Samenvatting. – Op de roemruchte site Ultramarathon World verscheen begin 2000 een schatting van het aantal ultralopers wereldwijd: 60 000 waarvan 1000 in Nederland. Dat leek aan de hoge kant en dus startte Martien Baars een analyse van de startlijsten van 1999. De namenlijsten van Nederlandse deelnemers aan Nederlandse ultralopen van 1999 werden in elkaar geschoven. Lopers die minder dan de marathon hadden afgelegd, werden doorgestreept. Het totaal aantal individuen dat in Nederland actief was, kwam op 273, waarvan slechts 7% vrouwen. Enkele tientallen lopers moesten daar nog bijgeteld worden die alleen op buitenlandse ultralopen actief waren of die het hele jaar 1999 geblesseerd waren. Telde men ook alle Nederlanders mee die aan de zware Jungfrau Marathon meededen, dan steeg de populatie van 1999 zelfs van 300 naar ongeveer 400.
Bij de Nederlandse lopen over 50 – 60 km finishte gemiddeld 85%. Er waren – naast meerdere 24 en 12 uurslopen – drie lange afstandslopen in 1999, namelijk de 120 van Texel, de RUN 100 km (een zeer warme editie) en aan het eind van het jaar de MillenniumRun van 200 km. Op elk van deze lopen haalden maar ongeveer 1/3 van de Nederlandse starters de finish. Liefst 200 van de 300 Nederlandse ultralopers liep maar 1 ultra in dat jaar 1999. Er waren maar 18 lopers die aan 5 of meer Nederlandse ultralopen meededen. Drie types lopers werden onderscheiden, vrij vertaald de betitelen als de ‘verslaafde’, de ‘locale’ en de ‘eenmalige’. Het oorspronkelijke, Engelstalige artikel staat hieronder.
—————–
{b}On the number of ultrarunners in The Netherlands in 1999{eb}
{i}By Martien Baars
Ultramarathon World{ei}
{b}Texel, The Netherlands.{eb} –
With much pleasure I read the article by Andy Milroy and Ulrich Kamm, published on Ultramarathon World on 16 January 2000, on the number of ultrarunners in the world. The estimates of participants in events longer than the marathon per country or continent sum up to about 60 000 runners and more than 40 000 walkers per year, so the year-total of worldwide ‘ultra athletes’ is over 100 000. In response to the estimate of 1000 ultrarunners for The Netherlands, Anton Smeets mentioned as a more probable estimate the number of 200 (UW 30 Jan). From my experiences as one of the race directors of ‘De 60/120 van Texel’, I had the impression that this, in turn, could be an underestimate. Both guesses stimulated me in an effort to reach a more solid estimate of the number of ultrarunners in my country, at least for the year 1999.
Up till now there has been no systematic effort in The Netherlands to maintain an up to date list of ultrarunners and their details like date of birth and address. Run organizations use address systems based on their own lists of participants but there is no concerted exchange of these data. So nobody knows how many ultrarunners there are in my country, in fact. Ideally, the establishment of a joint database by pooling the entries in ultramarathons, could become a highly beneficial system to race organizations, since the mailing of leaflets could then reach the full population of ultrarunners that in the past participated in one or more ultramarathons. For the recruitment of new ultrarunners, general advertisement on national and local scale is still necessary, of course.
My interest in such a data base is also from the statistical point of view, to watch the population dynamics of ultrarunners – my 1982 thesis ‘Running for life’ was on that subject, though it concerned groundbeetles ;-). So the article by Milroy & Kamm stimulated me to construct an EXCEL table of all 1999 entries of Dutch people in Dutch ultramarathons, as a first inventory. Most of the 1999 lists of entries were already in my possession, and last week I got the final three ones – on 50 km runs – in complete form. I started from ‘my own’ Texel list, since these entries were in handy digital format. And because this (biannual) race around the island comprised by far the highest number of Dutch entries in 1999, it was a relatively easy job to add the lists of the other Dutch ultra’s.
