Black Canyon ‘Rally/Carnage Charts’

John Sugden in his newsletter Over the Ridgeline experiments with some ‘data journalism’ trying visualize how the elite runners faired at the Black Canyon race from last week:

I’m exploring different ways to display race positioning through a race. Here are two charts I came up with, which (depending on the comparison point) I’m calling rally charts or carnage charts. Admittedly, they are just ok; perhaps a bit novel, but could be a bit misleading when there is a large concentration of runners at the front of the race. I’ll keep revising them, and hopefully have something more impressive ready for big races like Western States later this year.

I appreciate the idea and thought process that went into those charts. We’re still in the early days of trail running media coverage and there’s lots of room to come up with new ways of story-telling around race coverage. It’s a fun playground to explore that will only expand in the coming years as more people find their voice and bring their skills and perspective to the game.