The "fastest" US marathon

Rickshaw · Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 11:05 am

Here's an interesting analysis of finishing times from 50 major US marathons. To help control for the fact that some races attract more walkers than others, it only considers the times of runners who finished in under 6 hours. For each race, it lists the median time of those finishers, as well as the percentage that finished under 3 and under 4 hours. Sure, it's not an iron-clad analysis, but it's a decent stab at measuring which courses are fastest.

The five fastest courses by this measure were Steamtown, Tucson, CIM, Lincoln, and Cape Cod. The five slowest were Maui, Mardi Gras, Long Beach, San Francisco, and Baltimore.

Full results are here: http://www.steamtownmarathon.com/marathoncomparisons.htm