{b}Criteria applied{eb}
The non-starters among the entries were not incorporated in the census. For the large Dutch races in Stein and at Texel during the beginning of the season, these numbers are considerable. Part of these entries cancelled their participation due to injuries, others simply did not show up. In Stein 11 people did not start out of 69 Dutch entries (16%), at Texel 22 out of 167 Dutch entries in total (13%). Among these 32 individuals, no less than 21 did not participate in any other Dutch ultra event during the rest of the year.
The 24 individuals that stopped during an ultrarun before completing a distance longer than the marathon, and did not start successfully in any other Dutch ultrarun, were not incorporated in the census either. Strictly speaking, these individuals did not answer to the definition of ‘ultrarunner’. However, the starts of these individuals were still used in the statistics on the results per category of ultramarathon (see below).
{b}Results{eb}
The total for 1999 resulted in 273 Dutch individuals that started successfully in one or more Dutch ultramarathons. This number is a conservative estimate of the total population of Dutch ultrarunners during 1999 because it does not include
a) other Dutch ultra performances in The Netherlands during 1999;
b) the ‘dedicated’ ultrarunners that were injured most of the year;
and c) the Dutch entries in ultraruns abroad, a quantitatively important category.
a) There are some special cases that were not incorporated in the 1999 census, like the conquerors of the 500 km long Pieterpad run. In May 1999, the Aquilo-runners Henk Noor and Daan Rob covered this south-north trail from Maastricht to the Wadden Sea in 7 days, followed by Cor Westhuis – and non-Dutch Karl Graf, Stefan Schlett, Paul Engels and Guiseppe Nuudlasa – when the club Runners Oost-Groningen organized a similar expedition during a week end of June. Henk Noor and Cor Westhuis also appeared in other ultraruns but Daan Rob did not start in any regular Dutch ultra event during 1999. Noteworthy is also the performance by Wim Akkermans, who beat as only solorunner fifty of the hundred teams during the student relay run of 105 km in Tilburg. Akkermans only start in a ‘real’ 1999 ultra was the Gouda 50 km testrun.
b) Quite some Dutch ultrarunners have been injured for most of the year, or were too busy with work or family life, and therefore lack in the 1999 starting fields of Dutch ultramarathons. Examples are Hans Pleijster and Thijs Roest. Also Oskar van Rijswijk & Allard Schmidt (the chief editor and the webmaster respectively of the Dutch ultrasite www.UltraNed.org) can be mentioned, and possibly some tens of others are involved.
c) The most wellknown Dutch ultrarunner, Ron Teunisse, is not included in the census since he did not participate in any Dutch ultrarun during 1999, although he started in the Spartathlon. Others of those examples are Gerard Ridder, who completed his 13th London-Brighton, and Krijn Kroezen, who covered 70 km during the exciting premiere of the Boston 100 km before injuries did drop him out. More importantly: every year there are series of Dutchmen participating in mountain-ultraruns like the Swiss Alpine, that do not start on a Dutch ultramarathon at all. Ton Smeets supplied me the names of no less than 130 Dutch individuals that started in Davos or in the Jungfrau marathon during 1999. Of these, only 5 already occurred in my 1999 census. Since the entries supplied by Smeets were pooled it was not possible to select the Davos runners. Strictly speaking, the Jungfrau marathon is no ultrarun in distance but in difficulty it is very comparable. Unfortunately, I have no data on the number of these Dutchmen that finished or at least covered a distance larger than the marathon.
So the real number of ultrarunners in The Netherlands during 1999 was possibly at least 300 individuals. And when all the successful mountain runners mentioned above are included the total was somewhere around 400.
{b}Distribution of starts and age{eb}
In the statistics below I have only used the 273 + 24 individuals as mentioned above that started in one or more Dutch ultramarathons that lasted no longer than one day. These 297 individuals of 1999 made 517 starts together, so on average each individual started in nearly 2 ultramarathons. The actual distribution of starts is very skewed, since no less than 206 individuals started only once. There were 35 with two, 26 with three and 12 with four starts in The Netherlands during 1999. Only 18 individuals started in five or more Dutch ultra’s, up to a maximum of nine starts – by the 45-year old Jan-Willem Dijkgraaf who runs (or walks) nearly every weekend at least a halve marathon up to an ultramarathon in Holland or adjacent Germany or Belgium.
