try again wrote:
automaticslim wrote:One of my students and I looked through the top 100 or so male and female seniors in the 3200 from 2016 using MileSplit, then tracked their results back through their HS careers. We didn't finish the analysis, but the preliminary findings suggested that male runners tended to progress pretty steadily through the four years of HS while female runners were all over the place. This suggested that puberty hits girls in different ways and at different points during that age range..
You can't cherry-pick the top 100 athletes from a group and then generalize your findings as representative for the total population.
With all due respect a sample size of the Top 100 per year over a number of years (I am aware of the study) is huge compared to many published medical studies involving runners where the sample size is under 20.
There are naturally exceptions however if you look at successful female XC and longer middle distance they are for the most part behind in normal female sexual development (ie. very slight, thin hipped and small busted, etc).
Not many 145lbs+ girls finish in the Top 10 of National or even Sate championship events.