Hours, or hours and minutes — 14, 14.5, 14:30.

Required average pace

8:14 min / km

13:15 min / mile

Comfortable

Room to walk the climbs and stop at aid.

Among the tightest 50K cut-offs we track. (983 races)

What other races allow

Every published cut-off we hold, grouped by distance category. Timed and backyard events are left out — their limit is the event rather than a target — as are races whose distance was never published. The spread inside a single category is the point: two 50Ks can ask for paces an hour apart over the same course length.

Distance Races Tightest 10% Median Most generous 10%
Marathon 43 9:20 12:16 18:40
50K 983 9:14 12:00 17:53
50 mi 446 8:58 11:15 15:41
100K 204 7:12 10:12 14:24
100 mi 30 5:13 11:47 17:53
200 mi + 14 11:37 14:20 17:42

Paces are minutes per kilometre of the whole course — the average a runner must hold from the gun, including every aid station, every climb and every stop. Climbing is not in this number: on a mountain course the same pace is a far harder day. The columns are the 10th, 50th and 90th percentile rather than the extremes, because a handful of stored limits disagree with their own distance and the extremes are where they sit. Browse races to see each one's limit beside its terrain.