About the Data

This site was built as part of my capstone project for an M.S. in Data Analysis and Data Visualization at CUNY's Graduate Center.

I built a series of Python scripts to scrape the race results data from the New York Road Runners results website, compiled them and calculated a pace field for each finish to allow for comparisons. I scraped the results of each 5K, 4-mile and 10K race in 2022 through 2025, a total of 459,812 records. I also used the age field to set an age group for each record to align with industry standards.

While each record has a pace field, I analyzed only the finishes at a given distance when comparing actual results to industry standards for specific distances, so only 5K finishes are used to compare the field to Couch to 5K training and only 10K finishes are used to compare the field to the corrals seeded by a 10K-equivalent pace.

One limitation of this data set is there is no information on how experienced the runners are, and training gains compound over time. Thus beginner runners who are the ones Couch to 5K is aimed at are likely to be slower than the field as a whole, but there is no way to measure that with this data set. Additional survey research in conjunction with a race organization to ask runners registering for races how much running experience they have would allow for improved data to better answer this question.

All the data is available for download on my GitHub repository for this project, and I invite other researchers and runners with an interest in this data to use the data and continue this analysis to explore further questions around the road racing community.