I think the first of the above statements is correct and the portion of the time that we see differs from that indicated in the second above statement because runners typically wear a timing chip so their finishing time often varies from the official race clock by a few minutes based on how long after the race started that person started the race.
In some big races, they start in waves so that the clock is total time, but doesn't represent the runner's time. They use chips to log start and end time.
i.e. He could've started 4 hours later than the first wave.
That race has to be a rarity since he's supposed to average 4hrs.