My family is having a discussion about who would win a 100 mile race, my wife or my son.
My wife is 48 years old and no longer trains regularly. She will run once or twice a week at most for about 2-4 miles at 9-10 min. mile pace. She stays active and is not overweight. When she was 30 she ran a marathon in 3:12 off of 40 miles a week training. She has not done much training in the past 18 years, except a little over a year ago she ran another marathon, finishing in 3:52 off of about 30 miles a week training for about 5 months. Not much training since.
My son is a 15 year old sophomore. He ran in the high 16's, low 17's for 5k cross country. He ran around 40 miles a week during the cross country season with most of his running around 7 minute pace and his longest run is 10 miles.
I realize this would be extremely difficult for either of them to do, if they could finish at all. Obviously there would be no time limits. They both seem to have natural endurance. With very little training my wife was back to doing 20 mile training runs last year after only about 3 months of getting back into training. My son moved up to 10 mile "long" runs very easily.
The discussion is if they did the race with their current fitness level and no increase in training. I feel like my son would be able to win, simply for the fact that he could go very easily at 8 minute miles and then stop for long periods of time to stretch, eat, sleep. My wife would be doing 10 min. miles or slower and therefore wouldn't have nearly as much time to stop, sleep, eat, etc. Most people we have talked to think my wife would be able to win since she has done marathons, women have better fat burning, etc.
So who wins.