South Downs Way 50 km Race, 2026

Matterley Bowl, United Kingdom
305finishers
33.1%women
50distance (km)
6:09:54median time
42median age
21nationalities

Men's race

1Martinez Perez, AntonioESP3:12:36
2Borgialli, RiccardoITA3:22:33
3Anguita Bayo, Francisco JoseESP3:28:47
finishers204median5:54:19last8:44:19

Women's race

1Bunting, RebeccaGBR3:49:37
2Funnell, NicoleGBR4:09:51
3White, AmyGBR4:28:28
finishers101median6:49:10last8:59:25

The field

Middle half of the field finished between
5:22:28 and 7:02:33
Finishing for the first time
275 of 305 (90.2%)
Beat their own time here
15 of 30
Oldest and youngest
80 and 20
From United Kingdom
87.5%
Finished in the final hour
24 of 305
Last finisher
8:59:25 (0:00:35 to spare)
Under 4 hours
10 (3.3%)
Under 6 hours
138 (45.2%)
Under 8 hours
281 (92.1%)

Antonio Martinez Perez won the men’s race in 3:12:36, with Riccardo Borgialli second in 3:22:33. Rebecca Bunting took the women’s race in 3:49:37, and Nicole Funnell followed her in 4:09:51. The course carried 1,219 metres of climbing.

Age separated this field more sharply than anything else in it. The median finisher aged 60 and over came home in 7:04:58, against 5:34:04 for runners in their thirties, a difference of 27%. The thirties were the quickest of the five age groups, faster than the runners younger than them as well as those older. With a median age of 42, at least half the field had already passed that peak.

Finishers held 21 nationalities between them, even though 87.5% of them were British.

Histogram of finish times at South Downs Way 50 km Race 2026. 305 finishers in 0.5-hour bands. The busiest band is 5:30:00 to 6:00:00 with 53 finishers, against a cutoff of 9:00:00.
305 finishers at South Downs Way 50 km Race, 2026-06-13. Dashed lines mark the winners of the men's and women's races and the median finisher. The solid line is the 9:00:00 cutoff.

The women’s race was slower through its whole depth, not only at the front. Three quarters of the men had finished by 6:42:12, before the median woman came in at 6:49:10. Women made up 33.1% of the finishers, so the slower half of the women’s race filled much of the final hours on its own. The same picture held at the very back of the race, where the last man was home well before the last woman.

The chart below shows the field getting slower with each age group beyond the thirties. The over-60s sit at the slow end, more than an hour and a half behind the fastest median.

Bar chart of median finish time by age band at South Downs Way 50 km Race 2026. the under 30 5:58:18, the 30s 5:34:04, the 40s 6:03:23, the 50s 6:38:38, the 60+ 7:04:58. The 60+ are 27.2% slower than the 30s.
Median finish time by age at South Downs Way 50 km Race, 2026-06-13. Bands holding fewer than 15 finishers are left out, since a median of a handful is not one.

The time limit was 9:00:00. The last finisher came in at 8:59:25, inside it.