Average marathon time
Runsy's synthesis of four published studies covering 107.9M+ race results: the midpoint, the full range where sources disagree, and every source named with its sample size and terms.
Where these numbers come from
Ask the internet for the average marathon time and you get a confident number with no source behind it. The page ranking second for this search prints a full age-by-sex table and cites nothing at all; its own about page says the standards come from "well known formulas". A formula is a model of a runner, not a measurement of one.
So here is ours, built the other way round. Runsy's synthesis: the average marathon finish time is around 4:30:49 — 4:17:54 for men, 4:49:49 for women — and every input, every sample size and every disagreement between the sources is printed below so you can check it.
How we built the figure
There is no single dataset that reports finish-time distributions for road running. So instead of picking one number and calling it the average, we did this:
- Collected every published central figure we could trace to a named source with a stated sample size.
- Discarded anything we could not trace to its origin. A magazine quoting a statistic is not a source; we followed each figure back to the study that produced it, and dropped it when the trail went cold.
- Took the unweighted mean of the surviving figures. Unweighted, deliberately: the samples overlap heavily and are not independent, so weighting by sample size would just hand the answer to whichever study counted the most rows.
- Published the range as well as the midpoint. Where the sources disagree, the disagreement is the finding.
The result is Runsy's synthesis of published data. It is not a measurement, and we do not present it as one. It is the middle of what the published record actually says, with the edges shown.
Two things the arithmetic cannot fix
We are averaging means with medians. The percentile study reports a 50th percentile; the others report an average. Finish-time distributions have a long slow tail, so the mean sits later than the median. Mixing them widens our range and pulls the midpoint slightly late. We say so rather than quietly picking whichever suits.
Some figures are converted from a published pace, not a published time. Where a source reports average pace per kilometre, we multiply by the race distance. That is arithmetic on their number, not a new number — but the mean of a set of paces is not identical to the pace of the mean time, so treat converted figures as the coarser of the two kinds. Each one is labelled below.
The four sources
Every number below is one we could trace to a named publisher who states what they measured and how many results they measured it over. Nothing here is modelled, estimated or carried over from a secondary write-up.
- RunRepeat / IAAF, The State of Running 2019
Measures: Average finish time by year, distance, nation and sex. Sample: 107.9M results, 70,000 events, 193 countries. Years: 1986–2018. Reuse terms: “You may use material from this report as long as you refer to this original report.” - RunRepeat, Marathon Statistics 2019 Worldwide
Measures: Average marathon finish time by nation and sex, elites excluded. Sample: 19,614,975 results, 32,335 races. Years: 2008–2018. Reuse terms: “Feel free to use any data from the study as long as you refer to this original source.” - RunRepeat, The State of US Marathons 2025
Measures: Average US marathon finish time by year, sex and age group, elites excluded. Sample: 10,482,628 results, 6,352 events, ~97% of US marathon results. Years: 1984–2025. Reuse terms: Same publisher and stated policy as above - RunRepeat, Compare Running Finish Times
Measures: Finish-time percentiles by distance and sex. Sample: 35M results, 28,000+ races. Years: “last 20 years”, no end date given. Reuse terms: Same publisher and stated policy as above - Cuk, Nikolaidis, Villiger & Knechtle (2021), Medicina 57(4):389
Measures: Mean pace by age group and sex, Oslo Marathon and Oslo 10‑km. Sample: 8,828 marathon finishers, 16,315 10‑km finishers. Years: 2015–2018. Reuse terms: Peer-reviewed, open access under CC BY 4.0
One caveat we will not bury
Four of those five come from the same publisher, and three of them share a lead researcher. They are not five independent measurements of the world; they are four analyses out of one research operation plus one peer-reviewed paper on two Norwegian races. That is genuinely the best-sourced picture we could assemble, and it is still a narrower evidence base than a number like "the average marathon time" makes it sound.
What the sources say, and where they disagree
Converted figures are marked. Everything else is quoted as published.
| Source | Basis | All | Men | Women |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| State of Running 2019 | Average, 2018 | 4:32:49 | 4:15:13 | 4:56:18 |
| Marathon Statistics 2019 | Average, 2018, global | 4:29:53 | — | — |
| State of US Marathons 2025 | Average, 2024, US only | 4:34 | 4:24 | 4:51 |
| Compare Running Finish Times | Median (50th percentile) | 4:26:33 | 4:14:29 | 4:42:09 |
| Runsy synthesis | Unweighted mean of the above | 4:30:49 | 4:17:54 | 4:49:49 |
| Spread between sources | 7:27 | 9:31 | 14:09 |
Fourteen minutes of disagreement on the women's figure is the useful part. If you ran 4:45 and you want to know whether that is above or below average, the honest answer is that it depends which study you ask — faster than the 2018 global average, slower than the 20-year median. Anyone quoting you a single number to the second is quoting one study and not telling you which.
A contradiction inside one report
The State of Running 2019 gives men's average marathon pace as 6:43 per kilometre, which works out at 4:43:25 over 42.195 km — 28 minutes slower than the 4:15:13 the same report gives for 2018. We could not reconcile the two from what is published, so we used the year-stamped finish time and left the pace figure out of the synthesis. We are flagging it because you will find both numbers quoted elsewhere as though they agree.
