Numbers, stats and more numbers!
I’ve done a blog on thank yous for 2023 – obviously that is very important, and again a huge thank you to everyone who has been involved with Big Bear this year. However, this one is about the stats!
The numbers are important for me to make sure what I think I see is actually bourn in the reality of statistics.
I’ll start easy….!!
We had 24 events (if you count the 50k and 50 mile events as separate at the Salcey 50/Cannock 50) at 10 different venues, we visited Salcey Forest the most with 8 events on 5 different days.
Entrant stats… (these are different to finisher stats which are quite difficult for me to collate) we’ve had 2257 entries this year from 1182 different individuals. 747 people only joined us once in 2023 meaning 435 joined us multiple times. 59 people entered 5 or more times. 4 people joined us more than 10 times, (Claudie 11, Brian 12, Elaine 12 and Jim 15!). Jim volunteered 4 times on top of this and Elaine 3 times as well.
We had 76 different volunteers (excluding help form The Olney Way to Run and Cannock Chase Trail Runners at the Salcey 50 and Cannock 50 respectively). 23 volunteered more than once and Rose, Jim, Kerry, Liz, Mary and Claire all volunteered 4 times or more (apologies if I’ve missed anyone, my volunteer data is messy and not designed for end of year auditing!!)
Between Nick and Kaz we have 13,265 race day photos taking up 73 GB of space! That’s an average of 6.4 photos per starter at each event. 284 Trees have been planted of which 89 are additional Trees for those wishing to have a medal, beer and flapjack. 48 of you wisely chose to order extra flapjack in the form of a tray of Rugby Real Bread flapjack. 35 collapsible cups have been purchased online, green the most popular being purchased 14 times. More get purchased at events but again my record system on that isn’t set up for an end of year analysis!
We had entries from 1168 females and 1087 males with 2 non-binary entries. So females made up 52% of entrants. The average age of entrants was 46 years and 9 months with a range between 20-85 wit the modal age 51 (102 entrants where 51!). We ask for ethnicity data but it’s an optional question, 1258 gave ethnicity data 94.3% where British, 2.6% where from ethnic minorities (excluding white minorities), 3.1% where from white minorities.
That’s a lot of numbers. Of course the important stats like, most amount of jaffa cakes eaten, longest spent drinking tea and longest waffling event briefing by me are much harder to quantify. Hopefully that gives a bit of an insight in to 2023 at Big Bear Events. Of course statistics aren’t always what they seem (lies, lies and statistics!) but I’m obviously not trying to push a view point, just give a reflection on the year. Lots of people come to the events, lots come only once and some come loads. A big thing for the events.
My next blog post will be plans for 2024!