PTC By the Numbers (2016)

I’m a numbers guy.

I like data, making lists and ranking things. It’s been that way since I was a kid when I would spend my summers walking around my backyard in circles memorizing statistics off the backs of baseball cards.

I’ve played fantasy baseball since 1991 and written about the game for quite a few years. Pouring over statistics and writing about them provides me with the same sort of escape that many get from reading novels or watching movies.

To me there is nothing better than sitting with a cup of coffee in the morning and looking at the box scores from the night before in the daily paper. If I’m doing that…I’m living.

There are many runners who have never worn a watch and have no idea where they’ve finished in past races. It doesn’t matter to them and the visceral and zen-like experience that running provides is reward enough.

I admire those people, but I don’t get them.

I, too, like to get in the zone when I run and have even started to *gasp* run without my Garmin at times. But it kills me not being able to nerd out on my GPS data when I get home.

I can tell you all of my times and race results from cross country meets in high school twenty five years ago and my mile splits from recent races.

What can I say. I’m one of THOSE runners.

I’m a numbers guy.

You may not be. And that’s OK.

While running (and especially ultrarunning) doesn’t have the vast amount of statistical data available that baseball and other major sports do, there are still plenty of statistics to be gleaned from race results.

Analyzing race results may seem to be at odds with ultra running, a sport where success is largely judged by one criteria — finishing — but for numbers junkies like myself, it provides yet another way to enjoy the sport as a fan.

It is my hope to eventually start an official record book for the Pinellas Trail Challenge at some point. While it may not seem like an important thing right now as the race enters just it’s fourth year, in time, as the race continues to grow, a recorded history of the event will be nice to have for future participants to enjoy and measure themselves by.

This isn’t that. This post is just for fun.

It’s basically me just sitting around with a calculator while looking at Ultra Signup and coming up with a bunch of random trivia.

As you may know, the data on Ultra Signup is not always correct and some ultras don’t record their race results there. Shoot. Some ultras don’t even record times period. So you can put a big fat * by these numbers.

On Ultra Signup there are duplicate entries, omissions, people with multiple name variations…it’s far from perfect. But it’s what we have and imperfect as it is, it’s the first place most of us turn when we want information about a race or a runner.

So having said that…take these numbers with a grain of salt. They will likely be different by the time you read this post as there are last minute registrations and cancellations. This is nothing more than a fun post that provides a snapshot at the history of the PTC through numbers and is probably only interesting to nerds like me.

So here is the PTC by the numbers — 2016 edition.