Comparing the Charleville Half-Marathon to the Dublin Half-Marathon

Last week, I had a post up about the stats for the Charleville Half-Marathon and it was obvious there was a drop in the number of faster women taking part this year. The question was why?

Last weekend, the Dublin Half-Marathon was held in the Phoenix Park and it attracted a huge field of nearly 7000 runners. As you see from the chart below, it dwarfs the numbers in Charleville.

Yet despite the difference, the winning times for the first man in the Charleville Half-Marathon has been faster than the Dublin Half-Marathon since it started in 2011. This might be partly explained by the fact that the course in the Phoenix Park is hillier but Charleville as you can see below has winning times that are 2-5 minutes faster. That's can't be just down to the course. It just seems to attract more of the faster male runners.

 In Charleville, there are prizes for the first 8 men. As you can see about, the 8th man in Charleville is often faster than the 8th man in Dublin.

For women, the winning time for Charleville is usually faster than Dublin except for this year.

The chart above shows the times for the 8th woman. As you can see, the standard for the 8th woman in Dublin was even higher this year than previous years.

As for original question as to why the drop in the numbers for the faster women in Charleville? I suspect that the pool of women in Munster who can run fast half-marathon times is very small indeed. It only takes a few to drift away to do other events to see a big change in the Charleville times.

Dublin on the other hand has a huge pool of runners to draw on. Even if the very fast women don't turn out, there are plenty of women capable of running 1:25-1:30 and that keeps the times for the top women reasonably high.