Brian Rock 
It’s New Year’s Day, and it’s time to take a look back at my year in running. I routinely reflect on my running – at the end of each week and after each big race. But doing so at the end of the year offers a really good opportunity to zoom out and put everything … Read more
The next big race on my calendar is the Fred Lebow Half Marathon in New York. I picked it, because I wanted to ensure that I had at least one chance to run a qualifying time for the NYC Marathon at a NYRR Half Marathon. The good thing about Fred Lebow is that anyone can … Read more
Last week, I published a brief analysis of the Valencia Marathon’s field – comparing it to other large races like Berlin, Chicago, and London. The takeaway – the Valencia Marathon has more sub-3:00 finishers than any other race in the world. Drilling down to young men, it has a very high percentage of runners going … Read more
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