The Valencia Marathon has a reputation for being fast. Still, I was a surprised when I saw a headline that there were over 5,000 runners finishing sub-3:00 at this year’s race.
Just how fast was this year’s Valencia Marathon?
Most of my data analysis has focused on American marathons, plus the Abbott World Majors. Although I’m familiar with Valencia, I haven’t previously collected or analyzed its results. This seemed like a good opportunity to do so.
Although the race dates to 1981, I was only able to find results sets back to 2009. I scraped those results from Athlinks for 2009 to 2023, and then I scraped the results for this year directly from the Valencia Marathon website.
Note: The Valencia Marathon website lists both an “official time” and a “real time.” It’s unclear what the difference is, but I used the “real time” since it’s sometimes slightly faster – and it’s the time that was used in the Athlinks results for other years.
A few questions immediately came to mind:
- How has the number of runners finishing sub-3:00 changed over time?
- Is there anything special about the field that would make it so fast?
- How does the field compare at faster times – like 2:30 or 2:45?
Let’s dive in and see what the data has to say about these questions.
History of Sub-3:00 Finishes at the Valencia Marathon
Let’s start with a basic question: how has the number of sub-3:00 finishes changed over time at the Valencia Marathon? Have there always been this many fast finishers?
The visual below tracks that number from 2009 to 2024, with the exception of 2020. That year, there was no mass event due to COVID – there was only a small elite field.
First, it looks like there were actually more sub-3:00 finishers last year. The difference isn’t large, but there were 5,243 finishers last year and 5,186 this year. So to the extent that Valencia set a record for the number of sub-3:00 finishes – it was last year’s race.
Second, there has been a huge increase in the number of sub-3:00 finishes since COVID. In 2019, there were only 2,158. There were fewer finishers (21,230 to this year’s 28,179), but that’s a 33% increase in finishers compared to a 140% in sub-3:00 finishes.
Third, I’ve marked the high water point for five other large races – Berlin, Boston, London, Chicago, and Tokyo. They are all known for fast times, and Valencia surpassed them all by a good amount. For some added context, Boston and Tokyo are of a similar size (albeit slightly larger), but Berlin, London, and Chicago are almost twice as large.
Berlin came the closest this year. Due to the surge in the number of finishers, it had about 4,500 sub-3:00 finishers – but considering how much larger it was (~53,000 finishers) than Valencia, there’s still a big difference between those two races.
What Does the Field at Valencia Look Like?
Let’s dig a little deeper.
One thing that can distort averages and distributions of times is if the demographics of the field are skewed. For example, Tokyo has a much older field, on average, and Berlin and Tokyo both tilt more heavily towards men. Boston, on the other hand, is unique because of the large role that qualifying times play in shaping the field.
Unlike Boston, there are no qualifying times restricting entry into this race. So that’s not a distorting factor. There’s also no lottery, like Berlin, guaranteeing some semblance of randomness. The race’s registration is (for now) first come first served.
The visual below shows the gender distribution at Valencia over the last fifteen years (again, excluding 2020). The blue bar denotes the share of women and the purple bar denotes the share of men.
Going back to 2009, that distribution is shockingly uneven. This is what American marathons looked like back in the 1970’s, before women’s running was a thing. But by the late 2000’s, things were on the way towards balancing out in America.
The last few years, about 20% of the field at Valencia has been women. That’s better than it used to be, but it’s still pretty imbalanced. Even knowing that European races like Berlin skew towards men, that is more unequal than I expected.
It could also be one (partial) explanation for why there are so many sub-3:00 finishes. That certainly doesn’t explain it all, but it’s one reason why a larger percentage of the runners at Valencia would break three hours than at Chicago (where close to 50% of the finishers are women).
The visual above shows the distribution of the sub-3:00 finishes at this year’s race. Purple bars are men and blue bars are women.
Unsurprisingly, since 3:00 is a much more difficult time for women to reach, they make up a tiny fraction of the sub-3:00 finishes. The vast majority are men, and the majority of them are in their 20’s and 30’s. A decent number come out of the 40-44 age group, and it starts to taper off among older runners – although there’s still an impressive amount of men 45-49 and 50-54 finishing sub-3:00.
Does Drilling Down on Age Change Anything?
There was a big shift in the number of runners finishing sub-3:00 over time. One explanation could be if there was a shift towards younger runners.
So let’s drill down on men under 45 and see if that changes anything.
There are two data points here. The blue line indicates the number of men in these age groups finishing sub-3:00, and the purple bars indicate the percent of them that finished under 3 hours. If you hover over a bar, you can also see the total number of men in these age groups in a given year.
