The Shoes of the 2015 Boston Marathon

An extensive review of participants at the 2015 Boston Marathon found several interesting facts regarding the running shoes that they wear.

Using a camera set up roughly 11 miles into the iconic race, we were able to capture the shoe brands of 15,718 runners, or roughly 59 percent of the total field. The breakdown of runners we documented was 59 percent men and 41 percent women, only slightly off from the total field breakdown of 54 percent male, 45 percent female.

To accurately capture shoe brands, we reviewed the entire set of videos at .125 speed, totaling about 60 hours of review. During light volume, the entire road was counted. During heavy traffic, only the half of the road closest to the camera was documented.

What did we find?

For a total market share, ASICS was No. 1, accounting for 25.12 percent of total shoes counted. Brooks was No. 2 at 19.04 percent, with Saucony third at 11.38 percent. No other shoe brand had more than 10 percent share.

In all, 24 different shoe brands were represented—though only 10 captured more than 1 percent of the market share—ASICS, Brooks, Saucony, adidas, Nike, Mizuno, New Balance, Hoka One One, Newton and On.

Other brands that had less than 1 percent share included Altra, Skechers, UnderArmour, Pearl Izumi, Vibram, Reebok, Zoot, K-Swiss, Merrell, Inov-8, Puma, Salming, Salomon and Spira.

Also, there were no barefoot runners among the first 15,718 competitors and only one runner was wearing sandals.

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Here is a further breakdown of the 2015 Boston Marathon shoe count, in visual form: