Does a 1:15.55 1/2 by Liz Yelling warrant BBC press??

You're not going to see a woman getting on here and complaining about 1:15:55.

Tim is right, that is the way it is with the media, and regardless of what Liz Yelling does athletically, the media will always refer to her as one time training partner and friend of Radcliffe. The Olympics may not be a good example, but Liz spends the majority of her interviews talking about Radcliffe so while I don't believe anyone here is having a pop at her, just be glad that she is getting some coverage for her running for a change and lobby the BBC editors to give all our top athletes, male or female, similar exposure. BTW, does anyone know the margin of Yellings victory and the quality of opposition she beat?

On a differnt note I tried to start earlier, anyone willing to respond to the suggestion UK athletics should pre-select 5 ladies (Radcliffe, Yelling X2, Pavey, Butler)for the world XC long course if they are to have a chance of improving on team bronze medals? I know the prospect of beating Kenya or Ethiopea is slim, but these are the best 5 to try so why not select them and let the younger developing athletes such as Dale do the 4km?

no way is a 17:51 for a woman equivalent to a 15:01 for a male!! 15:01 is much better.

17:51 is probably close to about a 15:35-40

1:03 (male) = 1:16 (female)............you must be out of your mind to think these are comparable preformances

Yep - I think we are standing the same side of the fence here.

Anyways - off to sort my own running out..

no way wrote:

no way is a 17:51 for a woman equivalent to a 15:01 for a male!! 15:01 is much better.

17:51 is probably close to about a 15:35-40

I'm guessing this is coming from a man? Just about every race I've ever won, the male winner is always about a minute/per mile faster. For example, when I ran that 17:51, the male winner ran 14:47. If you consider that "most" elite women in America are running around 2:45 for the marathon, and most elite men are running around 2:20, the minute/mile rule seems to be upheld.

Not quite sure whose mind you are referring to there but anyway...

I actually found the full results of this meet yesterday and here is the link

http://www.olympicharriers.org.nz/viewresults.php?eid=226

It seems Liz won the women's race by a long way and was 4th overall with husband Martin winning the men's race in 1:13:02 which on the face of it is a very poor time for him.

He is however the UK National Duathlon Champ. I only noted one track/road for him in 2004 - 15:07 for 5000 but I see he did run 14:36 in 2002. He's basically a sub 30 10K runner.

Thus it is obvious that the conditions were poor and I don't think it is useful to read too much into these times.

As a rule of thumb I tend to think of 10% for rough calculations to compare the best men with the best women. (just look at world record ratios)

If you want to compare the numbers of men who can reach a certain standard to the same number of women then 20% is good for similar ball park estimations.

Thus 15:00 5K for a man is maybe worth 16:30 for a woman

but chances are that 18:00 would see similar numbers of women achieving it to those men that can 15:00.

I don't think too many female's will consider a 17:50 equivalent to a male sub 15:00.

The reason there is a minute a mile difference in your 5k's is because there is no depth on women's running at the sharp end. Be realistic

this Jaguar is obviously comparing the numbers of people who achieve sub 18:00 (f) and sub 15:00 (m). I am comparing the QUALITY of the performance. Personally I think a sub 17:00 is about the same as a sub 15:00 in terms of the QUALITY of the run (disregarding the numbers of men/women who achieve them)

as an aid to the discussion - 126 British guys broke 15:00 in 2004. The 126th ranked woman ran 19:12.

Yelling is nowhere near a 30 minute 10k guy anymore, he hasn't ran well in 2/3 years, he ran very slowly in his last few races, more like 32 minute 10k shape, which would be about right for a 73 clocking. As for the womens standards I don't see how your argument is relevant Tim, how many women do you get at BMC meets compared with men? Barely enough to fill a single womens 5k... whilst the men are falling over themselves to get in...

