May and beyond...

[marathondan]

Warning: The following main contain Statistics.

In which I submit my entry for the World's Most Boring Post contest.

After downloading the results spreadsheet from the Reading Half Marathon, I did what any sane and right-thinking individual would do when presented with about 8,000 sets of data: I analysed them and turned them into graphs.

In theory, this could be quite interesting: as the second-biggest half marathon in the UK, the results present a pretty good snapshot of mass-participation distance running in this country, or at least the southern half of it. In practice, it may just beat a large mug of Horlicks or a Nytol. I'll let you be the judge.

So, attached are far too many graphs.

• Firstly, we have the distribution of all the finishing times. The most notable thing here is that there appears to be a sharp drop in finishers at 120 minutes, suggesting possibly that a lot of people bust a gut to get in under 2 hours. The most popular finishing time is 113 mins.
  
  
• Then, we have cumulative frequency graphs (oh yes) for:
  
  • all of the field
    
  • female classes from U35 through to 55+ (note that "f.gif" is under-35, NOT all females)
    
  • male classes from U40 through to 60+ (again, "m.gif" is under-40, NOT all males)
    

Um, I'm not sure what to do with that. But it passed an idle hour.

Again, sorry for sharing this with you. It's just the way I am. Please don't judge me.