Comparing the tens...Great Island 10 mile V Kilnaboy 10 mile

There were two 10 mile road races held in Munster on Sunday the 12th of April 2015...the Great Island 10m in Cobh, Co.Cork and the Kilnaboy 10m in Co.Clare.

For those of you new to the running scene, the Kilnaboy used to be part of the Munster Ten-Mile Spring Classics Series which ended a few years ago. It consisted of 4 races...Mallow 10, Dungarvan 10, Ballycotton 10 and the Kilnaboy 10. When the series was running, a good few runners from Cork used to travel up to it but since the series ended, the numbers have dwindled.

This year, it became part of the new Run Clare Series and the numbers have shot up again. I was looking through the results and I couldn't help but notice that the times seem pretty slow.

I have a post up on the Running in Munster site about this years results.

I noticed that the numbers taking part were pretty much the same as the Great Island 10 mile in Cobh so I did a comparison. As you can see, the times were a lot faster in Cobh even though the course is probably a little bit harder than Kilnaboy.

The big difference can be explained by the gender balance. In general, men run faster than women and the field in Kilnaboy was 63% women and in Cobh, it was 30%. I guess a lot of people think all 10 milers are the same but when you look at the stats, they can be very different.