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
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
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
When the world shut down at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, it sent shockwaves through the running community – is it did through the world. Although running is an activity that can be pursued alone, much of the enthusiasm and popularity around the sport is driven by large in person events. In particular, people … Read more
Last weekend was the Philly Marathon. This is the last large race in the fall marathon season. I didn’t run this year, although I did run the race back in 2022. But I happened to be in the city, and I got a chance to spectate for a change. The weather was beautiful – slightly … Read more
On Thanksgiving, it’s tradition for many runners to participate in a turkey trot. RunSignUp expected about 1,000,000 people to register for a race using their service this year. That’s a lot of turkey trots. In many cases, these races are short. 5k’s are the most popular, but there are a number of variations from the … Read more
Feature image by Steven Pisano, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons Last week, I wrote up a quick analysis of the trends among the fastest finishing women throughout the history of the New York City Marathon. Today, I’m back to look at the history of fast times among men. The gist of that post was … Read more
Feature image by Brett Weinstein on Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0 This week, I saw someone share a post from Threads about the number of women who finished the New York City Marathon under three hours. The original post from Fast Women included a line chart, and it said that 203 women at NYC broke 3 … Read more
Last month, I posted a lengthy analysis of the Chicago Marathon results. Part of that analysis was whether runners managed a negative split or not. Subsequently, I’ve done some more thinking about this issue. After some discussions around the data, I came up with a different way to think about the problem. Instead of looking … Read more