Aligning Running Industry Standards With the Full Road Racing Community

The road racing community has exploded in size with the latest running boom, prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic and people’s need for an exercise option that allowed for social distancing. Marathons are selling out faster than ever, time standards keep getting faster and there are many more run clubs and crews. At the same time, slower runners are becoming more common as activists like Latoya Shauntay Snell and Martinus Evans, founder of the Slow AF Run Club, have pushed races to be more inclusive.

New York Road Runners is one of the largest road racing organizations in the United States, and they started lengthening course time limits in late 2022 to allow more slower runners to finish their races. Because of New York’s racial and ethnic diversity and NYRR’s programs to encourage youth, senior citizen and low-income runners to participate, NYRR race results over-represent many groups of runners who traditionally have been excluded or sidelined by the sport’s roots among fast, white men. The organization also has two races geared specifically for women and partners with Achilles on a race each year. Achilles is one of the best-known running clubs geared to athletes with disabilities, and the NYRR race is the club’s biggest race in the United States each year. NYRR also was the first organization to allow nonbinary entrants in a World Marathon Major and has that as an entry option for all its races. All of these factors make NYRR race results well-suited to examine how running industry standards affect a larger, more diverse and more inclusive road racing community.

When we look at NYRR race results and compare them to various running industry standards, including some of the Road Runners’ own, it’s possible to see where and how the running community could update training programs, course time standards and race organization to better reflect the road racing community as it exists today.