I don't know if it's normal, but the test cases (when written by me at least) are timed to take around 0.5-1s each.
Which already that seems broken.
% pike -x benchmark -t*PCRE* test total user mem (runs) Tag removal u. Regexp.PCRE.23.295s 23.210s 8104kb (1) (86 /s)
Did someone change it to be more competent, but much heavier on PCRE, maybe? Without changing the loop amount?