An annual exercise to determine the human nature of runners who register for the Chevron Houston Marathon and Aramco Houston Half Marathon is to look at the numbers of registrants and finishers, using what data is available through the marathon’s website.
Timing is always an issue as data is being refreshed and updated constantly as post-race issues are resolved before the results are declared final and official.
As of Monday afternoon, it appears that the half marathon had a record number of finishers with 12,530 while the marathon had its lowest number of finishers since 2013 with 6,660.
The previous half marathon record was 11,664, set in 2015.
It is the first time in the event’s history that the two totaled more than 19,000 with 19,190 exactly.
18,881 finished the two events combined three years ago in 2016.
And if the race day weather and the preceding forecast had been a bit friendlier, it is easy to believe that the bar would have been set high for future years.
In the marathon, as of Friday, 8:15 p.m., there were 9,080 entries in the marathon’s results search.
Today, there were 7,152 who showed in the same results search with 6,660 official finishers – 4,052 men and 2,600 women.
This would suggest that 1,928 packets didn’t start the race on Sunday – a no-show rate of 21.2%
Actually, that’s not too bad.
Almost seven percent – 6.8%, to be exact – either didn’t finish or finished over six hours.
For the half marathon, Friday’s data revealed 16,545 potential runners.
Just about 13,000 – 12,988 exactly – started the race with 12,530 finishing.
That’s 3,557 no shows in just a slightly higher percentage of 21.5%.
This could have been worse – and might have been if the 29 degrees forecast with double-digit wind totals had prevailed.
Slightly under four percent of the runners – 3.6% -- who crossed the start line didn’t finish or did so in more than four hours.
The initial post-race press release from the Houston Marathon Committee on Sunday indicated that more finished – “a total of 6,930 runners finished the marathon, while 12,986 completed the half marathon on a day that saw runners brave an unseasonable start temperature of 33 degrees with a 12 mph wind”, but that was before the data begins to get scrubbed.
Previous records were determined from viewing page 18 of this year's Chevron Houston Marathon media guide.
1 comment:
sadly, my daughter was really running for a PR goal and her results have not been posted. It says she did not run. She is in her best friends race video as they came in together. She was very upset. I hope this can be resolved.
I was also a bit disappointed in the medals this year. They seem a bit smaller and not as nicely made.
The food was not that great either.
more people means less quality maybe?
I have run 17 full HM's. this was my first half
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