The Push to Finish the 2026 New York City Marathon Under 3, 4 and 5 Hours

Based on the 61,018 finishers mapped in this package. Figures cover the amateur field.

Marathon finish times do not spread out smoothly. They pile up just before the round numbers runners set as goals. In New York, 2,714 runners finished in the five minutes before four hours, and 1,916 in the five minutes after, about 42 percent more on the near side of the line. The same pattern appears at three hours, where 636 finished just under and 473 just over, and at five hours, 1,862 against 1,376. At three and a half and four and a half hours, the effect is much weaker.

It is tempting to picture this as a last-minute sprint, and runners did speed up at the end, but the data suggests the difference was made earlier. Runners who finished just under four hours did not close their last mile any faster than those who just missed. What separated them was pacing across the whole race: the sub-four group ran their second half a median of 5.5 percent slower than their first, against 6.4 percent for those who just missed, and 15 percent of them ran the second half faster than the first, against 11 percent of those who finished just over.

Choose a target to see its runners on the map. Those who made it are in coral, those who missed by less than five minutes in blue, and you can watch both groups converge on Central Park.