Road Race Statistics and then some

i don't believe that's true.

Ok, so I did a quick google search and it said that Armstrong broke 3 hours, and that fewer than 2 percent of marathoners ever break 3. Now where the hell do they get that stat from?

KnowItAll wrote:

Now where the hell do they get that stat from?

Marathonguide.com says there were 397,000 marathon finishes (not total people who did a marathon, total number of marathon finishes) in 2006, slightly up from about 370,000 last year. I've got no idea how that stacks up against how big the US population is, or how you'd stretch that out over multiple years.

If I had to guess I'd bet that way less than 1% of the current US population will complete a marathon in their lifetime. Ask that same question in 40 years and you'll probably get a different answer.

(edit...I got the number wrong for 2005 it was 383,000 not 370,000)

d2xccoach wrote:

Marathonguide.com says there were 397,000 marathon finishes (not total people who did a marathon, total number of marathon finishes) in 2006, slightly up from about 370,000 last year. I've got no idea how that stacks up against how big the US population is, or how you'd stretch that out over multiple years.

If I had to guess I'd bet that way less than 1% of the current US population will complete a marathon in their lifetime. Ask that same question in 40 years and you'll probably get a different answer.

Ok, so just throwing some broad assumptions out there. If over the past 10 years, the average number of marathon finishers was 300,000. Let's completely make up a percentage of repeat marathoners: 70% are repeat marathoners in every marathon. I know, completely made up.

Again for simplicity's sake, let's just say that 10 years ago, everyone ran their first marathon. Then each year, you'd get 90,000 new marathoners (300,000 * 30%). So over 10 years, you'd get 300,000 for first year + 90,000 new marathoners each year * 9 years = 1.11 million marathoners.

The current US population is ~300 mil. So that's ~0.4% of the US population.

So if you adjust the number of repeat marathoners down, and you project back further than 10 years, then it's not completely far fetched that about 1% of the US population has completed a marathon. It's probably not off by an order of magnitude, at least.

Damn, and so if only 2% of marathoners have run under 3 hours, that means that if you have gone under 3 hours, you are in the top 99.98% of US citizens.

See, this is why I'm searching for a stats database. I'm a friggin nerd and find this stuff interesting.

Years ago, when RW was a magazine for runners, they had an annual marathon issue and they PAGES of marathon names and times. I was shocked at how few broke 3 hours.

Too bad RW or RT wouldn't do something like this again- or maybe one for marathons, one for 15K-30K, and one for 5K-10K.

Look here...

Or if you're interested in some other anal statistics..