"Why marathon runners in the United States are getting slower," by Jens Jakob Andersen

When everybody begins wearing the Nike Vaporfly 4% this trend should reverse.

Not sure there is really much "research" in there.

I am skeptical that reduction in overall health is playing a role since people who choose to run a marathon are not likely to fit into that demographic.

Also, I cannot figure out what times he is talking about in the paragraph below. Is the improvement from 2:10 to 2:05 in triathlons?

"There is one other possibility. Ultramarathons and triathlons are growing in popularity. It could be that fitter and faster runners are focusing on more competitive races such as these, at the expense of marathons. Here, elite runners are improving speeds. In 1996, the record finishing time was a little over 2 hours and 10 minutes – now it is down to 2 hours and 5 minutes. When some of these runners upgrade to tougher races, we are left with the beginners or middle-tier runners mostly to fill their spots. This view is encouraged by the fact that the slowing-down is happening at a much higher rate than the improvements in the top runners’ speeds."

I wonder if a reason that the top 100, 1000, etc times have also slowed is as a result of more marathons. If the number of marathons triples doesn't it make sense that the number of people finishing 100th will also triple (or at least go up some since people do not run a lot of marathons in a year--or at least not many)? I finished White Rock in Dallas in 2009 in the top 100 and came in a little under 3:10. I am thinking if there were 2/3 fewer marathons then people who finished in the in the top 100 in dozens of marathons would have run this marathon instead and pushed me out of the top 100.

This is the type of statistics a sophomore in high school could do.

But I guess I clicked the link and spent 5 minutes of my time reading it, so he got me

after watching what the health i am not even suprised

ohnoit'sbad wrote:

after watching what the health i am not even suprised

Yeah, because there were so many faster vegans back in 1995.

Moran.

Beyond legitimate comments above on the possible reasons for this trend, the data needs scrutiny. The chart provided summarizes the 34 million data points they collected. However, there are such outliers that the data is suspicious to me:

How can the average 100th place finishing time vary so much:

2006 3:11

2007 2:28

2008 2:53

In 2007 how can the average 1000th place time be 3:20 but the average 2000th place time be 3:22.

In 4 of the 17 years of data, the average 2000th place finishing time was FASTER than the average 1000th place finishing time. Maybe I’m not thinking straight today but how can that happen?

Moran Identifier wrote:

ohnoit'sbad wrote:

after watching what the health i am not even suprised

Yeah, because there were so many faster vegans back in 1995.

Moran.

Look in the mirror, its you.

Why are bloggers getting more stupid?

WDC Runner wrote:

Beyond legitimate comments above on the possible reasons for this trend, the data needs scrutiny. The chart provided summarizes the 34 million data points they collected. However, there are such outliers that the data is suspicious to me:

How can the average 100th place finishing time vary so much:

2006 3:11

2007 2:28

2008 2:53

In 2007 how can the average 1000th place time be 3:20 but the average 2000th place time be 3:22.

In 4 of the 17 years of data, the average 2000th place finishing time was FASTER than the average 1000th place finishing time. Maybe I’m not thinking straight today but how can that happen?

You know, I'm going to have to agree with you. I posted after reading partway through the story--a very bad idea. I found myself scanning the raw numbers and seeing some stuff that didn't correlate with the large claims.

I'm glad I flagged the piece but sorry that I didn't read the entire piece and think through its problematics before posting.

So: please eviscerate the piece, everybody, if you wish. I won't fight you.

Teachable moment.

hvdsc wrote:

Why are bloggers getting more stupid?

+1

Something is weird about the tables in the article. How come the average running time of the top 1000 is *slower* than the average of the top 2000 (for example for 2002, 2009, 2012)?

Stats1000 wrote:

Something is weird about the tables in the article. How come the average running time of the top 1000 is *slower* than the average of the top 2000 (for example for 2002, 2009, 2012)?

If they sample all marathons, then the number with more than 1000 but less than 2000 finishers might skew the average of the top 1000 to be slower than the top 2000.

Bloggers/Journalist benefit more from putting out low quality content at a high volume than high quality content at reduced volume.

A good data scientist would have looked at these numbers and decided they didn't have enough information to make any sort of substantial conclusions so they either dig deeper spending more time or they make a less inflammatory statement than "Marathon runners are getting slower".

I would like to know what the standard deviations for all the groups are and if the bell curves are skewed for any groups.

The top 100, 1000, and 10000 times of the entire population of runners would also be interesting to see.

Article also states that ultras and triathlons are tougher?

article is garbage. more runners, more participants that are less competative. Did this guy take into account the stricter times to get into the majors like Boston?

When is this from? Seems like this article and analysis has been done a gazillion times, usually much better, over the past decade.

Woke wrote:

Bloggers/Journalist benefit more from putting out low quality content at a high volume than high quality content at reduced volume.

This is so true, it’s kinda sad. A guy I know is generating some decent income from his blog ($1000-$1500) and many of the articles are low quality garbage that could be improved with a 1/2 to an hour of research. But it seems the more low quality, click baity, catchy title articles he pumps out, the more advertising dollars, affiliate sales, and referrals he gets. And this is basically the modern state of the Internet and what we read.

Ultra and triathlon, really? wrote:

Article also states that ultras and triathlons are tougher?

Most letsrunners could finish an ultra off zero training, even more so for triathlon

Woke wrote:

The top 100, 1000, and 10000 times of the entire population of runners would also be interesting to see.

This would be a much better metric.

The slowing of the average top 100th or 1000th placed finishers could be explained by an increase in the number of races, thereby decreasing the average depth per race.