Pacing Patterns of Half-Marathon Runners: An analysis of ten years of results from Gothenburg Half Marathon
The Gothenburg Half Marathon is one of the world’s largest half marathon races with over 40 000 participants each year. In order to reduce the number of runners risking over-straining, injury, or collapse, we would like to provide runners with advice to appropriately plan their pacing. Many particip...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Sciendo
2023-03-01
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| Series: | International Journal of Computer Science in Sport |
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| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.2478/ijcss-2023-0014 |
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| author | Johansson Moa Atterfors Johan Lamm Johan |
| author_facet | Johansson Moa Atterfors Johan Lamm Johan |
| author_sort | Johansson Moa |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | The Gothenburg Half Marathon is one of the world’s largest half marathon races with over 40 000 participants each year. In order to reduce the number of runners risking over-straining, injury, or collapse, we would like to provide runners with advice to appropriately plan their pacing. Many participants are older or without extensive training experience and may particularly benefit from such pacing assistance. Our aim is to provide this with the help of machine learning. We first analyze a large publicly available dataset of results from the years 2010 - 2019 (n = 423 496) to identify pacing patterns related to age, sex, ability, and temperature of the race day. These features are then used to train machine learning models for predicting runner’s finish time and to identify which runners are at risk of making severe pacing errors and which ones seem set to pace well. We find that prediction of finish time improves over the current baseline, while identification of pacing patterns correctly identifies over 70% of runners at risk of severe slowdowns, albeit with many false positives. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-2a2ca7f666e340f496b1c9cb440a331f |
| institution | DOAJ |
| issn | 1684-4769 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2023-03-01 |
| publisher | Sciendo |
| record_format | Article |
| series | International Journal of Computer Science in Sport |
| spelling | doaj-art-2a2ca7f666e340f496b1c9cb440a331f2025-08-20T02:50:26ZengSciendoInternational Journal of Computer Science in Sport1684-47692023-03-0122112413810.2478/ijcss-2023-0014Pacing Patterns of Half-Marathon Runners: An analysis of ten years of results from Gothenburg Half MarathonJohansson Moa0Atterfors Johan1Lamm Johan2Chalmers University of Technology, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, Gothenburg, SwedenChalmers University of Technology, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, Gothenburg, SwedenChalmers University of Technology, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, Gothenburg, SwedenThe Gothenburg Half Marathon is one of the world’s largest half marathon races with over 40 000 participants each year. In order to reduce the number of runners risking over-straining, injury, or collapse, we would like to provide runners with advice to appropriately plan their pacing. Many participants are older or without extensive training experience and may particularly benefit from such pacing assistance. Our aim is to provide this with the help of machine learning. We first analyze a large publicly available dataset of results from the years 2010 - 2019 (n = 423 496) to identify pacing patterns related to age, sex, ability, and temperature of the race day. These features are then used to train machine learning models for predicting runner’s finish time and to identify which runners are at risk of making severe pacing errors and which ones seem set to pace well. We find that prediction of finish time improves over the current baseline, while identification of pacing patterns correctly identifies over 70% of runners at risk of severe slowdowns, albeit with many false positives.https://doi.org/10.2478/ijcss-2023-0014half-marathonrunningpacing patternsresults datamachine learning |
| spellingShingle | Johansson Moa Atterfors Johan Lamm Johan Pacing Patterns of Half-Marathon Runners: An analysis of ten years of results from Gothenburg Half Marathon International Journal of Computer Science in Sport half-marathon running pacing patterns results data machine learning |
| title | Pacing Patterns of Half-Marathon Runners: An analysis of ten years of results from Gothenburg Half Marathon |
| title_full | Pacing Patterns of Half-Marathon Runners: An analysis of ten years of results from Gothenburg Half Marathon |
| title_fullStr | Pacing Patterns of Half-Marathon Runners: An analysis of ten years of results from Gothenburg Half Marathon |
| title_full_unstemmed | Pacing Patterns of Half-Marathon Runners: An analysis of ten years of results from Gothenburg Half Marathon |
| title_short | Pacing Patterns of Half-Marathon Runners: An analysis of ten years of results from Gothenburg Half Marathon |
| title_sort | pacing patterns of half marathon runners an analysis of ten years of results from gothenburg half marathon |
| topic | half-marathon running pacing patterns results data machine learning |
| url | https://doi.org/10.2478/ijcss-2023-0014 |
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