Who’s Running What Race Distance in the Philippines?

Numbers have always fascinated me. I remember statistics as being one of my favorite subjects in grad school. In my wildest dreams, after mastering the laws of probability, I would see myself heading off to Vegas, striking it big-time, and then heading back home to enjoy a simple, good life. The 2008 movie 21 thus amused me no end. Of course, in real life, I only got as far as Reno, leaving the place empty-handed. But thanks to running, I now only need to don a pair of shorts and good running shoes to enjoy the good life just the same. Well, kind of.

So with recent races being described in superlatives such as being the ‘biggest’ and ‘grandest’ ever to be locally staged, the gravitational pull of numbers was again simply too strong for my runners’ bounce. I thus found myself morphing from runner to statistician, peeking at the results posted at takbo.ph, condurarun.com, and runrio.com for the three biggest runs with varied race distances so far in 2010 - Unilab’s United Run for Wellness, Condura’s Run for the Dolphins, and Century Tuna’s Superbods Run, respectively. Here’s a digest of what I found:


How many are running?
The Century run has been the biggest race so far this year, with 9000+ participants, followed by the Condura (7000+ including the 42K runners) and Unilab runs (6,000+).

(photo from www.philstar.com.ph)

What’s the favorite race distance?
For all three runs, the 5K was the runners’ distance of choice (36%), with the 10K coming in a close second (29%). In layman’s terms, 4 of every 10 Manila runners will likely run a 5K race, and 3 would likely opt for a 10K. The 3K and 21K are the least favored of all race distances, with only 3 out of 10 runners interested in both distances combined. In the Condura run, where the 42K was an option, 585 of 7453 runners chose this full marathon or full mary (in runnerspeak) distance. This translates to 7.8%, meaning that hardly 1 in every 10 runners is a real marathoner!

Are you woman enough?
Looking at the Century numbers alone, men and women have different race distance preferences. If there were 10 women, 3 of them would likely run the 3K, 5 the 5K, 2 the 10K, and hardly 1 the 21K. Of 10 men, 2 would run 21K, 3 the 10K, 4 the 5K and only 1 the 3K.
(photo from www. condurarun.com)

Are you good enough to beat a Sabal or a Buenavista?
Based on the three races, men were faster than women, with Adam's ilk always recording the fastest times in all race distances. The times to beat for men are – 0:08:24 (3K), 0:15:18 (5K), 0:31:46(10K), and 1:08:18 (21K). For women, the time thresholds are 0:11:55 (3K), 0:21:38 (5K), 0:38:39 (10K) and 1:28:18 (21K). The Century run was the fastest of the three runs, setting the fastest times for both men and women in both the 3K and 21K distances.


What if you just managed to walk?
No worries in this aspect for the running newbie. The slowest times recorded were all in excess of 3 hours - 3:08:04 for the 3K, and 3:19:08, 3:19:17, and 3:56:46 for the 5K, 10K, and 21K, respectively. Surprisingly, except for the 3K, all the slowest times were recorded by men! Talk about celebrating the International Day of Women!


Of course one can go deeper into the analysis, take a closer look at the various age groupings, and their race distance preferences, and average or range of speeds, and better still, perform analysis of variance. But that would take another blog post. As I don’t have the urge to improve upon the already great analysis done in the Century run via Runpix, I rest my case. But if I again take stock of my numbers-related wildest dreams, I see, in the not so distant future, the 10K and 21K runners increasing their numbers, as they gain more running experience and become addicted to the proverbial runner’s high. So who's in running Manila's races? Sure, there's Dingdong, Derek, Piolo, and the rest of us, 9000+-strong. I look forward, however, to the day when these Philippine running numbers can rival Singapore’s 50,000 last December or the 52,000 just last month in Hong Kong!