First Marathon What is the average marathon time, and how slow is too slow?

What is the average marathon time?

In 1994, Oprah Winfrey ran her first marathon, the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, DC, wearing bib number 40 for her 40th birthday. She finished in 4 hours, 29 minutes, and 15 seconds. The time became so well known that "Beat Oprah" turned into a running catch-phrase, as Run Washington recalled on its 25th anniversary.

Her time is also almost exactly average. The big race-results studies all land in the same place, a little either side of 4 and a half hours.

Sources: RunRepeat, The State of US Marathons 2025 (10.5 million US results); Running with Rock (about 400,000 finishers at 2024 US races); RunRepeat, Marathon Statistics 2019 Worldwide. The median is the runner exactly in the middle of the field.

Two things stand out. First, a 4:34 average works out to about 10:27 a mile, which surprises a lot of new runners. Most people in a marathon are not running fast. Second, these are finishers who chose to be there, plenty of them on their third or tenth marathon. A first marathon usually lands a little slower than average, and that's fine.

Average marathon time by age

In 1967, a 20-year-old named Kathrine Switzer ran the Boston Marathon at a time when women weren't welcome in it. A race official tried to pull her off the course. "I'm going to finish this race on my hands and knees if I have to," she remembered thinking, and she finished in 4 hours and 20 minutes. Fifty years later, at 70, she ran Boston again in 4 hours and 44 minutes. Half a century, 24 minutes.

That matches the data better than you might expect. Age slows the average marathoner, but gently, and not until the 50s.

US finishers, men and women together. Source: RunRepeat, The State of US Marathons 2025. Paces are my math from those times.

Between your 20s and your mid-40s, the average barely moves. So if you're 45 and wondering whether you've missed your window, you haven't. Switzer ran Boston at 70. At any age, the runners who get there tend to be the ones who stayed healthy through training, which comes down to a long run that grows slowly, easier weeks along the way, and enough food to recover.

How slow is too slow? Marathon cutoff times

Sandra Schawang, 63, was one of the last finishers at the 2022 Honolulu Marathon, a little over 14 hours after the 5 a.m. start. "I chose this marathon because there's no time limit," she said just after finishing.

Most races do have a limit, though, and it's the only real answer to "how slow is too slow." A cutoff is usually set as a pace, and you need to hold it from start to finish (or at checkpoints along the way). Here are a few real ones.

Sources: B.A.A. rules, Marine Corps Marathon (also has checkpoints, including mile 20 by 1:15 p.m.), Chicago Marathon, Honolulu Marathon. Limits change; check your race's own page before you sign up.

So the honest answer is that no finish time is too slow, as long as you choose a race that fits it. If your long runs suggest you'll be out there for 6 hours or more, look for a race with a generous limit, or one with no limit at all. If a race is set and the cutoff is tight, a run-walk plan can help you hold a steady pace the whole way.

And notice how much room there is. A 6-hour limit means about 13:44 a mile, and even the 65-and-up average in the table above finishes with 25 minutes to spare.

Why your first marathon should be about finishing

Benjamin Rapoport, a Harvard-MIT medical student who had run 18 marathons, hit the wall at the 2005 New York City Marathon: his legs stopped keeping up the pace as he entered Manhattan. Later, he built a model of why it happens. "People think hitting the wall is inevitable, but it's not," he told the Harvard Gazette. "You need to set a target pace that will get you to the finish without hitting the wall." The usual mistake, he said, happens on race morning: "People sometimes get too excited or change their game plan on the day of the race, and that's a tactical mistake."

That's the case for racing your first marathon to finish. You don't yet know what mile 22 feels like, so a time goal is a guess, and an aggressive guess is how people end up walking the last 6 miles. A marathon rewards patience more than speed. For most runners, marathon pace sits well below their hard, sustained effort, and the slower the finish, the further below it they run. It should feel almost easy for the first half.

The training follows the same idea. Longer long runs go with faster finishes, and in one group of first-time marathoners, with fewer race-day injuries. Running a half marathon before your first full helps too: in one study, it went with fewer injuries during marathon training.

Want a time goal anyway? Sub-5 is a friendly one for a first marathon, and the table shows what that means per mile. Your tracked long runs are a good guide to which row is yours: run them at an easy, steady effort, note the pace, and pick a goal a little slower than it feels like you could manage.

Even pace over 26.2 miles (42.2 km). Real races lose a little time to crowds, water stops, and weaving.

How to eat through marathon training

In 2017, Shalane Flanagan became the first American woman in 40 years to win the New York City Marathon. She told CBS News that in college, "we were eating everything low fat." With her best friend, the nutritionist and chef Elyse Kopecky, she switched to a wholesome everyday diet. "I don't think I'd be sitting here, talking to you and running at a high level if it weren't for the fact that I changed my diet."

The food that matters most isn't eaten on race day. It's the ordinary meals across 16 to 20 weeks of training. Eating enough day to day is what lets your training work, and coming up short for weeks blunts it.

A few habits do most of the work. Eat to match the day: a 20-mile long run burns around 2,000 calories for a 150-pound runner, so long-run days need more food, especially carbs, and rest days go back to normal, not starved. After long runs, eat carbs and some protein soon, not hours later. Runners need more carbs and protein than people who don't train, so get some protein at every meal. And don't save calories in a big week. Losing weight? Keep the cut small and take it from the whole day, never the long-run days: big deficits raise the risk of illness and bone stress injuries.

Underfueling rarely announces itself. It looks like being tired all the time, legs that never feel fresh, getting sick more often, sleeping badly, feeling cranky, and easy runs that feel harder while your paces stall. The IOC's 2023 consensus on low energy in sport names lower immunity, poorer sleep, mood changes, a weaker training response, and higher injury risk, and low energy undermines bone. If those signs show up in a big week, try eating more before you train harder. Race-day fuel is the small part: extra carbs the last couple of days, and gels you practiced on long runs.

Race day

Look down the Marine Corps Marathon's own list of famous finishers and you'll find plenty of ordinary marathon times. Drew Carey ran 4:37:11. Ted Koppel, the longtime Nightline host, ran 5:09:08. Every one of them is listed the same way: as a finisher.

On the morning, keep it simple. The last weeks of your plan get lighter on purpose, because running less in the final weeks, while keeping a little speed, helps you race better, so arrive rested and keep eating normally. Start slower than you want to, and fuel the way you practiced. If you feel great at mile 18, hold on to that feeling until mile 22. Then spend it.

Jim Barahal, president of the Honolulu Marathon Association, put the whole idea of this guide in two sentences. "Your time doesn't matter to us," he said. "We welcome you as a finisher."

Your first marathon time is the one you'll beat next time. The finish is the part you keep.