The average marathoner isn't even halfway when the world record is broken
• Sports
The NYC Marathon starts Sunday, November 1, a year after a record 59,226 runners finished it, and six months after Sabastian Sawe became the first person to legally run 26.2 miles in under two hours. How far would a typical runner get in the time it took him to finish?
Key takeaways
- Sawe’s 1:59:30 world record in London averaged 4:33 per mile.
- The average US male marathoner is at mile 11.9 when Sawe crosses the finish line, with 2 hours 24 minutes to go.
- The average male finisher of the 2025 NYC Marathon would be at mile 12.1, still in Brooklyn.
Sawe and his record-breaking run
On April 26, 2026, Sabastian Sawe crossed the finish line of the London Marathon with a record-breaking time of 1:59:30. His time was ratified by World Athletics on July 23 as the first record-eligible marathon run completed in under 2 hours. Yomif Kejelcha was right behind him, with 1:59:41.
The previous record belonged to the late Kelvin Kiptum, who took 2:00:35 to complete the Chicago Marathon in 2023. Sawe took 65 seconds off his predecessor’s time.
Eliud Kipchoge ran 1:59:40 in Vienna in 2019, but that was a staged exhibition with rotating pacers and a pace car, so it was not eligible as a record.
4:33 per mile: What does it mean?
A marathon is 26.2 miles. Divide Sawe’s time by this length, and you get his pace per mile: 4 minutes 33 seconds for 26.2 miles straight, or 13.2 mph. For comparison, most home treadmills are capped at 12 mph.
According to RunRepeat, the average US male marathoner finished in 4 hours 24 minutes in 2024. That works out to about 10:04 per mile (6 mph), so he takes more than twice as long as Sawe to cover each mile.
Where the average marathoner is when Sawe finishes
For this comparison, we take the average pace of a 2024 US male marathon finisher to see how far along he would be at the time that Sawe finishes the race.
distance = time ÷ pace
At 10:04 per mile, 1 hour 59 minutes 30 seconds of running covers 11.9 miles, or about 45% into the race. Subtracting that from the total length of the marathon, that’s about 14.3 miles away from the finish line.
From this point on, it will take him roughly another 2 hours 24 minutes to reach the end, which is 25 minutes longer than Sawe’s entire race.
On the flip side, in the 4 hours 24 minutes the average US male marathoner needs to finish, Sawe could have run 2.2 marathons.
How it translates into the NYC Marathon
31,927 men finished the NYC Marathon in 2025, with an average time of 4:18:55. The average pace was, therefore, 9:53 per mile.
At 1:59:30, the average male 2025 NYC Marathon finisher was at mile 12.1, that is, in Brooklyn, about a mile from the halfway point. Even Benson Kipruto, the winner of the 2025 NYC Marathon with 2:08:09, would be at mile 24.4, with 1.8 miles to go.
Methodology
The model assumes an even pace throughout the race. Real runners slow down in the second half. US averages are for men who finished a US marathon in 2024 (RunRepeat, State of US Marathons 2025). NYC averages are for men who finished the 2025 race. Runners who dropped out are not included, so the true average runner would be slightly further back. Sawe’s pace is from London, which is flatter and generally quicker than New York.
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