Easily compare any race with CIC Score
One number lets you compare across all distances, disciplines and genders. It even controls for shoe tech advances.
A lot of work of research goes into the CIC number. Every single race needs to be tracked every year.
You can read about that below, but maybe this is all you need…
TL:DR
Zero is the world’s average result in any year
Lower than zero = faster
Higher than zero = tougher
*CIC = Course is Clear. We liked the name so much we named the whole company after it.
After every race, we record the fastest male and female times.
We then convert each time to be a percentage of the gender’s world record at the time the race was run, so crazy technical advances in super shoes is controlled for.
The male or female time that is closest to the world record becomes that course’s Absolute CIC Score for the next calendar year. So, in 2024, both Chicago and Berlin are equally scored as the “fastest” races on account of having Women’s and Men’s records being set at them in 2023.
Next, we calculate the Median CIC Score for all marathons in the world. At the start of 2024 we had over 1,500 marathon results from 2023 to calculate this.
We then zeroise the the median marathon’s score, and calculate the difference from the median event of that year for every marathon. This is the CIC Score for the year. Faster-than-median events are expressed as negative numbers, and tougher-than-normal events are positive numbers.
We’ve started with marathons but will add other distances and disciplines, alongside wheelchair and handcycle times, in due course. This will enable you to compare competitiveness or toughness across different race distances. Non-gendered times where available and plan to incorporate these when there is enough data. To avoid any gaming of the system, we reserve the right to introduce rolling averages where necessary.