South Downs Way 50 Mile Race, 2026

Worthing, United Kingdom
402finishers
19.2%women
80distance (km)
10:15:56median time
47median age
1,737climb (m)

Men's race

1Hammerton, MatthewGBR5:47:24
2Green, DavidGBR5:51:31
3Grieve, PaulUSA6:32:00
finishers325median10:02:11last12:59:52

Women's race

1Karlsson, AmelieSWE7:02:23
2Green, HayleyGBR7:34:43
3Brazier, KatieGBR7:47:27
finishers77median10:50:20last12:59:57

The field

Middle half of the field finished between
9:00:26 and 11:20:30
Finishing for the first time
271 of 402 (67.4%)
Beat their own time here
49 of 131
Oldest and youngest
77 and 21
From United Kingdom
90.0%
Nationalities
18
Finished in the final hour
46 of 402
Last finisher
12:59:57 (0:00:03 to spare)
Under 6 hours
2 (0.5%)
Under 8 hours
40 (10.0%)
Under 10 hours
178 (44.3%)
Under 12 hours
356 (88.6%)

Matthew Hammerton won the men’s race in 5:47:24, a year after finishing second here. His time was within 0.9% of the course best of 5:44:22. David Green stayed with him for second in 5:51:31, and the next man home was Paul Grieve in 6:32:00, so the front of the race belonged to two runners. Amelie Karlsson won the women’s race in 7:02:23, with Hayley Green second in 7:34:43.

No edition since 2013 has brought more runners home. There were 402 finishers, the most across 13 editions run on this course. A field that size changes what the race is for most of the people in it: the winners were done before lunch, and the bulk of the field was still on the trail well into the evening.

The field came from 18 nationalities, though 90.0% of it was from the United Kingdom.

Histogram of finish times at South Downs Way 50 Mile Race 2026. 402 finishers in 1.0-hour bands. The busiest band is 10:00:00 to 11:00:00 with 105 finishers, against a cutoff of 13:00:00.
402 finishers at South Downs Way 50 Mile Race, 2026-04-11. Dashed lines mark the winners of the men's and women's races and the median finisher. The solid line is the 13:00:00 cutoff.

Most of this field was out for a long day, and the women’s race was concentrated later in it than the men’s. The 77 women made up 19.2% of the finishers, and three quarters of them came home after 10:09:14, a time already close to the median for the whole field. Among the men, the median finisher took 10:02:11, so the middle of the men’s race arrived roughly where the faster women did. The women’s median was 10:50:20.

The age chart below shows how finishing times spread across a field whose median age was 47.

Bar chart of median finish time by age band at South Downs Way 50 Mile Race 2026. the under 30 9:59:40, the 30s 9:57:20, the 40s 10:05:38, the 50s 10:31:55, the 60+ 10:42:43. The 60+ are 7.6% slower than the 30s.
Median finish time by age at South Downs Way 50 Mile Race, 2026-04-11. Bands holding fewer than 20 finishers are left out, since a median of a handful is not one.

The last of the 402 came close to the cutoff. The last man finished in 12:59:52 and the last woman in 12:59:57, both inside the 13:00:00 limit.

Two stacked panels covering 14 editions of South Downs Way 50 Mile Race from 2013 to 2026. The upper panel shows finishers by year, split into men and women, peaking at 402 in 2026. The lower panel shows winning times for both races, the men's fastest in 2018 and the women's in 2019.
South Downs Way 50 Mile Race, 2013 to 2026. Finishers by year above, winning times below.