Plus 6 and Minus 6

My time in the latest run was 6 minutes slower than I did 28 years ago in the Seattle Marathon and 6 minutes faster than it had to be to qualify for the Boston Marathon.

And now more numbers, because I like numbers and their possible meanings...

In the latest race, I came in 10th among the 32 "Davids" entered, 289th out of 1193 overall, and 4th among the 20 Chelmsfordians. If you look at the ratios, I did best v. my fellow townspeople, then among all entrants and worst against Davids. Here is my hypothesis: Chelmsford is one of the three towns the race went through and so this race is very convenient for us. Maybe this caused people who are not as serious about running to give it a try.

As for the fact I did worse among Davids than overall: Davids are all men and men are faster (on average) than women. Only 42 of the 289 who beat me were women, although if they were a small percentage of the total entrants, this wouldn't suggest anything. If only 22% of the entrants were women and 22% beat me, then it would show that they are as fast as the men on average.

I don't want to go through the whole 1193 and count the number of women, but if they are slower, maybe they will be a higher percentage of the last 289 finishers...(A pause while I look at the results)...152 of the last 289 were women.