Ethiopia's Addisu Yihune produced the defining performance of Boston Marathon weekend's opening day on Saturday, running 13:14 on a chilly, fog-shrouded Back Bay course to win the 16th edition of the Boston 5K presented by Point32Health and set a new course and event record. The 23-year-old, who races for adidas, surged clear in the final kilometre of the 3.1-mile loop to take six seconds off the previous course mark of 13:20 set by American Ben True in 2017, claiming the $8,000 winner's cheque and a $5,000 course record bonus.
Yihune's winning margin belied a tight race through the middle miles. A lead group of roughly a dozen men travelled as one through the two-mile mark before the pace sharpened along Commonwealth Avenue, and the Ethiopian broke clear with a decisive acceleration in the closing 600 metres. His compatriot and training partner Berihu Aregawi was the nearest challenger through the tape, with American record holder and four-time Boston 5K champion Ben True among the lead pack that split sub-13:30 in the cool conditions. Organisers said temperatures hovered around 45 degrees Fahrenheit at the 8:00am gun, with light fog and a slight headwind along Boylston Street.
In the women's race, defending champion Gela Hambese repeated as winner in 15:28, though her time was well down on the 14:53 course record she set on the same streets a year earlier. The 23-year-old Ethiopian, who also races for adidas, was made to work much harder in 2026 as a compact chase group including American Emily Infeld, Britain's Amy-Eloise Markovc and Kenyan teenager Dorcus Ewoi tracked her through the middle of the race. Hambese pulled away on the return leg down Commonwealth to take the tape by five seconds, with the next three finishers credited with the same time of 15:33 in an unusually tight scramble for the minor places.
The professional wheelchair races opened the morning's programme and offered an early glimpse of the Patriots' Day form of two Boston Marathon headline acts. Switzerland's Marcel Hug, bidding for a ninth Boston marathon wheelchair title on Monday, won the men's 5K in 10:25, while American Tatyana McFadden took the women's race in 12:29. The B.A.A. Invitational Mile followed on Boylston Street at 11:00am, with the full Atlanta Track Club squad of Clay Pender, Luke Houser, Luciano Fiore and Sean Dolan — the quartet that set a 4×800 metres indoor world record earlier this season — lined up in the professional men's race.
The Boston 5K has grown into one of the most competitive road 5Ks in the United States, but its primary role remains the curtain-raiser to the Patriots' Day weekend. By mid-afternoon the attention around Copley Square had already pivoted to Monday's marathon, with shakeout runs from adidas, Tracksmith and Heartbreak Hill Running Company set to continue into Sunday and the first buses to Hopkinton due to leave Boston Common before dawn. For Yihune, a course record on the streets that host the world's oldest annual marathon offered both a $13,000 pay day and an emphatic opening statement for the weekend ahead.