Tracking the Growth in Marathons from 2000 to 2021
And identifying a random sample of races for additional, deeper analysis
For the past few weeks, I’ve been exploring data from American marathons to see how the sport has changed in the last two decades.
This analysis was inspired by an article I read which claimed that American marathoners were getting slower. On the one hand, it seemed plausible that the average runner was slower today than twenty years ago, if more runners were getting involved — changing the composition of the overall population of runners.
But it seemed a bit counterintuitive that the fastest runners should also be getting slower — given advances in training, nutrition, and footwear. And yet the article claimed that the fastest runners were getting slower as well.
I couldn’t find enough readily available data to challenge that conclusion, so I went about the task of collecting the data myself.
If you want to read more context, check out the original article in the series here. It also includes links to the previous articles, where you can find detailed analysis of the results from select races.
Today, we’re going to step back from individual marathons and take a look at the big picture.
