male equivalent to a female 3 hour marathon?

More like 2:45. Maybe 2:40 but that's a stretch

Do we have to include Paula's 2:15 into the mix?

i was thinking of percentage-wise equivalence. ie, if a 3 hour marathon beats 95% of women in a marathon, what is the time that beats 95% of all men in a marathon? somehow we should find a way to exclude the walkers, maybe impose a time cutoff above which we don't count people, because walkers are more women than men i bet. don't want to throw off the results of this formal study..

I agree. You have to use Paula's time in your calculation. The men's world record is about 92.6% the time of the woman's, so 92.6% of 3 hrs is 2:44 - 2:45.

I'ld say 2:45 too. I took the mens best 2:04 and the womans best 2:15 and it's about 92% diff. So if you take 92% of 3:00 you come out with approx 2:45. Or am I missing something?

But I guess you would have to take into consideration that many more men are closer to 2:04 than women at 2:15 so the numbers may be a little off. Maybe more like 2:40 would be a rough guess

3:00:00 was 235th on the 2005 US women's list and 292nd on the 2004 list. The same rank on the US men's lists were 2:32:57 (2005) and 2:34:17 (2004).

right, and this was the problem we were running into... there are a bunch of different ways to look at it, and the results vary widely with the approach. that 11 minutes between 2:34 and 2:45 is a big 11 minutes :)

Nope wrote:

But I guess you would have to take into consideration that many more men are closer to 2:04 than women at 2:15 so the numbers may be a little off. Maybe more like 2:40 would be a rough guess

Why is the number off? Just because less women put in the training that Paula does, dosn't mean its more difficult for a woman to run 3 hrs than it is for a man to run 2:44.

Marathonguide.com says last year the mean time for women in US marathons was 5:01:06 with a standard deviation of 1:06:59, which puts a 3:00:00 marathoner 1.81 standard deviations above the mean. For men, it's 4:28:29 / 1:01:03, and 1.81 standard deviations above the mean gives you 2:37:59.

But, you're not concerned about comparison to average marathoners as much as elite ones, so that analysis might not mean anything.

jsquire wrote:

3:00:00 was 235th on the 2005 US women's list and 292nd on the 2004 list. The same rank on the US men's lists were 2:32:57 (2005) and 2:34:17 (2004).

Where does one find these lists?

jsquire, you get an A for sure dude.

In my oppinion the best way to comare is look at what a 3 hour womans marithon is compaired to the best woman. Meaning the % based on the current womens world record. 180 / 135 = 1.33333 so a woman running 3 hours in 133.33333% of the WR. So 1.3333333 * 2.0666666 = 2.755555555 or 2 hours and 45 min.

Just use the IAAF scoring tables...

http://www.iaaf.org/downloads/scoringTables/index.html

a 3hr womens marathon gives you 776 points. For a man that is equivalent to 2:31. Now many guys on here will argue this statistic because they hate it when women are relatively faster than them... get over it.

.... wrote:

You have to use Paula's time in your calculation.

Paula is an outlier.

THOSE ARE POINTS BASED OFF OF RECORDED PERFOMANCES, NOT PERFOMANCE EQUIVALANTS BASED OFF OF POTENTIAL.

Not as many women participate in competitive running, or even sports in general. This causes men and women comparisons to be skewed towards women. Look at a standard road racing club, how women are training as hard as the men?

jaguar1 wrote:

.... wrote:

You have to use Paula's time in your calculation.

Paula is an outlier.

I wouldn't call Paula an outlier. That would mean she is training harder than any other woman or man. I think she trains as hard as most of the top male marathoners, its the rest of the women that need to raise their game.

OK, for arguments sake I'll call her an outlier, so I'll use a time of 2:19 for woman giving an 89% differential. So, the equivalent works out to 2:40:30.

I say 2:44 male = Sub 3 Female