Time For The Half Marathon Stats

Don't know why it took me so long, but here are some of Freescale Austin Half Marathon stats. I was talking to a coworker today who mentioned that he ran the half. It then occurred to me that I've been neglecting the half. Finally, when a post at runtex forums gave the same thought, I knew it was time.

You would think that there would be less of a slowdown in 2005 in the half since runners were able to finish before it got too hot and humid. However, that's not the case. All age groups ran slower in 2005 as compared to 2004. The slowdowns were between 2 and 12 minutes.

Interestingly, the biggest slowdowns in the half were the runners in their 50s. The full marathon 50 year olds had the least slowdown.

After thinking about this, I have a theory about why there was more of a slowdown in the half than in the full. I have to do some more crunching of the numbers first. I'll be sure to report back.

Here are the stats that I derived from the 2005 Freescale Half Marathon and 2004 Motorola Half Marathon.

Year: 2005

                     Mean      Median    Mean Chg
Age Group # in Group Chip Time Chip Time From 2004
--------- ---------- --------- --------  ---------
    teens    102     2:08:56   2:05:52   02:52
 twenties    920     2:12:39   2:10:28   05:06
 thirties   1271     2:14:47   2:10:41   07:26
  forties    806     2:16:03   2:12:32   07:37
  fifties    382     2:27:58   2:20:20   11:46
 sixties+    104     2:34:18   2:27:31   05:07


Year: 2004

                     Mean      Median   
Age Group # in Group Chip Time Chip Time
--------- ---------- --------- -------- 
    teens     83     2:06:04   2:00:02          
 twenties    790     2:07:33   2:04:52          
 thirties    999     2:07:21   2:04:52          
  forties    723     2:08:26   2:03:35          
  fifties    268     2:16:12   2:08:58          
 sixties+     64     2:29:11   2:23:07          

Note: Some runners were excluded due to strange
fields (like a runner under 19 with an age of two)