picture via Runrepeat
Men are faster than women, but the largest gender marathon analysis has shown that women are better at pacing. They burnout less in the second half of the marathon.
This is the result of analysis which covered 2,348,505 results from 6 marathons (Boston, Berlin, Chicago, London, New York, Paris) achieved from 2009 to 2019.
By looking at the burnout %, we see that in the US women are 17.65% better at keeping an even pace throughout the marathon than men.
| Gender | Participants | 5k pace | 10k pace | 15k pace | 20k pace | Half pace |
| Female | 334,366 | 0:06:02 | 0:06:08 | 0:06:10 | 0:06:25 | 0:06:12 |
| Male | 365,518 | 0:05:33 | 0:05:35 | 0:05:37 | 0:05:50 | 0:05:39 |
| 25k pace | 30k pace | 35k pace | 40k pace | Full pace | Burnout % |
| 0:06:43 | 0:06:52 | 0:07:12 | 0:07:18 | 0:07:01 | -13.24 |
| 0:06:07 | 0:06:21 | 0:06:47 | 0:06:59 | 0:06:34 | -16.08 |
On the global level, it’s a slightly different situation: women are 18.33% better at pacing than men.
| Average pace during the 1st and 2nd half of the marathon | |||
| Gender | 1st half | 2nd half | difference |
| Men | 0:05:43 | 0:06:40 | 14.07% |
| Women | 0:06:26 | 0:07:16 | 11.49% |
In detail, it looks like this:
| Average pace by race split | ||||||||
| Distance | 5k | 10k | 15k | 20k | 25k | 30k | 35k | 40k |
| Avg. pace men | 05:26 | 05:27 | 05:31 | 05:38 | 05:56 | 06:08 | 06:29 | 06:41 |
| Avg. pace women | 06:02 | 06:08 | 06:14 | 06:26 | 06:44 | 06:52 | 07:09 | 07:13 |
| % change men | 0.31 | 1.21 | 2.07 | 5.06 | 3.26 | 5.40 | 2.99 | |
| % change women | 1.63 | 1.60 | 3.11 | 4.46 | 1.94 | 3.96 | 0.92 | |
On a global level, the top 3 countries with the smallest differences in burnout between women and men are: Belgium, Austria, Switzerland. When looking at burnout % among women running population only, the best pacers come from Finland, Belgium and Switzerland.