This graph looks pretty similar to the original one. The increase from 2019 to 2024 is ~130% – so slightly lower, but still in the same ballpark.
Looking at the purple bars, there’s clearly a huge difference in the percent of runners finishing sub-3:00 over time.
From 2009 to 2017, it varies from about 5% to 10%. This is a fairly typical rate for men in their 20’s, 30’s, and early 40’s. Nothing out of the ordinary.
In 2018 and 2019, it increases a bit to ~15%. This is on the high side, but it’s not crazy. There are other marathons with flat courses and fast fields where more than 10% of young men go sub-3:00.
Given the timing, though, it’s possible that the introduction of the Vaporfly back in 2018 had some role to play in this initial boost. There may also be a data issue, as the age data wasn’t as reliable in the early years.
But then, post-COVID, the numbers surge incredibly. In 2022, 2023, and 2024, around 30% of men under the age of 45 at the Valencia Marathon finished sub-3:00. For a race that’s open to everyone and not restricted by time qualifications (like Boston), that’s an incredibly high rate.
The only kinds of races that come close are the extreme downhill races like REVEL Big Bear.
How Do Faster Times Compare With Other Major Races?
One final thing I was curious about: is it just sub-3:00 finishes, or does Valencia also have a disproportionately high rate of other fast time like 2:45 or 2:30?
I calculated the number of men under 45 finishing under each of those two times at Valencia along with Boston, Berlin, Chicago, London, and Tokyo. The results are in the visual below – with the stats for 2:30 at the top and 2:45 at the bottom. Note that the y-axis is different for each visual.
For each race, the data is calculated for 2019, 2022, 2023, and 2024 (left to right). You can hover over a bar to get the specifics.
Again, there’s a huge difference between 2019 and the post-COVID years at Valencia. Pre-COVID, the numbers are Valencia are in line with the rest of these majors races. But – especially in 2023 and 2024 – it starts to pull away in a big way.
At 2:45, Berlin and London come close in 2024. Boston isn’t that far back in 2023. Otherwise, none of the other races come close to 1,000 men finishing under 2:45. Valencia had 1,500 two years in a row.
And at 2:30, the difference is more stark. In 2023, there were almost 500 finishers under 2:30. Berlin came the closest this year, but it was way down at 273. London is the only other race that exceed 200.
This far down, the difficulty of the course at Boston seems to be outweighing the selection effect created by its qualifying times. At 2:45, Boston’s numbers looked good – especially good, considering it’s 2/3 the size of Berlin, Chicago, and London.
But at 2:30, Boston has the lowest numbers in almost every year. In 2022, London came in dead last and Boston came in second.
Back to the topic at hand, though … there are a ridiculous number of runners finishing sub 2:30 at Valencia.
So Is the Valencia Marathon As Fast As They Say It Is?
Yup. It really is.
Both last year and this year, it had far more runners finishing sub-3:00 than any other race. And it appears to also hold the record for the most runners finishing under 2:45 and 2:30, as well. I only ran those numbers for men under 45, but I’m sure the trend extends to the whole field.
Why is this?
The field is skewed heavily towards men, and that could increase the percent of the overall field that finishes sub-3:00. But even when you isolate the young men, the rate of sub-3:00 finishes is sky high.
It’s a flat course and it has good weather. But the same is true of London, Berlin, and (sometimes) Chicago. So that’s not the answer.
The most likely answer is that this race appeals specifically to runners who are trying to run fast times and there’s a self-selection effect at play.
In part, the fact that there is no lottery probably also influences things, since the fastest and most interested runners are the ones who will be eager and ready to register right away. If Chicago and Berlin didn’t have a lottery, their time distributions would probably shift a bit as well as more casual runners are eliminated.
But in part, it seems that the “word is out,” so to speak. Valencia is the place to go if you want to run fast. Two years running, it has had the fastest field in the world. And that kind of thing is self-reinforcing.
The real question, now, is what happens to registration.
Although it has sold out for six years straight, in 2023 it didn’t happen until June. This year’s race sold out in February – less than three months after registration opened. Next year’s race sold out mere days after registration opened.
This sounds eerily similar to the history of the Chicago Marathon, which also used to be first come first served. Over the course of a few years, it sold out more and more quickly. Then, in 2013, their website crashed a few hours into the registration period – or else it would have sold out in less than a day.
Will Valencia suffer the same fate? We’ll see. But popularity is a double edged sword.
Note: Feature image from Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA-4.0.
