If, like me, you are into running history and/or sociology, you might want to have a listen to the latest Everyday Runners podcast, hosted by Andy Fuller. Andy is an Australian runner, podcaster, publisher and independent researcher based in the Netherlands, and interviewed me on a wide variety of topics, covering everything from the meaning
Running Experience Survey Report Welcome to the 2025 Running Experience Survey (RXS) Report. The RXS research project provides a snapshot of running behaviours and attitudes across a wide range of topics, with a particular emphasis on race participation. It was designed, promoted and analysed by Neil Baxter, an independent sociologist and specialist in running culture.
There have always been ways of making running pay. In the days when long-distance travel meant struggling along badly maintained dirt roads and pony tracks, foot messengers could often outrun riders on horseback. Indeed, runners are conspicuous figures in stories of the distant past, even if some of their most famous appearances are much repeated
Running Experience Survey Respondent update It’s been just over a month since I launched the Running Experience Survey, and data collection has been going well. Thanks to help from members of running clubs and communities up and down the land – as well as online – I’ve received well over 1,900 responses so far. It’s
A race for the championship of the world On a late September afternoon in 1844, a large and noisy crowd gathered on the turnpike road in Hammersmith, then just outside London, close to the Seven Stars Inn. They were a motley crew that spanned the social spectrum and many had travelled great distances to be
How and why do people engage with running? It’s a question that can’t easily be answered by looking at one or two factors. So in an attempt to capture the full complexity, I used a technique called Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) — a powerful statistical tool for detecting patterns and mapping relationships across a large
Content A History of Marathon Running Ancient Origins? Despite the role of semi-legendary events from Ancient Greece in the history of marathon running as it is often told today, long-distance races were never an important part of Greek athletic culture. The most prestigious event at the Olympic Games was the stadion, a short sprint of
Hooliganism is not something we associate with running today. The crowds at track meets and road races are some of the friendliest and best natured of any sport. Yet at the dawn of the era of modern athletics running had a serious problem with crowd violence. In fact, the emergence of the modern sport was
Time for an update of the latest running demographics in England, drawing on insights gleaned from Sport England’s massive Active Lives Survey. I’ve broken runners down into five categories, which helps to illustrate the social diversity within the sport. Overall participation These are the figures for participation (any time in the last 12 months) in
“Golf is like bicycle shorts, it reveals a lot about a man.” [1] So, at least, claims Rick Reilly, an American sports journalist and golf-devotee who has played rounds with some of America’s top professional and celebrity players. In 1995, Reilly had perhaps the ultimate opportunity to put his golf-personality theory to the test, when
The average age of runners varies significantly between different forms of the sport, as I explore here. But what about if we try to get behind these simple averages and look at variations in participation profiles by age? The below chart draws on data from Sport England’s Active Lives Survey (data collected in 2023). It
Quantifying the barriers to running One of the great appeals of running is how relatively easy it is to fit around life’s other commitments. But, as all regular runners know, fitting in the daily miles can be a bit of a juggling act. Family responsibilities, work, study, social commitments and even the weather can all
These days the pub is probably not the first place that springs to mind when thinking about top class athletics. In fact, going to the pub and competitive running are probably about as culturally – and physically – different as you can get as far as pastimes go. Yet for the best part of a
Today it seems almost unbelievable that it took until 1984 before a women’s marathon was included in the Olympic programme, but from the first modern Games in 1896 until then, only men were allowed to compete at the classic distance. That’s not to say that during these wilderness years there weren’t many women racing in
Sprint superstars like Usain Bolt and Dafne Schippers, with their legions of fans and swollen bank balances, seem like a thoroughly modern phenomenon – a product of mass media exposure and the commercialisation of sport. But surprisingly, this isn’t the case. Research by cultural historian Peter Swain has unearthed the fascinating story of one of
The total length of Britain’s road network today is a staggering quarter of a million miles. That’s about the same distance as from the Earth to the Moon. For many runners, this immense web of tarmac provides the perfect place to practise their sport; roads offer an almost endless choice of smooth, firm and clean
One of the things I’ve found interesting in studying running is the diversity hidden beneath the sport’s surface. To someone who is unfamiliar with running, a fell-runner, a marathoner, a jogger and perhaps even a track athlete, might all seem to be part of one homogenous group. But for those familiar with running culture, the
Overall figures In this post I’m going to use data from the Big Running Survey, conducted as part of my PhD a couple of years ago, to explore variations in the motivations of different types of runner based on gender and age. I’m not going to try to explain the patterns – that will be
When endurance ruled One hundred and fifty years ago, in an age when sports results were delivered by newspaper and spectators’ attention spans had yet to be eroded by the internet and 24 hour media access, ultra-racing was one of the world’s most popular sports. Some of the most famous Victorian sportsmen were endurance athletes,
This article presents a collection of demographic statistics about running in the UK and beyond. The data is drawn primarily from Sport England’s Active People Survey and its unrivalled dataset, but also my own Big Running Survey, which provides finer detail. UK Running Demographics How many runners? The current size of the UK regular running
This is part 2 of my series on simple running statistics (part 1 here). The data used on this page is primarily drawn from my own Big Running Survey from 2017. Here we focus on exploring the demographic and psychographic features of different ways of participating in running. Section 1 – Demographics within runningGender –
Below is a list of key statistics about running derived from a number of sources, but mainly the Big Running Survey, which canvased the opinions of almost 2,700 runners on their running practices, motivations and attitudes in 2017. Follow the links on selected items for more detail. Section 1 – running demographicsParticipation rates – Social