Men are far more likely to hit the wall in a marathon, new study finds

July 5, 2026

For marathon runners, “hitting the wall” is a dreaded experience. After cruising along for an hour (or several) at your perfect pace, you suddenly feel as though every step is deeply exhausting, and an ideal race day turns into what feels like a nightmare.

A new study, published in Scientific Reports, looked at 873,334 Berlin Marathon finishes from 1999 to 2025 to see how often that late-race slowdown happens, and who is most likely to experience it. The researchers defined hitting the wall as slowing by at least 20 per cent after the halfway mark compared with the first half of the race.

In the study, 17.6 per cent of male runners hit the wall, compared with 9.7 per cent of female runners. And the difference only increased the faster the runners went. For those finishing under three hours, men were about six times more likely than women to fall apart in the second half. CANADIAN Running