Average Marathon Time by Age and Gender

How these marathon times by age are worked out

Every time in the table comes from the WMA/USATF 2025 road age-grading tables, approved by the USATF Masters Long Distance Running Council in January 2025. An age grade compares a finish time with the standard for that age and sex, as a percentage: 100% matches the standard, and each lower grade is slower. For the marathon, the tables' 100% mark, the open-class standard, is 2:00:35 for men and 2:09:56 for women.

The time at a grade is the age standard divided by the grade, so every 60% time is that age's standard divided by 60%. These are targets by age, not averages of real finishers. To grade a past race against the same tables, use the age-grade calculator.

What is a good marathon time?

A good marathon time beats the 2024 US median of 4:22:00 (Brian Rock, Outside Run), and a good target for your age is a 60% age-graded time, the level the RunReps Age-Grade Calculator calls club level: at 35, 3:20:58 for men and 3:39:12 for women.

Read the table's columns as tiers: 60% is club level, 70% regional class and 80% national class, while 90% and above is world class. At the elite end, the tables' 100% mark is 2:00:35 for men and 2:09:56 for women, the open-class standard that every age standard is scaled from.

Is 4 hours a good marathon time?

Running a marathon in 4:00:00 is a good time by either measure: it beats RunRepeat's 2024 US average of 4:34:00 and the 2024 US median of 4:22:00 from Brian Rock at Outside Run.

On the WMA 2025 tables, 4:00:00 is a 50.2% age grade for a man of 35 and 54.8% for a woman of 35. The same time grades higher with age: 65.0% for a man of 65, club level, and 73.3% for a man of 75, regional class.

What is the average marathon time for a woman?

The average marathon time for a woman in the US was 4:51:00 in 2024, according to RunRepeat, and the median for women was 4:38:00 (Brian Rock, Outside Run), against 4:24:00 and 4:10:00 for men.

Age grading sets a separate women's standard, so a woman's grade compares her with women of the same age. For a woman of 45, a 60% age-graded time, club level, is 3:50:43; at 65 it is 4:52:10.

A 3:30:00 finish is a 62.6% age grade for a woman of 35 and 72.7% for a woman of 55, regional class.

What is a good time for a first-time marathon?

A good time for a first-time marathon is anything under 4:34:00, RunRepeat's average for US marathons in 2024, and anything under the 4:22:00 median from Brian Rock at Outside Run puts you ahead of half of US finishers.

Both figures mix first-timers with experienced runners, so treat them as a yardstick rather than a target. A realistic goal for a beginner comes from a recent shorter race: put it into the race time predictor.

The running plan generator then builds a marathon plan around that goal.

What is a good marathon time for my age?

A good marathon time for your age is a 60% age-graded time, the level the RunReps Age-Grade Calculator calls club level, which on the WMA 2025 tables is 3:34:25 for a man of 45 and 4:14:19 for a woman of 55.

The targets slow with age: a man's 60% time moves from 3:20:58 at 35 to 4:06:48 at 60, and a woman's from 3:39:12 at 35 to 4:31:53 at 60. In pace terms, the 60% target for a man of 45 is 5:05 min/km (8:11 min/mile), and the marathon pace chart turns any finish time into a pace.

These are age-graded targets, not an average marathon time by age. For half the distance, the same tables give half marathon times by age.

Why do average marathon times disagree?

Average marathon times disagree because sources count different fields: RunRepeat's 4:34:00 is the average of about 97% of US results from 2024 with elites excluded, while Brian Rock's 4:22:00 at Outside Run is the median of about 500,000 US results from 2024.

A median is the time half the field beats, so it sits nearer the middle finisher, while a long tail of slower runners pulls an average later. Figures from other years or other countries describe different fields again, so check which one you are reading before you compare.

The table's times are a third kind of number: age-graded targets set by the WMA 2025 tables, not the results of any group of finishers.