Last weekend was the 2025 Marine Corps Marathon – the 50th anniversary of the People’s Marathon. It’s consistently among the largest races in the United States, although it’s been somewhat smaller in recent years.
After all of the Majors, I collect the results and write up a thorough analysis of the data. The most recent write ups were on Chicago, Berlin, and Sydney, and next week I’ll publish one on New York. I occasionally do something similar for other large races, and considering this is the 50th anniversary of MCM, I thought this year’s race deserved a write up of its own, too.
A few questions to consider:
- How big was this year’s race, and how does it compare to earlier editions of MCM?
- What’s the gender and age breakdown of the race, and how does this compare to other large marathons?
- Where are the runners from, and how does this compare to other large races?
- How fast were the winners – and how does this compare over time?
- How fast was the field – and how does this compare to previous editions and to other races?
Let’s get to it.
Note that the historical results go back to 1997 and were collected from Athlinks. The 2025 results were collected directly from the Marine Corps Marathon website.
How Big Is the Marine Corps Marathon?
The Marine Corps Marathon is typically one of the biggest races in the country, but it’s never the biggest. Last year, it was #6 on the list of the largest races in the United States, behind the Majors, LA, and Honolulu.
If you look at the visual below, though, you’ll see that last year’s 16,000 finishers was small in the context of the race’s history. Before COVID, you’d have to go back to 2003 to find a race with 15,000 finishers.
Way back in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, the race averaged 13,000 to 14,000. There was a bump in 2000 for the 25th anniversary and another one in 2005 for the 30th anniversary.
After 2005, the race averaged closer to 20,000 finishers. In 2012 and 2013, the peak years in the last marathon boom, there were over 23,000 finishers. That started to taper off from 2014 to 2019, with the exception of the 40th anniversary (2015). In 2019, the race had under 19,000 finishers for the first time in a decade.
The race went virtual in 2020 and it stayed virtual in 2021. When it returned in person in 2022, it was with a smaller field (11,000). Things rebounded slightly over the next two years, but 2024 still wasn’t back to 2019 levels.
Then comes this year: just over 30,000 finishers. It is by far the largest race in MCM history. That’s about 30% larger than the previous largest race, and it’ll push MCM into the #3 spot on the list of the largest marathons in the United States in 2025 (behind New York City and Chicago, but ahead of Boston).
A large field was expected, and they eliminated the other race distances to focus all of their efforts this year on the marathon. Back in 2019, that would mean about 1,300 runners in the 50k and another 6,200 runners in the 10k (7,500 total).
For the 40th anniversary, they still held the 10k race. So while there were only 23,000 marathoners, there were another 7,000 10k runners – which means there were slightly more total runners at the 2015 race. But only by a few hundred.
What’s the Gender Breakdown of the Marine Corps Marathon?
Overall, the gender breakdown of finishers at American marathons is close to 60% men and 40% women, with some marathons closer to gender parity and some leaning more heavily towards men. Before I looked at the data, I assumed that the Marine Corps Marathon would be one of those races that lean more heavily towards men.
Apparently, it’s not.
The visual below shows the gender breakdown of finishers for each year, going back to 1997. Note that the 2020 and 2021 races were virtual.
Coming out of the late 1990’s, women made up less than 40% of the field. From 1999 to 2010, the breakdown would hover around 39-40% women.
From that point on, though, the race moved progressively towards greater parity. From 2010 to 2015, that number moved from 40% to 45%. And in the next few years, it increased a little further to just over 46%. This is similar to what it is at Chicago and New York City, but few other races are that close to being equally balanced.
Since COVID, though, things have shifted in the other direction. From 2022 to 2024, the share of women dropped from 45% back down to 40%. Last year, only 37% of the finishers were women. This year’s mega field rebounded to about 41% – but it’s still more imbalanced than it was pre-COVID.
How Has the Age Breakdown Changed?
In the last few years, the surge in marathon finishers across the country has been concentrated among younger runners, particularly men. Is that same dynamic playing out at MCM?
On both the men’s and women’s side, each age group grew through the 2015 peak and then started to contract. In the late 2010’s, the only age groups that remained pretty constant were the 50+ age groups.
Last year, which was still a relatively small field, there were more women in their 20’s than there had been in a decade. But all of the other age groups remained much smaller than they were pre-COVID.
On the men’s side, there were about 3,000 men under 30 in 2024. That’s the largest that that age group has ever been – at least going back through 2003, when I have good data on both age and gender. But the 30-39 age group only barely matched 2019, and the 40-49 age group was much smaller than it used to be.
So the growth here is concentrated among younger runners, and particularly among men – which explains why the gender distribution is shifting.
