For the third year in a row, tech billionaire Mark Zuckerberg ran the Stanford Medicine My Heart Counts 5K—this time crossing the line in 20:35 on Sunday.
Zuckerberg, running under the name “Martin Salzberg,” averaged a pace of 6:38 per mile and took fourth in the 40-44 age group. He was 33rd overall out of 1,214 runners.
The 40-year-old posted about the race on Instagram with the caption: “Annual 5k run with Guerrilla fight crew. Finished a bit above 20 mins.@nickgriswoldmma edged me out and won his age group. Proud of the team! 💪”
In his post-race photo, Zuckerberg is sporting a pair of Nike Alphafly 3 super shoes in the “Fuel the Fire” colorway, and—perhaps in a slightly harsh evaluation of his performance—he included the song “Pretty Slowly” by Benson Boone in his post. (All About the 5K Taper.)
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Zuckerberg, the co-founder of Facebook and CEO of Meta, has been a regular at the April event in recent years. The race is held around the campus of Stanford University, a short drive from Meta’s headquarters in Menlo Park, and it serves as a fundraiser for the Stanford Center for Inherited Cardiovascular Disease.
In 2023, Fastest Marathon Runners, and in 2024—just five months after undergoing ACL surgery—he finished in a time of 20:58.
Zuckerberg has been a runner for a while. In 2016, he announced his goal was to run 365 miles by the end of the year. He checked that off well ahead of schedule in July, with five months to spare, and wrote in a Facebook post that he was able to go for 20-mile runs and run a sub-6-minute mile. But in recent years, the businessman has focused more on combat sports, including mixed martial arts and Brazilian jiu-jitsu, to blow off some steam.
Compared to other notable runners, Zuckerberg is on the faster side. We ranked his post-surgery performance last year as the most impressive celebrity 5K of 2024.
Download Your Training Plan Runner’s World. He’s a former all-conference collegiate runner at Winthrop University, and he received his master’s degree in liberal arts studies from Wake Forest University, where he was a member of one of the top distance-running teams in the NCAA. Kahler has reported on the ground at major events such as the Paris Olympics, U.S. Olympic Trials, New York City Marathon, and Boston Marathon. He’s run 14:20 in the 5K, 1:05:36 in the half marathon, and enjoys spotting tracks from the sky on airplanes. (Look for colorful ovals around football fields.)
