In recent years, global marathon performance has completely transformed. New shoe technology has revolutionized the optimization of energy return. General public participation has boomed. And the degree of competition across all levels has exploded.
That last consideration recently got me thinking. In the interest of exploring further exactly how far things have come, I took a deep dive into the data. Thankfully, World Athletics has been tracking yearly performance lists for some time now. I mined those lists to try to generate some clarity around these improvements, and here’s what I found.
- Women’s top level marathon performance has grown at over double the rate of men’s since 2008.
- The gap between the men’s 10th and 100th fastest marathon times has narrowed since 2008 while the women’s has increased.
- The number of women under 2:25 increased nearly 15x between 2008 and 2024.
- The 100th fastest marathon time for men in 2024 was over 3 and 1/2 minutes faster than in 2008.
- The 10th fastest marathon time for women in 2024 was 7 and 1/2 minutes faster than in 2008.
To generate a full picture of the gravity of marathon performance improvement, I looked at three particular areas: (1) top times by rank (10th, 25th, 50th, and 100th), (2) quantity of performances by time (different benchmarks for men and women), and (3) percent improvement in top times.
Let’s take a closer look at these and other statistics.
Women’s Global Marathon Performance
Top Times by Rank
This statistic was generated by identifying the 10th, 25th, 50th, and 100th best performance each year. See Figure 1.1 below for an interactive display.
Let’s review the results.
In 2008, the 10th fastest women’s performance was 2:24:27. This improved 2.42% to 2012 when it was 2:20:57, but 2012 appears to have been a kind of crazy year because performances by 2016 actually were heading the other direction, worsening by 1.22%.
Both of these swings were much more dramatic for the best of the best, though. When looking at the top 50 and top 100 fastest performances, the improvement of 2012 was only about half that of the top 10, and the worsening of 2016 was only a fraction of the top 10.
2017-2019 was clearly a period of growth, but keep in mind that this was also when super shoes were first introduced into elite circles.
The truly incredible stretch of time for women’s marathoning improvement came in 2022.
In 2019, the 25th fastest women’s marathon time was 2:21:05, over a minute faster than the next best year. But in 2022, only three years later, the 25th time was 2:18:51. That’s over two minutes faster in only 3 years time!
This trend was mirrored at each of the levels evaluated (10th, 50th, and 100th times) as well.
But to truly understand the gravity of this improvement, we need to look no further than this comparison: in 2008, the 10th fastest performance by a woman was 2:24:27. This kind of performance was winning major marathons and other significant contests. In fact, the top 10 women in 2008 all finished 1st or 2nd in their events, events that included Berlin, Dubai, and Tokyo marathons.
In 2024, only 16 years later, the 100th fastest time was 2:23:45, 42 seconds faster, a performance that at most major marathons was only barely finishing in the top 10 (10th in Chicago and Valencia, 9th in London, etc.).
To further illustrate the gap, in 2008, 2:23:45 would have been 9th on the top list and only a stone’s throw from 7th. In 2024, Sara Hall (USA) ran 2:23:45 at the Valencia Marathon where she finished 10th. Her time tied the 100th fastest performance of 2024 and at 41 years of age, earned her the US Master’s record.
Quantity of Performances (2:25, 2:20, 2:18)
This statistic was generated by identifying how many women ran under 2:25, 2:20, and 2:18 in the marathon each year. See Figure 1.2 below for an interactive display.
Let’s briefly identify what this figure reveals.
In 2008, 11 women ran under 2:25. In 2024, that number skyrocketed to 152. In 2022, more women ran under 2:20 (29 total) than all of 2008-2018 combined.
And the final revelation in this figure is that from 2008 to 2016, not a single woman in the world ran under 2:18. In 2022-2024, 10, 11, and 12 women did so (respectively).
Now we can fully appreciate the degree of improvement in only 16 years.
