I was wondering what heading to put on this story, and this is the only one that seems to fit! Runners love their numbers and and as a group they probably like statistics more than most. Finish times, chip times, interval pace, last year's times, next year's predictions, kilometre splits, wind speeds.. you get the idea. Streets runner Gerard Conway took up the challenge and created a web analysis app: http://ondemand.spotfire.com/public/ViewAnalysis.aspx?file=/Users/TIBCO-....

He used Spotfire to create a full statistical analysis of the race based on the published results file. There is so much here that you can do:
- You can see that this year's race had 51.3% Male & 48.7% Female, with average times of 40.35 & 50.04 mins respectively.
- You can check your performance against other groups & clubs
- You can check your performance against other age categories and gender.
- You can check out your club statistics - how many finishers etc..
- And plenty more..

Thanks to Gerard for doing this, which originally came in as a comment yesterday, and which got temporarily removed when we weren't able to keep up with reviewing the comments coming in. He also says: as far as Spotfire goes the following is what I used to create the app, http://spotfire.tibco.com/silverspotfire/default.aspx. Anyone can get a free 1 year no obligations trial, to create their own analysis with their own data.

Spotfire provides a visual data analysis tool and for a bit more technical background on what Spotfire is and dynamic queries, this article I found online is from the University of Maryland where it all began: http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/spotfire/.