Does Hitting the Wall in Marathons Affect Men and Women Differently?…

On the marathon course, "hitting the wall" is every runner's nightmare. That experience of complete physical collapse — heavy legs, a cliff-like drop in pace — can turn the 42.195 km journey into a long ordeal. Yet it is something many runners encounter.

So between male and female runners, who is more likely to hit the wall in a marathon? Intuitively people might think men, being faster or more competitive, are more prone to blowing up; a recent study using big data has provided an answer.

Top academic journal publishes a report

Male runners are more likely to hit the wall than female runners

Recently, the top scientific publisher Nature, in its journal Scientific Reports, published a study on marathon "hitting the wall." The researchers used electronic timing data from 873,334 finishers of the Berlin Marathon between 1999 and 2025 as their sample and conducted a detailed analysis.

They defined runners as having "hit the wall" when the second-half pace dropped by at least 20% compared to the first half. After rigorous analysis, the results are striking: although the average finish time for men (4:02) was faster than for women (4:29), the proportion of men who hit the wall was 17.63%, compared with only 9.66% for women — nearly double.

Among elite runners finishing under 3 hours the gap is even wider: men had a 1.42% chance of hitting the wall, women only 0.23% — six times lower for women.

The study also found that this gender difference remained stable across the 27 years, and was not a fluke in any single year or period.

In addition to the academic paper, the popular running app Strava also provided supporting data for "male runners being more likely to blow up." Strava data from the 2025 Boston Marathon show that among runners who slowed by 10% or more in the final 10 km, 39% were male and 25% were female — a 14 percentage-point difference in favor of men.

Causes behind the 'greater vulnerability'

A trio of physiology, strategy and psychology

Why are male runners more likely to blow up? It's not caused by a single factor; it's likely the result of an interaction between physiological differences, race strategy, and psychological factors.

First, on the physiological side, female runners have an energy-conservation advantage. The ultimate physiological constraint in the marathon is limited glycogen storage. When muscle glycogen runs out, hitting the wall follows. The researchers propose that during a marathon, women rely relatively more on fat oxidation, allowing them to conserve muscle glycogen and reducing the probability of glycogen depletion and thus hitting the wall.

On race strategy, male runners often adopt a more aggressive approach from the start, and an overly fast opening pace leads to premature energy depletion.

The Berlin data mentioned above also show that female runners tend to begin a gentle slowdown around 20 km, while male runners are more likely to sustain a high pace into the 25–30 km zone. The result is that women's pace fluctuates less and follows a "slow and steady" trajectory, whereas men more often follow a "fast then crash" pattern — a direct driver of the higher male hit rate.

Psychological factors also play a role. On one hand, male runners competing together often trigger strong competitive instincts that push each other to go all-out; on the other hand, some men may feel compelled to show their "strongest" side in front of female runners. Both tendencies increase the chance of running at an unsustainable pace and then blowing up.

Lessons from the research: learn restraint

Faced with the challenge of hitting the wall, what can runners do to reduce the likelihood?

First, choose a more appropriate pacing strategy: resist the urge to speed up early in the race and then gradually increase your speed as the race progresses. The ideal outcome is a negative split — the second half faster than the first — which usually means you never hit the wall. As a pragmatic alternative, adopt a steady pace and reduce pace variability; this both lowers the chance of hitting the wall and often leads to a better finishing time.

Beyond pacing, you can refine your in-race fueling strategy so that external energy intake keeps your body supplied. For more on fueling, check our previous article: From 1:59:30 to PB: What recreational runners can learn from Savi's elite fueling strategy

Wishing you all a Personal Best — and no Pao Beng!

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#How do you deal with hitting the wall?#

Text / Editor: HP

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Does Hitting the Wall in Marathons Affect Men and Women Differently? Big Data Has the Answer