What 11 women were doing in 2008, over 150 women did in 2024. What exactly ZERO women were doing in more than half of the last 16 years, 12 women did in 2024 alone.
This kind of improvement falls in the category of shocking.
Understand this. While we didn’t include stats dating all the way back to 2001 (when World Athletics began tracking this degree of statistics), we did review it briefly.
The rate of improvement in exactly 3 years (2022-2024) nearly matched the rate of improvement for the previous TWENTY years.
If you felt like your jaw was on the floor for the entirety of the last three years, at least you now know why.
Men’s Global Marathon Performance
That is the true definition of unbelievable. Incredible. The next question we want to be asking, though, is whether the men shared the same reality.
Quantity of Performances (2:08, 2:06, 2:04)
This statistic was generated by identifying how many men ran under 2:08, 2:06, and 2:04 in the marathon each year. See Figure 2.1 below for an interactive display.
The short answer here that you can see at a glance is no. Not quite, at least.
While women clearly performed well over an order of magnitude better in 2024 versus 2008, the rate of growth for men was less. However, it was still notable.
In particular, the notability appears in the clear leap in performance after the year 2020.
Consider the benchmark time of 2:08. Still somewhat rare in 2008 (29 men total), that achievement was increasingly common each year with some small corrections.
For reasons we will not attempt to discuss here, 2012 was a particularly impressive year in terms of the depth of marathon performances. However, except for that year, the improvements were almost linear until the singular moment on everyone’s mind: the super shoes. Because the super shoes began to appear as early as 2016, the increasing rate of growth after 2016 is logical.
Even with the global lockdown of 2020, performances remained fairly high. After 2020, the rate of growth first observed in 2017 continued, again in a fairly linear fashion.
The final figure will help us evaluate this further.
Top Times by Rank
This statistic was generated by identifying the 10th, 25th, 50th, and 100th best performance each year. See Figure 2.2 below for an interactive display.
The data revealed by this figure can be summed up in one observation: the 100th man in 2024 ran exactly 3 minutes and 36 seconds faster than in 2008. That improvement was shared by each of the other benchmarks as well. In short, from 2008 to 2024, the amount of improvement was:
- 3 minutes and 36 seconds for 100th (2:10:30 to 2:06:54)
- 2 minutes and 57 seconds for 50th (2:08:51 to 2:05:54)
- 2 minutes and 55 seconds for 25th (2:07:45 to 2:04:50)
- 2 minutes and 38 seconds for 10th (2:06: 25 to 2:03:47)
As you can see, nearly 100 men did in 2024 what only 10 were doing in 2008.
Most intriguing in this analysis is that the gap between 10th and 100th has been steadily narrowing, as well, such that from 2008 to 2016, the difference in the rate of improvement was only .05% and favored the top 10 while from 2016 to 2024, that difference swung dramatically the other direction, favoring 100th by .73%.
In other words, the fastest men are getting faster, but the depth of the field is getting faster even faster.
What does this mean? Super shoes.
Big picture? This just means that the world of running got a small injection of awesome sauce. For a period of time, things have been moving and shaking in exciting ways and to dramatic degrees.
However, as with all advancements, unless a new awesome sauce hits soon, we’re likely to see a kind of settling of global marathon performance. You know as much as I do, now, and together I think we can see some signs of this settling already.
The men’s improvements may have already begun that settling based on the slight correction in 2024. Even the women’s rate of growth, which has been borderline absurd, has already begun leveling a touch.
Still, this one thing is certain: super shoes single-handedly redefined fast. And I would guess that if you’ve been running more than 5 years and decided to try some carbon-plated, nitrogen-infused foot springs, there’s a good chance you’ve noticed the difference too.
Whatever your take on it, though, there’s not denying that these have been exciting years!
Interested in more running history deep dives? Let us know here: info@atozrunning.com. And be sure to subscribe to receive all future articles like this!
Authored by: Zach Ripley, AtoZrunning Co-founder & Coach
Updated: December 16, 2024
