On Sunday, hundreds of keen marathoners from throughout the globe took the streets of Valencia, Spain, with the purpose of a speedy ending time on one of many world’s quickest programs. A sub-three-hour marathon time is a benchmark many aspire to realize, however it wouldn’t have gotten runners so far as they assume.
This 12 months’s Valencia Trinidad Alfonso Zurich Marathon noticed a document variety of finishers underneath the three-hour mark. For those who ran 2:59:59 on the dot, it might have positioned you in 5,two hundredth out of 28,000 finishers. Compared, the identical time on the 2024 Toronto Waterfront Marathon would have positioned you 293rd total–and a pair of,660th on the 2024 Boston Marathon, which reveals Valencia’s unimaginable depth.
Though the race noticed a document variety of sub-three finishers, solely 512 runners went underneath two hours and half-hour, with 126 from France. This quantity was barely decrease than the 560 runners who achieved the mark in 2023.
Of the 28,000+ finishers, simply over 6,100 have been girls, making up solely 21 per cent of the 2024 discipline. The age group with probably the most sub-three finishers was the lads’s 18-35 classification, with 1,056 runners. The typical marathon ending time for all individuals in Valencia was 3:39:12, with males averaging 3:33:30 and ladies averaging 4:00:00.
Sub-three may not have the identical glory it used to have within the pre-carbon-plated shoe period, however the time remains to be thought-about inside the prime 5 per cent amongst marathon instances—simply possibly not at Valencia. The marathon within the Spanish metropolis has traditionally drawn round 30,000 runners from over 120 totally different nations, bolstered by its repute as one of many world’s quickest programs.
Kenya’s Sebastian Sawe gained this 12 months’s race in his marathon debut, changing into the fifth quickest man in historical past in 2:02:05. Ethiopia’s Megertu Alemu gained the ladies’s race with a time of two:16:49.
You may view the complete outcomes from the 2024 Valencia Trinidad Alfonso Zurich Marathon, right here.
