Lilac Bloomsday Run in Graphs

UPDATE: THE BLOG/SITE HAS MOVED TO GITHUB. THE NEW LINK FOR THE BLOG/SITE IS patilv.github.io and THE LINK TO THIS POST IS: http://bit.ly/1obWRer. PLEASE UPDATE ANY BOOKMARKS YOU MAY HAVE. 

The Lilac Bloomsday Run is a 7.46 miles (12 kms) race held annually in Spokane, Washington. The run was started in 1977 by Don Kardong and it saw 51,613 people register for it in 2013. In this post, I use R to collect data from their website, clean and organize them, and present some information about the run and its history using graphs generated using ggplot2. The markdown file with the code and output can be found here. The code by itself, along with the raw data files to replicate everything can be found on github. A pdf document with all pages from their website relevant for these graphs can be found here.

2013 Geographic representation of participants

* People from Spokane participate in it with full spirit. There is international representation as well. 

Gender Composition over Years

* It is no longer male dominated. There is a higher proportion of female finishers.
Presidents/Directors of the Run over Years
In alphabetical order by first name




In order of number of times Presidents/Directors served




Number of People Registered and Finished in the General Category




General Category Winners, All Years



Wheelchair Winners, All Years


Winners in All Categories, All Years




The Perennials - Finish times of Runners Who have Finished Bloomsday Run Every Year Since It Began


* It is the spirit of participating and finishing that counts.
Top Performers in Each Age Group, Since 1983


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