The current marathon records for both men and women are held in Berlin! To celebrate, here is a compilation of the Berlin Marathon results among runners from 1974 to 2023. This dataset include data gathered for the years 1974-2019 and compiled by Kaggle as well as results for the years 2021-2023.
lots of people
I had the privilege of running (and finishing) the Berlin Marathon back in 2019. After months of preparation, one thing you can never truly prepare for is the sheer number of people running alongside you.
Thousands of runners arrive in the city every year to participate in this race, one of the coveted six Abbott World Marathon Majors. The last edition, held two weeks ago, registered 40,309 finishers (with valid times), the largest in the marathon’s history.
slower but faster
One of the interesting aspects of the dataset is that, although the event’s fastest times continue to improve, the average pace of the crowd has been getting slower over the years.
Running a marathon, although a remarkable achievement, is becoming increasingly popular among people of varying athletic backgrounds. The rising number of participants in the Berlin Marathon reflects a global trend in races of different lengths. One hypothesis for the rising median marathon times could be the increased participation of non-elite athletes.
Another reasonable factor could be changes in the upper cutoff time limit for runners to reach the finish line. Whatever the reasons may be, what’s important is that the data is available, and many other aspects of it are yet to be analyzed. Happy coding.
