I thought the number of sub 3 hour finishers might be spread out across the various clubs but they're not. I did a comparison with 2016 and 2017 and the results are shown below...
As you can see, Eagle AC and St.Finbarr's AC have the highest number of sub 3 hour finishers. In 2015, the two clubs accounted for 50% of all the sub 3 hour club finishers from Cork. In 2016, that went up to 68% and this year, it's 74%.
What's really suprising are the low number of sub 3 hour finishers from other clubs.
In terms of total numbers of Cork club runners going sub 3 hours, there were 20 in 2015, 25 in 2016 and 27 in 2017.
13 comments:
A very interesting statistic. I so much want to break the 3 hours for the marathon myself. Hopefully one day I will. Your graph gives me encouragement to train harder.
How about a comparison to the number of members per club? With the 2 mentioned it is no surprise that they have some of the largest numbers. Or compare to the number of members who did it versus the numbers who finished sub 3. It may not be as surprising then.
You can't really compare the number of sub 3 hours in Eagle to the number of sub 3 hours in other clubs without putting all the numbers out there. Maybe other clubs don't have as many marathon runners and focus on the shorter distance. Other clubs would be newer clubs who are gaining numbers from couch to 5k and continue to grow the distance.
Also, some of the figures are not correct. You have some clubs down as one when there were more.
Good article. Any idea how many non club folks got under the 3hours?
The original numbers were based on the chip timing results which turned to have a few missing, mostly St.Finbarr's AC runners. Chart updated now.
These are the simple stats of how many club runners from Cork broke 3 hours. If someone wants to spend time working out what size each club is and how many numbers they have, off you go.
I still see clubs missing runners with sub 3hrs but that isn't for me to fix. I'm just making a point about the "surprising" comment aimed at other clubs. It may not be as surprising when the overall picture is looked at. Also there was a lot of foreign marathons recently so that might be another picture.
I checked the results on the Athletic Ireland website again and I can't see any omissions. If there are any other sub 3 hour runners from Cork clubs, they're not listed there.
Maybe people are doing other marathons but this was the national marathon. I would still have expected more sub 3 hour runners from other clubs.
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Someone else asked about non-club runners. Roughly 500 runners broke 3 hours although it's not possible to know who is from Cork or not other than being member of an athletics club. Roughly 3% of the total field ran under 3 hours.
any graph from a few years back to compare,thanks john nice read
Interesting article John. Keep up the good work.
interesting stat, it is surprising more clubs don't have more sub 3 hour runners, donoughmore, a relatively small club had one while I would have thought Leevale, east cork and mallow with their numbers would have several running what I would consider a very attainable standard for a dedicated club runner.
It's probably worth pointing out that not all clubs are the same. For example, East Cork AC are one of the top clubs in Cork but they are more orientated towards shorter distances than marathons.
So by these stats, if I join Eagle I have a better chance of breaking 3?
Breaking 3 hours depends on your own abilities. It helps though to train with a group of people who are running times around the 3 hour mark. All clubs are slightly different. See which one suits.
To throw a spanner in the works, I'm from Cork in a Dublin club, and broke 3 hours, as did another lad from Cork in the club - A hard one to put numbers against! Agree with your last comment, totally recommend running in a group of people with similar goals, it certainly worked for me this time around.
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