Nashville's Country Music Marathon

I'm working on these stats now. In the mean time, I'll post some basic facts and stats. Just like the SLC Marathon, this had an exciting finish. The Kenyan Nephat Kinyanjui over took the race leader Yuriy Hychun of Ukraine in the last half-mile and won with a time of 2:15:37. Another Kenyan took second place, and Hychun came in third with a time of 2:16:10. It must be frustrating to come in third after leading for almost the whole race.

The top women was Irina Safarova of Russia who finished with a time of 2:33:53. Both the top man and woman won $17.5K or an 05 Nissan Xterra.

I also like the fact they had cash prizes for other categories like wheelchair, masters, local county, and state of Tennessee. Those prizes ranged from $500 to $1000. The winning Tennessee runners had times of 2:34:19 (male) and 3:02:18 (female).

Here are some of the basic stats from the Marathon's race results page:

2005 Marathon Participants:
Registered: 4656
Finishers: 3743 (80%)
Male Finishers: 2203 (59%)
Female Finishers: 1540

2005 Half Marathon Participants
Registered: 12923
Finishers: 11392 (88%)
Male Finishers: 4573 (40%)
Female Finishers: 6819

2004 Marathon Participants:
Registered: 5120
Finishers: 4138 (81%)
Male Finishers: 2446 (59%)
Female Finishers: 1692

2004 Half Marathon Participants:
Registered: 11003
Finishers: 9256 (84%)
Male Finishers: 3772 (41%)
Female Finishers: 5484

Similar to other races, the men outnumber the women for the marathons, but the women outnumber the men in the half. I'm willing to bet that the women in the twenties age group outnumber the men in the marathon.

Looking at both 2004 and 2005, the marathon finishers went down by about 10% in 2005. However in the half marathon, the finishers increased by 23%. Wonder if this is a common trend? Perhaps half marathons are able to retain more repeat runners? Something to look at in future posts.

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