Lists of individuals could also provide associated interesting statistics like age and sex distribution. There are only 21 women (7%) among the 297 individuals mentioned above, comprising 2 seniors + 19 masters. The 228 men of which the age is known comprise 69 seniors and 159 masters (50 M40, 52 M45, 49 M50, 7 M60 and 1 M70).
{b}Statistics in relation to type of ultra{eb}
It is interesting to view the distribution of the participation of Dutch individuals according to type of ultramarathon. This is a bit tricky because of the small number of events in each category, of course. Note that the total of 20 runs depicted below stem from 16 events, since some have more than 1 category: notably Texel 120 & 60 km, and Almere 24 & 12 & 6 hours.
{fixed} 50 km –100 km – 200 km 60 km – 120 km 6 hrs – 12 hrs – 24 hrs
runs 5 – 1 – 1 1 – 1 6 – 3 – 2
individuals 105 – 43 – 6 131 – 14 111 – 35 – 27
total starts 121 – 43 – 6 131 – 14 134 – 39 – 29
total finishers 100 – 13 – 2 116 – 5 105 – 21 – 17
part finished 83% – 30% – 33% 89% – 36% 78% – 54% – 59%{efixed}
{u}Starters.{eu} In all three comparisons, the numbers decrease with distance or duration, as expected. The total number of starts in the five 50 km runs was relatively small compared to the 60 km (Texel) and to the 6-hour runs, probably because these 50 km runs have a low profile so far. The 12-hour runs also had a somewhat low number of participants compared to the adjacent numbers in the 6- and 24-hour runs. The number in the 120 km Texel race was low due to the fact that entries were only accepted from runners that had run a 100 km within 9.5 hrs (in view of the sharp cutoff of 12 hrs for this 120 km run). And the recent 200 km MillenniumRun got less Dutch participants than was hoped for (in view of the Dutch population of 24-hour runners), since not all potential runners were injury-free or allowed to stay away from home that memorable night.
{u}Finishers.{eu} During that demanding run over 200 km, and also during the very warm Winschoten 100 km and during the Texel 120 km, only about onethird of the Dutch starters eventually finished. Expectedly, the mean percentage of finishers during the short ultramarathons over 50 and 60 km was relatively high. But the variation within this category was large, ranging from 48% in the loop around the Eem Lake on a hot May 29, up to 93% in the loop around Voorne on the pleasant August 29. For the runs with a fixed period of time, I applied a threshold by calculating the percentage of the starters in 6-, 12- and 24-hour runs that realized distances above 50, 80 and 130 km. (Since even a walker by 5 km/h could cover a distance longer than the marathon within 12 hours) The low success-percentage of the 12-hour runs compared to the 24- hour runs is possibly due to the fact that the two major 12-hour runs (The Hague and Budel Dorplein) were on summer days, whereas the 24-hour runs were in cooler spring (Apeldoorn) and autumn (Almere).
