Brian Rock 
I’m currently working on a longer article about age group winners at the World Major Marathons. I’d been exploring the data a bit, and a simple question came to me while I was out for my run this week: which of the races have the fastest age group winners? I was curious if one or … Read more
This week, the Boston Athletic Association made a big announcement about registration for the 2027 Boston Marathon: there would be a new lottery for runners who met their qualifying time but missed the cutoff time. They also announced the dates for registration: September 14 to September 18. This means that the weekend of September 12-13 … Read more
Feature Photo Courtesy Berlin Marathon / (c) SCC Events, Sebastian Wells Earlier this month, an article was published in the research journal Scientific Reports which examined differences in pacing patterns between men and women at the Berlin Marathon. The main conclusion was that “male runners [were] approximately twice as likely overall […] to experience catastrophic … Read more
Feature Image by Acabashi – via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link Last summer, I put together a dashboard to track the fastest Six Star Finishers around the world. This was a follow up on some deeper dives into the Six Star Finisher data from earlier in the year. I intended to do another follow … Read more
I usually reserve these deep dives for the Majors and a handful of other really big races. While Grandma’s Marathon is a big race, it’s not that big. But there were a few things that made this year’s race particularly interesting. It’s the 50th anniversary of the race, and it sold out in less than … Read more
The Boston Marathon Cutoff Time Tracker tracks the net change in Boston qualifiers from year to year and that is the main variable used to determine the projected cutoff time. But not all BQ’s are necessarily equal. Only some of those runners will actually apply to run Boston – and that conversion rate of qualifier … Read more
The Presidential Fitness Test is a core memory for many Americans, especially if you’re a millenial or Gen X. For decades, we participated in an annual ritual that included, among other things, a mile run. The standardized test was phased out in the 2010’s, but it’s been back in the news since the president announced … Read more
You hear anecdotes here and there. Maybe you noticed your local marathon sell out earlier than usual. But it’s easy to lose the forest for the trees. Is this part of a broader trend where marathons are selling out faster than ever? Yes. Yes, it is. I first noticed this last year with a few … Read more
This is another project that’s been on my to do list for too long. Back in early 2024, I built an age grade calculator that calculated actual age grades for marathon performances along with a runner’s position (percentile) within the distribution of all finish times for their age group. I updated that calculator in early … Read more
A couple years back, I wrote an article about how finish times across different race distances can highlight a runner’s strengths and weaknesses. I used a particular runner’s post on Reddit as an example to highlight how with a relatively weak half marathon time – compared to predictions based on shorter events – would also … Read more