By Mark Butler
BBC Sport's athletics statistician takes a look at the numbers behind the big races

If you are a casual runner testing your fitness, try measuring out 100 metres and see how quickly you can cover that distance.

Then compare your result with the following figures: 15.4 seconds for men and 17.3 for women.

For many fit people, these might not seem to be tough targets and of course are far from the current world records of 9.69 and 10.49.

But consider that these were the slowest 100m sections covered in the respective Olympic 1500m finals last summer.

Every athlete in both those races ran 14 further 100m stretches faster than those times, and without a break!

These figures were obtained from a revolutionary timing system, where all distance running athletes each wore a tiny transponder on the inside of their front bib number.