How Fast is a NYC Marathon?
In November each year New York City hosts its marathon and it’s always a lovely and inspiring day. Running 26.2 miles seems a bit unfathomable to me and I had very little concept of what was a “fast” or “impressive” time, or what is even an “okay” time. Many people would consider finishing at all to be impressive, while some serious runners push to achieve specific time goals. I was interested when this switch flips, and in general what the goal times for marathons seem to be.
Luckily, all the finisher results are hosted on New York Road Runner’s Results website and I was able to pull all the data using a Python script I wrote (https://github.com/shaunmac611/nyrr_data) using Selenium. With that, I could pull NYC marathon data for the last several years and see what the distribution looks like.
Something to note: The NYC marathon is a famously difficult marathon - it goes over several bridges which are difficult to manage hills. Perhaps in the future I will do analysis on the other course, but for this analysis I chose to keep it local.
Percentile of runners from slowest on the left to fastest on the right. The numbers on the bottom are their marathon finishing time
How to Interpret: 6.1 on the bottom is 6 hours and 6 minutes, so the chart at this point represents the percentage of runners that finished the marathon in slower than 6.1 hours (>6:06:00), which is about 8% on average, i.e. if you finished the marathon around this time you are in the 8th percentile
What immediately stood out to me was how much harder 2022 was than previous years. At around 75 degrees Fahrenheit, 2022 was the hottest NYC marathon days since the race was moved to November in the 80s. This pushed the distribution to the left, i.e. everyone was running a bit slower. If we take the average of these years we can see the distribution of runners on average:
Percentage of runners who fall in each 6 minute range. The hour and half hour marks have been highlighted (i.e. sub four hours, sub 4.5 hours, etc.)
How to Interpret: (6.1,6.2] are the percentage of runners that finished the marathon between 6.1 and 6.2 hours (6:06:00 < Time <= 6:12:00), nearly 1% of runners
What’s fascinating about this chart is how people will push themselves to achieve their goals. At each hour mark and at each half hour mark the number of runners spikes. These are goals people set for themselves, which can be immensely powerful as you can see the biggest spike is just breaking 4 hours which is a very common goal for running a marathon. Nearly 5% of runners break 4 within 6 minutes - it is the largest group of finishing times even though the median finishing time is closer to 4.5. We can look at this at a more granular level in chunks of 1 minute to see just how close these runners got:
Percentage of runners who fall in each 1 minute range (every 10 min on x axis). The hour and half hour mark spikes have been labeled
How to Interpret: (5:59,6:00] are the percentage of runners that finished the marathon after between 5:59:01 and 6:00:00
When we look at it in 1 minute chunks we see just how close these groupings are: 1.8% of runners break 4 hours by 2 minutes or less! These are people pushing themselves to run faster in the last mile after already running over 25 miles quite quickly. One in ten runners will finish within 7 minutes of 4 hours, 5.5% of runners will just barely beat 4 hours and 4.5% of runners will get very close without breaking 4 hours.
Another observation from this it the consistent increase in the sub 5 hour mark. I interpret this as some people (about 30%) just want to finish the marathon. They will walk, take photos, and soak in the day - some are naturally faster and some are slower which represents the distribution between 8 hours and >5 hours. Around 5 hours is when people begin to be concerned with their time, they are training more and are pushing themselves on the day to get sub 5, or sub 4:30, or chances are sub 4. Beyond that are extreme runners who have likely run several marathons and are looking to hone their already impressive ability to perhaps get sub 3:30 or even sub 3.
Some final thoughts. Showing up and finishing at all is impressive in it’s own right. What is not shown in the above is <1% of people in the US have completed a marathon - so by finishing you are already in the top 1%! But if you want to compare yourself to the amazing field of athletes who run a marathon, 5 hours (11:27 min miles) is a pretty good time if you’re trying to finish it and are concerned about time. Around 4:30 (10:18 min miles) is a good goal if you want to be in the top half of all marathon runners in NYC. Sub 4 hours (9:10 min miles) is a great goal for serious runners to test their abilities. Beyond that is more extreme, 3:30 (8:01 min miles) would show true dedication to long distance running and put you in the top 10% of runners. Sub 3 (6:52 min miles) is mastery of the sport, putting you in the top 1-2% of runners. Sub 2:30 (5:44 min miles) is elite, and you can probably start thinking about sponsorships. 2:05:06 is the current NYC course record which requires consistent sub 5 minute miles.