10k differences and Why so few 35,36 minute 10k runners.

Before you die, what will you be content wirh:

A few years of honest effort,

or decades of "hard work"?

You choose. I did.

After all, the mindset of an endurance (hobby) athlete with its long-term perspective could be more preset in society.

To put one's life energy into 100mpw, well, to each their own.

Sure, but that data is still across age/genders. If you constrain to a single cohort it might be different.

Just trying to remove the drifters, i.e. those 2-3 min slower than their peak.

Les wrote:

I was a 35 minute 10k runner back in the day, in the '80s. There were a lot of us then. But now, the sub elites have drifted out of the sport with the prevalence of participation runners. Now there's just elites like your 31 min. runner and your 37 min. jogger. Looking at New York Marathon lists lately I was astounded to see my 30 year old sub-elite marathon best would have placed in the top 1% of recent races just because there's so many 4 hour marathoners now. The elite guys are much faster, but there's been an explosion of participation runners just out for the experience.

When was 35 minutes considered to be a sub-elite? You're calling a 37 minute 10k'er a jogger but yourself a sub-elite. You're a complete idiot!! Go back to the 80's and your narcissistic haze you twit. You were a field filler back then and nothing more. All you done was donate your entry fee into the winner's back pocket.

OP here. want to do some real stats analysis?instead of one big race (where all the college folk always show up), take 100 smaller local 10ks races.Your data means nothing either and is flawed. can't draw conclusions from that.

I'm a Nerd wrote:

Bimodal inference wrote:

Sure, but that data is still across age/genders. If you constrain to a single cohort it might be different.

No it would not. You can look up the results. There is not a shred of evidence for a "bimodal" distribution.

sure. but it will take awhile.

I hope everybody here realizes those 31 minute 20 year olds are 35 minute 45 year olds still training hard.

That being said, I do see big gaps at some races. I ran a 5k last summer.

There were 688 finishers.

12 ran under 15 minutes

7 ran in the 15s

11 ran in the 16s

Between 17:32 and 19:00, only 6 runners crossed the finish line. (Comparable to 36-39 10k)

18 runners ran in the 19s

18 runners ran in the 20s

This race pays cash to top 10 men and women

Seems to be right for me. For myself, I'm either training hard (30-31 minutes) or jogging about 15 miles a week and doing the occasional race (37-38 minutes). The only time I would run in the 34-36 range would be if I just started training seriously, so there wouldn't be a lot of occasion for me to hit those times in races. 35-36 minutes seems to be no man's land - I'm either going to try to hit my potential or not really give a shit.

County Cork wrote:

But OVERALL there is no gap in ability. There is no overall lack of 35-36 minute 10K runners like the title seems to suggest.

I agree because whether they like it or not, even the 28 guys will be running 35 if they keep it up long enough. I ran beside John Campbell last fall in a 10k. He ran in the 39s.

This is exactly why us 33-minute types don't bother to fill up the races anymore. even though we know we are not elites. Back in the day we used to get treated like shit by the condescending 29-31:00 guys who turned everything into a dick measuring contest. Try being cool to people for once, instead of an insecure fukkwad. It's not that much fun running with aloof jackasses, so we found better things to do and better people to spend time with. Basically, most pretty good runners are freaking major azzholes and this site proves it.

hahahaha ha ha ha wrote:

When was 35 minutes considered to be a sub-elite? You're calling a 37 minute 10k'er a jogger but yourself a sub-elite. You're a complete idiot!! Go back to the 80's and your narcissistic haze you twit. You were a field filler back then and nothing more. All you done was donate your entry fee into the winner's back pocket.

I'm a Nerd wrote:

reader of LRC wrote:

I'll acknowledge the theory may be complete BS, but I've done enough races to know that 33,34,35,36 minute runners are very rare. Either the 31,32 guys show up and win or someone 37-39minutes wins... I'll try to find data to back it up.

You have your work cut out for you. From the Peachtree this year:

30:xx 12

31:xx 12

32:xx 23

33:xx 40

34:xx 42

35:xx 43

36:xx 64

Now can you put your hypotheses to rest? And yes, please call it a "hypothesis," not a "theory," because a theory implies some empirical evidence to support it, of which you have none.

Now I also question the OP's theory and the data from Ptree does seem to refute it. But then again the OP was referring not to mega-races like Ptree but the smaller, local 10K races. Is it possible that the 40+ guys in each of the 33/34/35 categories above are less likely to be participating in the following week's neighborhood 10Ks than the 12 in each of the 30/31 groups that know they can potentially win such local races and end up running every week? And then the 38/39 groups just have so many more numbers that even if the ratio of them running in local races is the same as it is for the 33/34/35 guys, it still means they have significant representation each week unlike those 33/34/35 guys?

You can find the same pattern in a compilation of all UK runners posted above. It's the same distribution as Peachtree. The OP is wrong, there is no question about it.