2010 Chicago Marathon Data

October 14, 2010 7:04 AM

How to get raw data from 2010 Chicago Marathon results? I want to crunch some numbers, but I don't know how to scrape the data from the website.

So the results for the Chicago Marathon are online, and I'd like to download the raw data somehow. I would basically like all the data I can get, including start time, finish time, and split times, total time, age/gender/overall placement for each person. What would be the easiest way to get this information? I know there is some scripty way to scrape the data, but lets assume that I'm not very savvy when it comes to that.

posted by corpse to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

The first thing I would do is just call 'em up and ask if they have a spreadsheet handy.

Alternatively, pull up 1000 results per page, select just the table, then paste it into Excel. In order to get a proper table, make sure you use Edit->Paste Special and select plain text. There are 20 pages worth of results for the men and 17 pages for the women, so it will take a little while but it's definitely doable. It can probably be done faster this way than writing a script to scrape the pages.

Alternatively, if you're not going to use Excel for the number crunching (and who could blame you? It's kind of crap for statistics), then you can just paste it directly into a decent text editor and get a whitespace delimited version that should be pretty easy to import into your stats program of choice.
posted by jedicus at 7:18 AM on October 14, 2010

Response by poster: The 1000 results per page won't give me the Start/Finish time and complete splits.
posted by corpse at 8:15 AM on October 14, 2010

Ah, I see what you mean. Then your options are basically either to call them up or beg/hire someone to scrape the data for you.
posted by jedicus at 8:20 AM on October 14, 2010