Average marathon time by age
This is the table every competitor prints and almost none of them source. The only age breakdown we could trace to published data is US-only, from The State of US Marathons 2025 — average finish time by age group, 2019 against 2024, elites excluded.
- 2019
- 2024
Each bar is the time added since the 18–24 group of the same series. Absolute finish times are in the table below.
| Age group | 2019 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|
| 18–24 | 4:21:00 | 4:19:00 |
| 25–34 | 4:33:00 | 4:27:00 |
| 35–44 | 4:35:00 | 4:29:00 |
| 45–54 | 4:42:00 | 4:38:00 |
| 55–64 | 4:58:28 | 4:58:04 |
| 65+ | 5:39:00 | 5:35:00 |
The source prints most of these to the minute and two of them to the second. They are written here as h:mm:ss throughout so the column scans, which adds trailing zeros and no precision.
Two things worth reading off it. The age penalty is smaller than people expect — about 76 minutes separates the fastest age group from the oldest, across a 45-year span. And the curve is remarkably flat from 18 to 44: eight minutes covers three decades of life. Whatever slows marathon runners down, for most people it is not age.
These are US figures. We have no traceable age breakdown for the rest of the world, and we are not going to extrapolate one.
Is your marathon time good?
The synthesis puts the middle of the field at about 4:30. From the percentile study, which is the only source that publishes a distribution rather than an average.
- All
- Men
- Women
| Percentile | All | Men | Women |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fastest 1% | 2:50:48 | 2:44:18 | 3:11:35 |
| Fastest 10% | 3:31:46 | 3:22:40 | 3:49:22 |
| Fastest 30% | 4:02:56 | 3:53:07 | 4:20:24 |
| Median | 4:26:33 | 4:14:29 | 4:42:09 |
| Slowest 20% | 5:11:00 | 4:55:33 | 5:26:40 |
Which makes sub-4 a genuinely meaningful goal rather than a round number: it puts you inside the fastest 30% of everyone who finishes a marathon, and inside the fastest 20% of women. Sub-3:30 is top 10%.
If you want a comparison that adjusts for your age and sex rather than lumping you in with everyone, an age-graded percentage is the better instrument — it is built on the World Masters Athletics standards, which are a published reference rather than a survey of who turned up.
Where would your time land?
Enter a finish time to read it off the same published distribution, instead of counting rows.
Faster than 72%
4:00:00 puts you in the top 28% of all finishers.
- Top 1%
- 2:50:48
- Top 10%
- 3:31:46
- Top 30%
- 4:02:56
- Top 50%
- 4:26:33
- Top 80%
- 5:11:00
Positions between the published anchors are linear interpolations, not measurements, and nothing is extrapolated past the fastest or slowest anchor. Source: RunRepeat, Compare Running Finish Times — finish-time percentiles by distance and sex, 35M results across 28,000+ races, publisher states “last 20 years” with no end date.
What we could not support, and left out
- A full age × sex percentile table. No source we could trace publishes finish-time percentiles broken down by both age and sex. The tables you see elsewhere are generated, not measured. We would rather have a gap than a fabrication.
- Anything from parkrun. parkrun's terms prohibit scraping and data reuse, which also rules out the community scrapes and dataset mirrors built from it. We did not use them.
- Strava's Year in Sport. Widely quoted for a median US marathon time. We read the press release directly and it contains no finish-time statistic at all — the number circulating under Strava's name is not in Strava's report. Dropped.
- Non-US age breakdowns, and any figure after 2024. Not published as far as we can find.
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Fair questions
What is the average marathon time?
Runsy's synthesis of four published studies puts it at about 4:30:49 for all finishers, 4:17:54 for men and 4:49:49 for women. That is the unweighted midpoint of figures ranging from 4:26:33 to 4:34:00 overall. It is not a measurement we made; it is the middle of what the published record says, and the sources and their samples are listed on this page.
Is a 4-hour marathon good?
Yes, on the published distribution. A sub-4 marathon puts you inside the fastest 30% of all finishers, and inside the fastest 20% of women, according to the RunRepeat percentile study of 35 million race results. The median finisher is around 4:26.
Why do different sites give different average marathon times?
Because they are measuring different things and rarely say so. Some report a mean and some a median; some are global and some US-only; some are a single year and some span decades; some exclude elite runners and some do not. Across the four sources we traced, the overall figure ranges from 4:26:33 to 4:34:00 — a seven-and-a-half minute spread that is entirely explained by methodology, not by runners changing.
Are these averages of all runners or just people who race?
Just people who race, and specifically people who finish. Every dataset behind these numbers is built from official race results, so it excludes anyone who did not enter, did not start, or did not finish. Race finishers are a self-selected and better-trained group than runners in general. No published dataset we could find measures the wider running population.
How much does age slow your marathon time?
Less than most people assume. In the US data covering 10.4 million results, the 18–24 age group averaged 4:19 in 2024 and the 65+ group 5:35 — about 76 minutes across a 45-year span. The curve is nearly flat between 18 and 44, where eight minutes separates the age groups.