The popularity of running is undeniable. Road races with fields in the thousands sell out in days, if not hours, and lotteries to get in are becoming the norm. Who are these passionate people that put their toes on the line? Let's narrow down the question and concentrate on the runners in this year's New York City half-marathon. The NYC half is fun to look at, well because it's NYC, but mostly because it has a massive field that allows for great analytics.
If you ran this past March in Central Park then passing through Times Square and you are a woman, chances are you are around 25 years old. If you are a man then you may be in your early 30s. But a plot takes us farther than 13.1 miles, so here we have the distribution by age and gender for the 2014 NYC half (you can access race results on this link).
Women dominated the field with over 11 thousand participants. The number of men was just under 10 thousand. About a third of all women, 3467 of them to be more precise, were age between 20 and 30. For the same age group there were only 1801 men. Not a bad ratio if you are a single guy who missed one of the many valentine's runs. The number of runners dwindle as age increases, somehow resembling the actual population of the US, and remind us of the finiteness of life. What does not resemble at all the actual population of the US is the number of young runners. Is the sharp jump at the age of 20 a result of human physiology or is it cultural? Even more, should young people run long distances at all? I may even point out that the hefty fees for the NYC half could be to blame for at least a fraction of that drop (sure enough, NYRR makes up with their Team for Kids initiative).
If you are running a half marathon you should absolutely plan for brunch with your friends after finishing. Just be sure to send invites for about 2 to 3 hours after the race start.
Most runners finish in about 2 hours. The mode for men is around 1:50 and for women about 2:05. It's interesting to see the pros bump at the lower end of times distribution. Not surprisingly the NYC half attracts a sizable number of professional athletes. For the numerically inclined minds the solid fitting lines are log-normal distributions. In other words, the distribution of the logarithm of the finishing times closely resembles a Gaussian. There's a piece of wisdom one can extract from this plot. If you are a guy looking to run your next half-marathon in under 1:30, and lack a running buddy to pace you, try to stick to a female runner after mile 9 or so. You can be sure she knows what she's doing, after all she's faster than 95% of all other women.
More than one third of all runners are age 40 or older. To be precise, 7140 finishers were over 40. I think this is a remarkable number, especially if you compare with other sports. Probably the second most popular sport among 40+ people is golf (assuming you agree on calling golf a sport). It may be surprising to know that performance is not affected by age as much as one could expect.
The typical man between 20 to 25 years old finishes in around 1:50. Men with more than twice their age, in the range between 50 to 55 years old will finish just about 10 minutes later. A similar drop in pace is observed for women. It is not until the age of 65 that the slowing down rate accelerates.
The previous plot only shows the typical finishing time for the average runner. But your average 20-year old pal may become part of the fastest 10% by age 65. Not a far fetched thought given the 45 years of happy running. The great news is that the typical 20 year old may become an even faster runner at age 65! At age 65 the top 10% of runners finish the half marathon in under 1:45.
I'll end with this plot showing the evolution of finishing times for runners between the top 5% and 15%. I hope you enjoyed this post, please share your thoughts in the comments.
2 comments:
Great Post! Very informative and entertaining. I have a comment though. Your claim about the great news for a mid-of-the-pack 20 yo runner will become a fast 65 yo runner assumes the pace will remain constant along the runner's life right? Cheers!
Thanks for the comment! If the runner's pace is constant over the years then certainly the runner's percentile will decrease. But more realistically, people who start running at age 20 will probably run a personal best in their late 30s. By age 65 they may be slower than at their best but still could be running faster than at 20.
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