OK, we all know that Ironman Hawaii is hot, but how hot? And we might be tempted to assume that a marathon in Anchorage Alaska, or one in early January (even in Florida) would be relatively cool, right?
Wrong.
How good an idea is it to make a big bet on setting a PR at an event with incredible year-to-year variations in conditions versus one with conditions that have historically fallen within a much narrower range?
In one of those projects that just seemed to take on a life of its own, (and will no doubt confirm my reputation as a complete geek of endurance athletic analysis), I recently compiled and analyzed publicly available weather data from Weather Underground for seventeen familiar - and some decidedly not-so-familiar marathons, plus a few Ironman and ultra events as a common point of reference.
See the spreadsheet HERE.
The dates on this sheet don't correspond to historical event dates but to the calendar date of the most recent event. This analysis also doesn't take into account things like relative humidity, start times, shade cover, and wind, or anticipated time on the course, but I had to stop somewhere!
In any case, that's where common sense comes in. I.e. Houston has higher humidity than Phoenix; runners in the Boston Marathon - 12Noon start - are more likely to see the higher temperatures than those at Disney - which runs in the Winter dark after starting at 6:00AM - etc.
Comments welcome!