Brian Rock 
Finding good stats on the largest marathons in the United States is – for some reason – difficult. A few years ago, I found myself looking for a list of the largest races. What I ended up finding was a bunch of listicles with mixed and match different methodologies of counting. Some races include multiple … Read more
Last week ended with the Rutgers Big Chill 5k. It wasn’t quite as good as I hoped, but it was a solid PR – and I’m happy with it. This week is something of a transition week. I plan to keep it fairly easy and take a bit of a down week before transitioning back … Read more
The Valencia Marathon has a reputation for being fast. Still, I was a surprised when I saw a headline that there were over 5,000 runners finishing sub-3:00 at this year’s race. Just how fast was this year’s Valencia Marathon? Most of my data analysis has focused on American marathons, plus the Abbott World Majors. Although … Read more
This year, there were a record number of qualifiers who applied to run the Boston Marathon. That led to a steep cutoff time of 6:51 for the 2025 race and new qualifying times for the 2026 race and beyond. A lot of people, myself included, hoped that would bring the cutoff time for future races … Read more
This week will bring my fall racing season to a close and, after a down week, I’ll be transitioning to training for the Fred Lebow Half Marathon in January. I first ran the Rutgers Big Chill back in 2014. That was the year I ran my first half marathon – in October – but my … Read more
Gels (and carbs) are all the rage these days. And for good reason. Taking fuel during a marathon is helpful. There’s plenty of scholarly and anecdotal evidence for that. But sometimes – maybe often – I find that people are hyper focused on fueling strategies and gels, and as a result when they diagnose problems … Read more
Last month, I wrote up a short analysis of both the number of women and the number of men finishing at specific fast times at the New York City Marathon. The gist of it was this: There was a huge surge in the number of women finishing under 3:00 and men finishing under 2:40. At … Read more
Today was the final race on my calendar for this year – the Rutgers Big Chill 5k. I try to run this race every year. I went to college (undergrad and grad) at Rutgers, so it’s great to be back on campus. And the timing of the race – early December – usually works out … Read more
Feature image by nakashi on Flickr. CC BY-SA 2.0 The World Marathon Majors certainly have one thing in common — they’re all very popular. This year saw a record number of applicants at many of the world’s largest races. Whether it’s New York City, Chicago, Boston, London, Tokyo, or Berlin — or now, Sydney — … Read more
Last week was the Ashenfelter 8k, and going into the race I was feeling a little beat up. Although I had shown some signs of life, I also had some real slow recovery days in there. Frankly, I was starting to think maybe I came back from the Chicago Marathon too quickly. Ashenfelter itself wasn’t … Read more