Black Canyon 100K Quick Recap
Excuse the gratuitous use of charts, I'm experimenting for future race recaps
With warmer weather, and continued pushing of athletic (and nutritional) performance, records were broken at the Black Canyon 100K today. Congrats on the new course records, Seth and Riley!
Updated historic charts:
Not only are athletes getting faster, the spread between the podium / top 10 runners is also shrinking (I'm sure the hunt for golden tickets is driving the competition):
*I’m not sure I really like this plot. Here I’m showing the average time and standard deviation for each runner in the Top 10. Might need some more refining, else I’ll just scrap it.
The men’s field is especially competitive; on average, only 3 minutes between each finisher in the top 10!
The women’s field is also getting more competitive, though this year was slightly less competitive than 2024. Still, 5 1/2 minutes between each finisher on average this year, still speedy!
My last new charts — top 10 performances of all time (excluding 2019, due to the modified course):
Five of the men’s top 10 performances came from this year.
Like with the men’s race, five of the women’s top 10 performances came from this year as well. It’s kind of nuts that the #2 performances from last year barely scrape in at #9/10 of the Top 10 lists!
Data visualization is so important to conveying concepts, thank you for bringing this approach to ultra running! I love being able to see what I’m feeling is the case. And FWIW, I love the elapsed time charts, I thought they were a very clrar demonstration of top-10 spreads shrinking and thus competitiveness.
Super interesting stuff! Thanks for taking the time to create and share. The elapsed time chart is really definitely something new for me, I like it!
I think Eli Hemming and Canhua Luo should also be in the top-10 all time with their performances today. Crazy if that puts it up to 5!