A Data Analysis of the Dublin Marathon

Lessons Learned from 150,000 Dublin Marathon Runners

Image courtesy of https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dublin_City_Marathon_2006_(283653500).jpg

TLDR;

• An analysis of 150,000 Dublin Marathon runners from 2000–2015.
• The field is getting faster and older, but increasingly male dominated.
• While men may be faster than women, women are more disciplined: they run a more consistent pace and they hit the wall far less often than men.

Introduction

2016 is a special year for the 37th edition of Dublin City Marathon. It is Ireland’s 1916 centenary year and the marathon will mark it with a special commemorative finishers medal along with a shift from the bank holiday Monday to the Sunday for the first time. It seems to be working because the race is a sell-out with 19,500 runners, making it the largest in the event’s history, and the fourth largest marathon in Europe.

As it happens I’ve been looking at the data of the Dublin City Marathon for the last few months; just for fun you understand. Finisher results from the period 2000–2015 are readily available online, providing access to a treasure trove of data from numbers of participants, gender, age ranges, finish-times, and even the split-times for some years. All in all there are more than 150,000 finisher records and in what…