2011 Marathon, Half-Marathon and State of the Sport Reports

[jmasgat]

Interesting article with stats.....

http://runningusa.org/node/76115#76363

 

[Rupert B Puppenstein]

Thanks for sharing that Maura! Very interesting. Women may dominate races, but I think since the majority of races are not oriented entirely towards women that it shows that most women would run regardless of the race demographic. The article definitely proves that running at Disney is about having fun, not setting world records!

The best thing about the article is that now I know about races that I had never heard of and now want to check out!

 

[FFigawi]

What an interesting read. Thanks for sharing it. I'm intrigued by the stats on the largest US marathons. Hard to believe that #20 on the list is one-tenth the size of #1, yet it's still the 20th largest one in the country. It's also interesting to see that of the top 20 marathons, most of them are events with just a full marathon. Only a handful of them have both a full and a half. The other stat that jumped out at me: the huge difference in half and full runners in races that do offer both.

RnR Arizona 21,657 vs 5,741
RnR San Antonio 20,436 vs 4,675
RnR Las Vegas 19,217 vs 5,180

Now I know why I feel so lonely after the turn-offs.

 

[SAHDad]

Thanks for the link. I knew a new one would be coming out fairly soon. I worry, however, that, as women make up an ever-increasing %age of half-marathon runners, it will be used to justify an ever-increasing number of women-centric or women-only races, thus furthering the imbalance.

It's great that more people are running; it's just unfortunate that we have so many races which exist to discourage half the population from entering (or prohibit them altogether).

 

[johde]

Thanks for the info Maura. It was interesting comparing the differences between last years and this years. Last year both WDW and DL were in the 5 slowest median timed events along with the princess. I would have liked to have seen the slowest median times among non female centric races. As I continue to get faster it would be nice to know where it would be easier for me to crack into the upper 50% of half marathoners.