There are only a few epic events in that runners have the opportunity to be a part of in a lifetime and I had one of those in early Dec
ember, 2011 on the day before my 50th birthday. After training for nearly a year along with extensive travel planning, I traveled from Colorado to New Zealand to run the Asics Kepler Challenge 60K (37 mile) mountain trail race. Running Times Magazine published my account of the adventure here.
When I run in road races and look around at the participants, my gut tells me that there are plenty of runners in the 40 and older age range. But, sometimes it’s difficult to tell the difference between a 39 and 46 year old. I know I’ve seen some runners win awards in the 50-54 age group that I could swear were in their 30s by look and by speed. So, I decided to do some research to see what the numbers really look like.
Running USA has compiled a mountain of runner statistics over many years and they provide some great information which is the basis of the analysis below. In this initial view of race finisher data, I wanted to determine is the percentage of runners in races of various distances are in the Masters (40+) or older age groups. Recent data when compared to older data should provide a hint as to whether runners continue to run when they get older or if they stop.
While there are many ways to examine the data, here’s what I found and what I think the results mean:
There were about
13,000,000 finishers in distance races in the USA in 2010. That was a big 37% increase over 2005 and an even more impressive 50% increase over 2000. During this time the % of Masters (40+) runners at the 5K, 10K, Half Marathon and Marathon remained stable at around 40% of the total with no more than a 2-3% variance over the 2000 to 2010 period. Because the percentage difference between the number of finishers in the under 40 age range and the over 40 age range is relatively stable at about 10 – 12% higher for the younger group, it appears that over the last 10 years, as the overall number of runners has increased, so has the relative number of Masters runners. An explanation for this is that as the younger group of runners age and move into the Masters age group they keep running and add to the previous set of Masters runners who also continue to compete in races as they move further in to Masters and Grand Masters age groups.
Another interesting data point that I found is that the largest percentage of Masters and older runners is in the Marathon at 46% of the total finishers in 2010. This is contrasted by the 5K in which 39% of finishers were 40 and older, the lowest percentage when looking at the 5K, 10K, Half-Marathon and Marathon. To be clear, the 5K had many more race finishers than any other race distance at 4.6 million, 1.8 million of them being 40 and older. Whereas the Marathon had 507,000 overall finishers with 233,000 of them being over 40. An explanation for this may be that as race distances become longer, fewer people are willing and able to prepare for them and tend to be more serious runners. Therefore, as they age and move into the Masters category they continue to run the longer distance races.
There are many relationships to explore with this data. A few questions initially come to mind; Of the 13 million race finishers in 2010, how many of them ran more than one race? What is the average number of races in which a runner competes in a year? How many runners never race and therefore are not counted in the total number of runners?
Future discussions to come.
In distance running races, both road and trail, the age category between 50 and 59 and sometimes over 50 in general is called the Grand Masters age group. I’ve been running for about 30 years as a mid-pack runner, sometimes a little above sometimes a little below the middle. I recently turned 50 and entered the Grand Masters category.
As I looked around the web, I didn’t find much information that is focused on the over 50 running crowd, so I thought, why not start a blog with that target. I think we have some specific topics that interest us and lots of experiences to share and questions to ponder.
A central question for me is “What will it be like to continue running now that I have turned 50”. The answer will surely come with time and my intention is to write about the more interesting aspects of the journey. Hopefully some lively discussion will be generated and we will learn something from each other.
I have a few areas that I plan to focus on and I’m sure many others topics will appear as events transpire. These are the categories I’m thinking about now:
- Training Plans and Experiences
- Reviews of Shoes, Training Logs, Gear
- Health – Food, Injury Prevention and Treatment,
- Book Reviews – Running Related Books
- Current Events – Races, Olympics, Etc.
Although much of the focus will be on Grand Masters age runners, there are many topics that apply to all runners so I don’t plan to limit discussions based on age.
Finally, as we all know, traffic to new websites and blogs doesn’t happen magically. It will take time to build a following and hopefully with posting of interesting information and insightful comments more people pay attention. Let the information flow begin.
Grand Masters Running 