The number of finishers at this years race is so large that it’s hard to make comparisons to previous years. So this version of the visual normalizes things to show what percent of each gender is in each age group.
Compared to last year, a slightly smaller share of both men and women are in the under 30 age group. But among men, it’s still higher than it ever was between 2003 and 2019. And for women, it’s larger than it was from 2011 to 2019.
On the women’s side, there’s also been an increase in the share of older runners 50+ and 60+. For men, those age groups are still slightly smaller than used to be. But in each case, there’s a smaller share of runners in their 30’s and 40’s than there used to be.
How Fast Were the Winners?
If you saw a headline about this year’s Marine Corps Marathon, it was probably about the women’s winner: Tessa Barrett. She set a new course record.
To put things in context, the women’s and men’s winning times going back to 1997 are plotted on the visual below.
Over the course of those thirty years, the women’s winning times have gotten progressively faster. It bounces up and down from year to year, but the general trend is down and to the right.
A couple results stand out – Heather Hanscom’s 2:37:59 in 2003 and Janet Cherobon’s 2:39:19 in 2010. The previous course record (2:37:00) was set by Olga Markova back in 1990.
Tessa Barrett blew that out of the water with her 2:34:08. That finish is also under the USOTQ standard (2:37), making her the only woman to qualify at MCM since they lowered the standard from 2:45.
On the men’s side, the results have been fairly stable. The course record (2:14:01) was set all the way back in 1987. In a typical year, the winning men’s time has fluctuated between 2:20 and 2:25. Kyle King’s 2:18:51 is the fastest men’s time since 1997 – but it’s a far cry from the course record.
How Did the Rest of the Field Do?
Marine Corps is not typically a very fast race. It’s known as the People’s Marathon because there is no prize money and there are no qualifying times. But that doesn’t mean that no one shows up with a fast goal in mind.
Last year, 4.2% of finishers met their Boston qualifying times. This year, that rate dropped slightly to about 3.7%. But given the massive increase in the number of finishers, that still means there’s a significant increase in the actual number of qualifiers compared to last year. If you’re worried about the cutoff time for Boston 2027, this will be a small factor pointing towards a higher cutoff.
The visual below provides a good indication of how the broader field performed. It graphs the distribution of finish times, by two minute increments, for the past two years. The graphs are normalized, so each dot represents the percentage of that year’s runners that finished at that time. To eliminate the impact of age, this focuses just on runners under 35.
The visual above shows the distribution of the men’s times. There’s not a huge difference year to year, although last year was slightly faster. You can see multiple spots, from 3:30 to 5:00, where the red dots are higher. And along the right tail, past 5:00, the green dots are higher.
But what’s more interesting is how the distribution differs from faster races. At Chicago, for example, there’s a huge spike at 3:00, and it’s a similar height to the spikes at 3:30 and 4:00. Here, there are far fewer runners targeting 3:00 – and far more runners targeting 4:00.
Here’s the same distribution of finish times for women. Similar to the men, there’s some evidence that last year was slightly faster. Especially through the middle range – 3:30 to 5:00 – there plenty of red dots that are higher, and past 5:15 the green dots are higher.
And again, this distribution differs from other races. At Chicago, there’s a much bigger spike at 4:00, and the 4:00 to 5:00 range is lower. Here, there’s a fairly similar rate of finishing from 4:00 to 5:00. At Chicago, there’s also a larger share of women finishing around 3:00, but here it’s just a tiny blip.
It seems plausible that runners at Marine Corps are much less likely to target faster times (or BQs). At races with faster fields, you’ll see big spikes of men targeting 3:00 and women targeting 3:30. Here, the target times seem to be slower.
What Was Your Experience at the 2025 Marine Corps Marathon?
So there are a few tidbits that the data can tell us about the 2025 Marine Corps Marathon.
- It was much bigger than any previous MCM.
- Like other races, the field is shifting younger.
- Tessa Barrett set a new course record, and while Kyle King had one of the fast men’s times in a long time.
- Runners this year were slightly slower on average than last year.
- The distribution of finish times, and the spikes around target times, looks different from faster races like Chicago.
Did you run this year’s race? I’d love to hear how your experience was – and how this year’s race compared to previous year’s.
As a data junkie your insights are exactly what I need. In my late 50s, only started seriously running for 2+ years, I now have the marathon bug. Completed WDW & Marine Corp in 2024; Chicago this year, considering Honolulu as a last minute entry. While participating in majors are challenging, the other motivating criteria are great locations that are well-organized with large numbers of participants & onlookers. Please continue to update trends in marathon growth and numbers of participants, largest marathons in 2025, etc. Great job!