Houston Marathon Numbers: 6 Weeks To Go

This past Sunday, I started my annual process of crunching the publicly available registration data for the events associated with the Houston Marathon. Although, the marathon's switch - at least to the external user - to active.com has made the opportunity to mine the confirmation database for information a bit more difficult.

So ... 676 combinations of first name = a and last name = a (a, b; a, c ... z, y; z, z) later, I have estimated the following numbers (10,956 total), as of Sunday, have registered for each event:

Chevron Houston Marathon - 5,420 (3,245 men / 2,175 women)
Aramco Houston Half Marathon - 4,935 (2,993 women / 1,942 men)
Houston Press / Smart Financial 5K - 601 (396 women / 205 men)

This would mean that, if these numbers are correct, the marathon, as of Sunday, was 69% full towards its 15,000 combined cap for the full and half marathons. The marathon does have a capacity of 4,000 for the 5K event.

So far ...

+ Runners from 48 states and the District of Columbia have registered for either the full or the half marathon -- Hawaii and Nevada are missing.

+ Eight (8) of the 13 Canadian provinces and territories are represented in the field. Registrations are in from Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Northwest Territories, Ontario, Quebec and Saskatchewan. (Missing are Newfoundland & Labrador, Nova Scotia, Nunavut, Prince Edward Island and Yukon.)

+ 11 of 32 Mexican states will have runners present. They include Chihauhua, Coahuila, Distrito Federal, Guanajato, Jalisco, Baja California Sur, Quintana Roo, San Luis Potosi, Tabasco, Morelos and Estado de Mexico.

+ Aside from foreign elite and invited runners, 16 additional countries will be represented: Brazil, France, Gabon, Germany, Ghana, India, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, Panama, Peru, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Uruquay and Venezuela.

+ The youngest participant per event? 5-year-old Cameron Pickering of Marblehead, Massachusetts in the 5K, 9-year-old Reagan Norwood of Alvin in the Half Marathon (Waverly is one of seven (7) 10-year-olds signed up) and 12-year-old Julia Simmons of League City in the Marathon.

+ The oldest participant in each event? 84-year-old Louis Ciaccio from Galveston in the 5K, 83-year-old Harold Gillespie of Houston in the Half Marathon and 85-year-old Don McNelly from Rochester, New York in the Marathon.