 2025 Boston Marathon.
And if you’re training, you probably have a goal.
And if you have a goal, you’ve probably started to think about the weather and the impact that it might have on that goal.
Well, that’s why we’re here. For the next three weeks, we’re dropping into your inbox every day with a quick race day outlook—what the forecast means for your goal time, how you might want to tweak your strategy or what you wear, and a little Boston Marathon weather history that you may or may not have heard before.
Each briefing is short—under 3 minutes to read.
And if you’re into this stuff (or just need something to channel the taper energy), we built you an app: Tailwind Weather. It uses a ton of research and data to tell you—down to the second—how much the weather might affect your race. We made it for fun, and to help raise money for another project (built for runners, of course) that we’re really excited about.
Tailwind will be ready for download on Wednesday, April 2nd. It’s a one-time download. If you like it, we’d love if you shared it. Just search “Tailwind Weather” in the App Store.
Okay—enough intro. Let’s get into Daily Briefing #1.
Tailwind Tracker
Will there be a tailwind? Yes! expect a strong tailwind.
Temperature at Start: 46°F (8°C)
Temperature at Finish: 47°F (9°C)
Wind: W at 21 mph (32 km/h) — tailwind all the way
Precipitation Chance: 0%
Conditions: Cloudy most of the way
Humidity: 90%
Race Day Impact:
Similar years at Boston have yielded times that are on average 3-5 minutes faster than the average.
The Good
It’s a perfect day to run fast. The temperature is ideal—cool but not cold—so you’ll stay comfortable without overheating. There will be very little sun so you might want to layer at the start but overall it doesn’t get better than this!
The Less Good
There’s not much to complain about today. You’ll be a little chilly when the gun goes off and sometimes when the weather is this perfect, it’s easy to forget to fuel. Also with the tailwind so strong, it may feel blustery at times.
That’s it for the briefing, Check back tomorrow to see how things shift. Now it’s time for a look back in time!
The April Fools Blizzard of ‘97
On this day in 1997, New Englanders were met with a freak snowstorm that dropped more than 30 inches of snow in some areas. In classic Boston fashion, it was 60 degrees the day prior, before the storm dropped nearly 3” per hour of heavy, wet snow.
Ultimately, the storm had zero impact on the race that year as temperatures quickly warmed back up and race day conditions were near perfect. A high of 51 with a slight to moderate headwind.
Go back in time and check out these crazy news reports from 1997.