The Data of the Chicago Marathon

Lessons learned from 400,000 Chicago marathoners (2005–2016)

Image courtesy of https://www.flickr.com/photos/ifmuth/5074457356

TLDR;

• An analysis of more than 400,000 Chicago Marathon results from 2005–2016.
• Athlete gender has a greater impact on various performance metrics (speed, pace variation, hitting the wall) than age.
• While men are faster than women, women are more disciplined. Women enjoy more even pacing and hit the wall far less than men.
• Faster runners are more likely to be repeat marathoners. Men are more likely to repeat than women and older runners repeat more than younger runners. And the experience gained from repeat marathons has a positive impact on performance in terms of speed, pacing, and the tendancy for athletes to hit the wall.
• This is part of a series of posts that I am writing as part of an ongoing analysis of marathon data. So if you are interested in this sort of thing then you will find a growing number of articles here.

Introduction

As I am writing this post the results are just in for yesterday’s 2016 Chicago Marathon, the 39th edition of one of the world’s most popular marathons. This year saw 41,357 runners toeing the start-line in near-perfect race conditions and the event did not disappoint…