{b}Overlap{eb}
In the fixed time runs, where we have in The Netherlands two or more runs per year in each category, the overlap in individuals between the runs within one category is small. Moreover, the overlap in starters seems to decrease with distance, with 17% doubles in the 6-hour runs, via 11% doubles in the 12-hour runs, to 7% doubles in the 24-hour runs. Among the 111 individuals that participated in a 6-hour run, 15 started in two and 4 in three 6-hour runs. For the 12-hours runs, 4 individuals out of 35 started both in The Hague and, only two weeks later, in Budel Dorplein. (Two of them covered around 100 km during both occasions, whereas the other two ran > 80 km in The Hague but < 80 km in Budel) For the 24-hours runs, there were only 2 runners among the 27 Dutchmen that participated both in Apeldoorn during mid May and in Almere during mid October (Piet de Peuter and Lammert Meijer). Most Dutch 24-hour runners did also participate in one or more other Dutch ultraruns during 1999, but there were 6 individuals, 3 in Apeldoorn and 3 in Almere, that were present only there. So it seems that apparently every run, even a 24-hours, attracts a number of local runners or some runners who favour only that event. {b}‘The more ultra events, the more ultrarunners’{eb} The implication of this observation could be that there is a lot of truth in the credo frequently stated by Ton Smeets that ‘the more ultra events, the more ultrarunners’. Currently, I am processing the entries in Dutch ultraruns during the period 1976 – 2000. The oldest yearly-organized ultramarathon in The Netherlands, the 100 km race in Winschoten, saw birth in 1976, followed by the Schipholrun 60 km in 1978. The data available so far nicely show the increase in number of starts - both by Dutchmen and by foreigners – with the increasing number of ultramarathons during that period. However, this relationship is not directly proportional. The mean number of runs per year increased from 1.5 during 1976-1979 towards 16.5 during 1996-1999. The total number of Dutch starters per year increased by less than that factor of 11: the mean year-totals over these 4-year periods went from about 112 to about 460. In other words, the mean number of Dutch participants per ultramarathon dropped from 75 to 28 twenty years later. So the birth of a new ultramarathon will add to the total number of starts and possibly will recruit new ultrarunners, especially locals that never started in an ultrarun before. On the other hand, a new run will also have some inverse effects on the start fields of existing, established runs. I hope to report on these long term trends in The Netherlands in an article for UW sometime later this year. However, the present data set from 1976 onwards is not accurate and detailed enough to make an analysis of the starts by Dutch runners on an individual base, unfortunately. {b}Categories of ultrarunners{eb} Keeping record of the individual starts for a number of years will enable some estimates of turnover rates since the duration of ultrarunning careers is very variable. For example, I guess that something like the following categories could be practical: a) the regular ultrarunner: participates every year in more than one ultramarathon (if not injured) b) the occasional ultrarunner: participates in no more than one ultramarathon per year c) the onetime ultrarunner: just one (or a few) ultramarathon(s) in one particular year The latter group is comparable to the onetime marathonner: they just want to do one marathon in their lifetime. Many such Dutch marathon debuts occur in New York, because for this ‘once and only marathon’ runners often choose the most appealing one - like I did myself (the warm NYCM edition of 1990, in 3.40). In the Dutch ultramarathon scene, the onetimers are the people that once in their running career want to complete a challenging –but still feasible – run like the 60 km around Texel - or a trail or mountain run abroad. Two years ago I belonged to this category when I was the gate-closing solorunner during the very nice loop Rondje Voorne of 50 km in August 1998, finishing within 5.30. I used this run as a training for a personal ‘phantasy’ goal in my running career: mid November that year, around the time of the dying-day of Jan Knippenberg in 1995, I completed my own private Texel 60 km run (in 7 hrs ;-). Also in order to demonstrate that an ordinary runner could manage a distance beyond the marathon. These onetimers are just ‘ultrarunner’ for that particular year. The onetimers have, by definition, a complete turnover from year tot year, whereas the individuals in the first two categories are lasting as ‘ultrarunner’ for a number of years. The first category is in my view representing the dedicated ultrarunner. The second category possibly comprise people that run usually shorter distances and only participate now and then in one local ultramarathon - because of the reward of prestige in his or her own environment. Looking through the list of the circa 300 individuals of 1999, my estimate is that about half of them are dedicated ultrarunners, and the other half belong to the occasional and onetime ultrarunners. {b}The challenge: a study of the durations of ultrarunning careers{eb} In my view the construction of statistics like indicated above could be a very helpful base for policy makers – together with the necessary interviews why people do or do not participate in ultramarathons – to stimulate ultrarunning. I understood from Andy Milroy that so far no real demographic study on any population of ultrarunners has been made, or at least published. The original material underlying the statistics published by the magazine Ultrarunning, comprising the total number per year of starters and finishers in US ultramarathons since the early eighties, could be a gold mine in that respect. Hopefully, somebody in the US is stimulated by this article as well as by the article by Milroy & Kamm to process this huge data base (in 1998 there were nearly 20 000 starts in US ultra’s !) on an individual base, to explore the duration of ultrarunning careers and the yearly turnover rates of different categories of ultrarunners. (Ultramarathon World: http://fox.nstn.ca/~dblaikie) (baars@nioz.nl)(feb2000)