I think us Oregonians think of ourselves as lovers of all things outdoors – especially running. We have so many trails, routes, and a committment to the sport, that it’s hard to imagine there being faster runners out there. Jens Jakob Andersen, founder of RunRepeat.com, together with Ivanka Nikolova, Ph.D. in Math, have analyzed 6 million marathon results from 1996 to 2016 and come up with a full US state comparison. So how does Oregon stack up?
Read the original study here.
Overall
- Overall ranking – 9th place (4:29:01)
- Women ranking – 13th place (4:45)
- Men ranking – 4th place (4:12)
Age:
By average age group, Oregon ranks:
- <20 years – 15th place (average finish time – 4:23:32)
- 20-29 years – 6th place (average finish time – 4:17:39)
- 30-39 years – 3rd place (average finish time – 4:15:37)
- 40-49 years – 7th place (average finish time – 4:25:14)
- 50-59 years – 15th place (average finish time – 4:40:36)
- >60 years – 17th place (average finish time – 5:10:14
- The average age of Oregon participants is 41.2
- Oregon over 50-year olds (4:50:55) are faster than the under 30-year olds from Alaska (4:51:36) and Mississippi (4:58:11)
- Oregon age distribution – <30 (20%), 30-49 (60%), >50% (20%)
- Young to Elderly participants – rank 33, coefficient 1.05. This means that Oregon has almost equally many young as elderly participants
Participation
- By number of participants Oregon ranks 33rd
- Oregon has 44.8% women participants and 55.2% men
- By number of participants as % of states population – ranks 42nd with 0.04% participation. That is 0.42% of the population participated in a race past year. Or 1 in 238
- Oregon female participants numbers have declined by 7.87% in the last 17 years
Speed
- By change in speed Oregon ranks 2nd and they have speeded up by 1.29% in the last 17 years. That is, Oregon has improved a lot!
- By change in women time Oregon ranks 2nd and women have speeded up by 2.66%
- By change in finish time for men Oregon ranks 2nd with 0.46% increase in speed
- Oregon women (4:45:36) are faster than the men from Hawaii (4:55:03) and Mississippi (4:57:10)
- Oregon women are 12.99% slower than Oregon men
- By age group the ranking of the slowdown is as follows:
- <30 – rank 2, speed up 1.17%
- 30-49 – rank 1, speed up 0.63%
- >50 – rank 2, speed up 2.57%.
Oregon is among the only 4 states that have actually improved the past 17 years.
