Male marathon runners are roughly twice as likely as female runners to experience a sudden performance collapse known as “hitting the wall,” according to a study published in Scientific Reports.
The study, co-authored by Swiss researcher Beat Knechtle, analysed data from the Berlin Marathon between 1999 and 2025.
“Hitting the wall” is a term used by runners to describe a sudden drop in performance that occurs when the body has exhausted its readily available energy reserves. The research team defined it as a reduction in average pace of at least 20% in the second half of the marathon compared with the first.
Knechtle and colleagues from Brazil evaluated more than 850,000 finishing times for the 42km course. Some of the data came from the same runners across multiple years. Of the runners who were analysed, 76% were male and more than half were aged 35 to 49.
While men completed the marathon faster on average (in four hours and two minutes) than women (four hours and 29 minutes), men also “hit the wall” almost twice as often – nearly 18% of them compared with under 10% of women.
Among male runners who finished in under three hours, the rate of performance collapse was six times higher than among women (1.42% versus 0.23%).
It was interesting and surprising that the sudden performance drop among men was not a beginner’s problem but was particularly pronounced among the very fastest runners, co-author Aldo Seffrin said. Being fitter and more experienced did not protect the men, according to their findings.
Burn energy faster
Men finished faster on average but distributed their energy less carefully, while women ran more evenly and maintained their pace in the second half as well, Seffrin said. This suggested that pacing was just as important as raw speed and that many men would benefit from starting more conservatively, he said.
Among 52% of women, no clear drop in performance was detectable over the course of the marathon – for men, this was the case for only about a third (36%). The authors wrote that it had been known from earlier research that men slow down more often during longer runs. However, it had not previously been demonstrated whether the phenomenon could be observed in large cohorts.
As a possible reason, the team suggested that the female body uses its glycogen reserves more sparingly while running. Glycogen is the storage form of glucose and serves as a short-term energy reserve.
Gender-specific differences in metabolism and in the proportion of certain muscle fibres could potentially delay the glycogen depletion that triggers hitting a wall, the team said.
It was also known from behavioural research that men tended to overestimate themselves and were more willing to take risks, the authors said. In the context of a marathon, where runners set their own pace, this could result in a faster starting pace. However, these were only assumptions by the research team – the current study did not collect data on this.
The researchers recommended that men start races more slowly and accelerate later. This could potentially reduce the risk of “hitting the wall,” they said. – dpa
