Sex differences in marathon pacing: analysis of 873,000 Berlin marathon runners reveals men are twice as likely to “hit the wall”

To determine whether sex differences in marathon pacing strategies and susceptibility to catastrophic deceleration ("hitting the wall") persist in a massive, high-performance dataset, and to quantify this risk across different performance levels. We analyzed 873,334 finishers from the Berlin Marathon (1999-2025). Pacing stability was quantified using the percentage slowdown in the second half relative to the first. "Hitting the wall" was operationally defined as a deceleration of ≥ 20%. A stratified analysis was performed to compare risks between sexes across five performance categories (Competitive to Casual). Multivariable logistic regression adjusted for age and performance category, sensitivity analyses (deduplicated subset; alternative thresholds), and fine-grained pacing metrics from 5 km splits were also conducted. Male runners exhibited significantly greater mean deceleration (10.73% ± 11.41%) compared with female runners (8.34% ± 8.91%, p < 0.001). The prevalence of "hitting the wall" was nearly double in men (17.63%) compared with women (9.66%), corresponding to a crude Odds Ratio of 2.00 (95% CI 1.97 to 2.03); after adjustment for age and performance category, the disparity strengthened (adjusted OR = 3.88, 95% CI 3.81 to 3.94). The risk disparity widened among the fastest runners: in the Competitive (< 3 h) category, male runners were approximately six times more likely to experience catastrophic deceleration than their female counterparts (1.42% vs 0.23%). The gap was stable across the 27-year archive (Mann-Kendall τ = 0.14, p = 0.33). Despite faster finish times, men demonstrate significantly less stable pacing strategies and a twofold higher crude risk of catastrophic deceleration compared with women, with the disparity most pronounced among the fastest runners. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that behavioral and strategic factors contribute alongside physiological determinants to sex differences in marathon outcomes, and provide a quantitative basis for further investigation of the underlying mechanisms.