Marathon performance across nations
If you are interested in marathon trends across the globe, there is a great website that collates amazing and insightful data. For example, it was surprising to learn that despite its popularity, marathon running in Europe is growing less than that of the rest of the world. Asia, on the other hand, is the fastest - China and India being the biggest contributors. It seems that growing participation of women is the real game changer globally. What country is the marathon fittest? With an average finish time of 03:55:35 from 2009 to 2014, Spain is the fastest marathon nation. Second on the list is Portugal (03:59:04) and third Luxembourg (04.00.46).