Women outnumber men at Tralee 10 mile race...

In most road races for the last 20 years or so, the number of men has always outnumbered the number of women. In the past, it wasn't unusual to find that women may have made up something like 20% of the field. In the last few years, the number of women out running has really taken off and they often make up 50% of the field in short races like the 5k.

Over the longer distances like 10 miles, the majority of the field is still comprised mainly of men. This however is changing as well as can be seen from this earlier post which shows how the number of women in the Dungarvan 10 mile race has increased in the last 5 years from 29% to 41%.

Last Saturday (15th Feb 2014), there was a new 10 mile race in Tralee Co.Kerry and for the first time that I can remember, women made up the majority. Out of the 622 runners that took part, 55.8% were women.

This might be partially explained by the groups set up in Tralee that are training for the various new races in the town. As with most Fit4Life training groups and the like, they do tend to attract more women than men.

Although the results don't show it, I'd suspect that there was probably a higher percentage of non-club runners in this event as well which might explain the lower male numbers. Whatever the reason, it's another sign that the number of women in races continues to grow.

The results of the Tralee 10 mile can be seen HERE