The Olympic standard for women was incredibly slow compared with the mens, Dan robinsons run was head and shoulders above Tracey Morris's run but the press got hold of her old PB and had afiled day, if Dan had lied and said his previous best was 2.50 he'd be a household name by now. dans run in teh Olympics ot nowhere near the credit it deserved either...

Yes I must say I looked up my own lists for this!

Statistically 5000 track is not a good event to choose though because most women still do the 3000 over the 5000 in leagues and so not many 5000 women's races.

5K road where opportunities are the same is probably better.

100th man 15:04, 100th woman 17:47 so matches up well with previous posts and my 15:00-18:00 20% ballpark theory when comparing equal numbers.

What is 15:00 actually worth for a woman? Sub 17 clearly...

Well I'll ask Martin's coach when I see him next week for the "low down". If he can't do better than 73 half in good conditions then he may as well forget trying to compete in the elite duathlon races. The top duathlates need to be sub 30 10K performers to be competitive.

As regards the other points think you are missing the point somewhat which is that the average person in the street only really looks at the best 1 or 2 when considering the "state" of things. I agree men's standards go deepeer as I think I have indicated several times already.

I somehow doubt though if 2:50 would have swung it has most people would think that is amazing anyway!

As regards BMC turnout, we do find the women are more "shy" about turning up than the men.

Anyway good news is that there will 5000s abound for your 15:00 type runner this year. I know Belgrave are putting on at least 3 over the summer and BMC are planning a few more like the Eltham one and that's aside from whatever is put in the Grand Prixs.

I'm guessing this is coming from a man? Just about every race I've ever won, the male winner is always about a minute/per mile faster. For example, when I ran that 17:51, the male winner ran 14:47. If you consider that "most" elite women in America are running around 2:45 for the marathon, and most elite men are running around 2:20, the minute/mile rule seems to be upheld.

There are two different perspectives. One is on age-grading of performances (performance relative to world record performance), the other is percentile.

The problem with using percentile is that you can get a high percentile rank by running against a field which lacks depth. For example, a sub 2:20 is not any faster today than it was 20 years ago, yet there were 49 sub 2:20 finishers in '81 NYC marathon, against 17 sub 2:20 finishers in 2004. The guy who places 18th today is not a better runner than the guy who placed 19th in 1981.

Womens competitive fields simply lack depth, I think this is because female participation in the sport is still at least relatively new (first womens marathon in 1984). For example,

we get open-class women winning trophies in local half marathon races with 1:39 time. There were men in the 65-69 age group in the same race who ran faster than that. The womens olympic trials were won by a 40 year old. Would never happen in the mens race -- first guy over 40 was 8th in the US marathon trials, and he's a discredited drug cheat. Second guy over 40 was 46th over all.

And which age-graded calculator did you use?? There seems to be discrepancies between the "calculators" you use:

Well, one calc is WAVA, which compares your time against world records. A 70% WAVA performance means that you can run at 70% world record pace for that distance for your age. Can't comment on the Mercier calc, the page doesn't explain the details well enough to say much about it.

this Jaguar is obviously comparing the numbers of people who achieve sub 18:00 (f) and sub 15:00 (m). I

No, if you look at the links Jag posted, the calc used does at least claim/pretend to rate performance quality.

Read the Mercier blurb

http://myweb.lmu.edu/jmureika/track/Mercier/Merc99.html

it talks about equating the 5th, 10th, 20th, 50th, and 100th World-ranked performances in each event

It thus makes the assumption that the nth best man and nth best woman are largely equivalent.

Not surprising then the results that come out...

It thus makes the assumption that the nth best man and nth best woman are largely equivalent.

In fact for times that are close to elite, it seems plausible.

What it doesn't make clear is how the scores are computed. It just asserts that they use performance scores, without discussing the curves that those scores are based on. It does seem odd that the semi-elite women should occupy the same part of the "score curve" as a local competitive male runner.

But the results do, as you point out, seem to be reasonably consistent with percentiles.