I’m a numbers guy through and through. As such, I like to look at who signs up to run 100 mile races with me. Data from the charts below are pulled from Ultrasignup, which does a pretty good job of capturing US ultra results however isn’t all inclusive.
These splits are similar to what I’ve seen in other hundreds that I’ve run with my age group (M40-49) being the largest. Women make up a higher percentage of the participants at 34% compared to the mid-20% range in other races. And mad respect to the two runners over 70 who are signed up to race. One of my goals is to join them in a couple decades.
When I started running hundreds, I just assumed everyone was vastly more experienced than I was. The truth is most people have only been doing ultras for a couple years. Over half the starting field has run less than 10 ultras and only been at this for the past 5 years or less.
This chart shows that three-quarters of the field has finished 3 or fewer hundreds. This makes sense as LH100 is on the easier side of 100s considering the flat, non-technical course and looped format. As I’ve learned from experience though, flat doesn’t mean easy.
Even though this race has been around for a while, not many repeat finishers in the race.
The weather looks to be a little on the warm side this year (highs in the 80s), however hopefully this won’t impact the finisher rate too much. Good luck to everyone heading to the race next weekend!