Fast Women at the NYC Marathon Over the Years

Feature image by Brett Weinstein on Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0

This week, I saw someone share a post from Threads about the number of women who finished the New York City Marathon under three hours.

The original post from Fast Women included a line chart, and it said that 203 women at NYC broke 3 hours. This was far more than any previous year.

When I saw the post, it was shared to a Facebook group, and I skimmed through the comments. There was a mix of reactions. Some in awe of the feat of the runners. And others critical of the way the data was presented … and maybe a bit skeptical. Any time you post some data, people like to say, “Yeah, but what about [x] …”

I think the two main claims in the post – that this year had far more fast finishing women than ever before and that there had been more fast finishers in general in the last few years – hold. But since I’ve got access to the full dataset, I thought it would be worth diving in to get a little extra detail.

So let’s get to it.

Note: All results were collected from the NYRR website. The 2024 results were collected on Monday, November 4, and there may have been slight changes since then as the unofficial results were finalized.

What Percent of Women at the NYC Marathon Finish Under 3:00?

For the purposes of these visuals, I’ve narrowed things down to just women under 40. So the total numbers are slightly lower than those in the original post.

Although some women over 40 will be able to go sub-3, it becomes increasingly rare with age. So to calculate a relative percent, it’s more reliable to focus on just the younger runners who are otherwise more likely to meet that time.

In the visual below, the blue line represents the total number of women under 40 at the New York City Marathon. The purple bar represents the number of women who finished sub-3. And if you hover over the bar, you’ll see that figure represented as a percent of the total number.

So you can see that both the number of women going sub-3 and the total number of women is increasing. But the two don’t increase in tandem.

From the mid 1980’s to the mid 2000’s, the number of women increases pretty dramatically. But the number of sub-3 finishers stays relatively constant (other than a brief spike in 1982-83). This drives a steady decline in the percentage of women going sub-3. Essentially, the overall field is growing, but the number of those truly fast women up front is fairly stagnant.

Things get a little mixed up in the late 2000’s. But although some years see a slightly higher percent – up to 0.007% to 0.008% – you also have 2014 – which has the lowest percentage at 0.003%.

But when you fast forward to the end of the time period, there’s a huge disconnect with 2024. The total number of finishers is marginally higher. But the number of women sub-3 is way higher. Like more than double most previous years.

And the percentage jumps to 0.012% – the highest rate since 1989. It was close (0.011%) in 2021, but that was driven by a vastly reduced field size in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

What Percent of Women at the NYC Marathon Finish Under 3:30?

Just to add a little more color, what happens if we zoom out from sub-3 to sub-3:30?

For a woman to finish a marathon under 3:00 is pretty rare – even moreso at a race with a tough course like New York City. These women are close to sub-elite level, so they will always make up a tiny portion of the overall field.

But 3:30 is a more achievable goal for the majority of women. It’s certainly tough, and a small percentage of women will break 3:30. But it’s nowhere near as exclusive as the sub-3 club.

The visual below is set up in the same way, but the purple bars represent the number of women under 40 who finished under 3:30.

The blue line is the same here. And for much of the graph, the purple bars are, as well.

The number of women sub-3:30 is fairly constant from the 1980s to the mid 2000’s. But it increases pretty significantly in the late 2000’s – more than it does for women sub-3.

And that increase continues through the late 2010’s, and there’s a fairly significant jump from 2023 to 2024. But that change is smaller than it is among the faster runners.

For sub-3 runners, it was over a 100% increase. For sub-3:30, it was about 30%.

And as a proportion of the field, it’s an incremental increase. From 2013-16, it was 0.04%. In 2017 and 2018, it was 0.05%. In 2019, 2021, and 2023, it was 0.06%. And in 2024, it was 0.07%.

So although both groups grew, this year saw a particularly large increase among women running sub-3 – compared to women running sub-3:30.

A Final Thought

I pulled the data and started typing this up in the evening. Then, I went to bed and went for my morning run before I came back to finish things up and hit the publish button.

It was while I was out for my run this morning that a partial explanation for this increase popped into my head.

Sure, the longer term trend is likely driven by some mixture of a) shoe tech, b) nutrition, c) more women running, and d) better times at the elite level.

But there’s one wildcard in particular that explains why the sub-3 group increased so much more dramatically than the sub-3:30 group.

Last year, NYRR introduced a new system for guaranteed entry based on a non-NYRR race.

Previously, it was first come, first serve. If you had a qualifying time, you crossed your fingers, hoped to make it through the queue, and registered as fast as you could. The result would have been a more randomized distribution of runners beneath the qualifying time. And given the distribution of overall finish times, there would probably be slightly more in the 3:05 – 3:15 range than 2:55 – 3:05.

With the new system, they took the fastest runners in the pool until it filled up (like they do for Boston). The result was that you needed to run about 18 minutes faster than your qualifying time to earn guaranteed entry with a non-NYRR race. So if a woman under 40 earned entry this way, she would have to have submitted a qualifying time that’s below 3:00 from another race.

So, at least in part, the dramatic spike from last year to this year is caused by a selection effect. These women were always out there running – but previously they would have been rejected from the NYC Marathon and they probably would have ended up in a different fall race.

I guess one of the consequences – intended or not – of the new guaranteed entry system is that it deepens the field for sub-elite runners. I’ll go back to the data and look at this question another day, but I’ll bet that there’s a similar bump for men under 40 who finish in the 2:30’s.

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