A recent study published in Scientific Reports has highlighted a significant disparity in how men and women manage their energy during long-distance races. While men generally maintain faster average speeds over the 42.195km distance, they are nearly twice as likely to experience a sudden, dramatic slowdown—a phenomenon commonly known as “hitting the wall.”
The research, which analyzed 873,334 finishers from the Berlin Marathon between 1999 and 2025, defined “hitting the wall” as a decline in pace of 20% or more during the second half of the race compared to the first. Among runners who completed the marathon in under three hours, men were found to be approximately six times more likely to encounter this mid-race collapse than their female counterparts.
Researchers suggest that men are “behaviorally less efficient” in their approach to the race. Despite physiological advantages, such as greater muscle mass, higher haemoglobin concentrations, and lower body fat—which contribute to faster average finishing times of four hours and two minutes for men compared to four hours and 29 minutes for women—men often fail to pace themselves effectively. The study notes that men, regardless of their performance level, are more prone to aggressive pacing strategies and catastrophic deceleration.
This tendency is attributed to risk-taking behavior and overconfidence, which frequently lead male runners to start at an unsustainable speed before fading later in the event. Conversely, the study highlights that women demonstrate superior self-pacing abilities and show greater resistance to decision-making fatigue. Because pacing is considered the most critical tactical determinant of performance, these behavioral differences play a decisive role in marathon success, where efficient energy management is just as vital as raw speed.
