Roberta Groner 2:29:06 PR AGE 41

Banana Bread wrote:

Despite what the math appears to show. a decrease of 10% of a 2:15 marathon isn't 2:30. It is not linear. It is exponential. You wouldn't say a 2:30 thonner is 90% as good as a 2:15 thonner. Or you wouldn't say a 4:06 thonner is half as good as Bekele for sure. I would say a 2:30 thonner is 90% as good as a 2:25 thonner and 50% as good as a 2:15 thonner.

You are trying to evaluate relative merit. Fair enough. But that isn't what is meant by the scientists saying performances will decline by 1% each year, or 10% in a decade. In those terms 1% is 1% - it isn't exponential.

Armstronglivs wrote:

Banana Bread wrote:

Despite what the math appears to show. a decrease of 10% of a 2:15 marathon isn't 2:30. It is not linear. It is exponential. You wouldn't say a 2:30 thonner is 90% as good as a 2:15 thonner. Or you wouldn't say a 4:06 thonner is half as good as Bekele for sure. I would say a 2:30 thonner is 90% as good as a 2:25 thonner and 50% as good as a 2:15 thonner.

You are trying to evaluate relative merit. Fair enough. But that isn't what is meant by the scientists saying performances will decline by 1% each year, or 10% in a decade. In those terms 1% is 1% - it isn't exponential.

So according to you people must get slower from 30 on no matter what they do?

Kipchoge should be at 2:06 now wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:

You are trying to evaluate relative merit. Fair enough. But that isn't what is meant by the scientists saying performances will decline by 1% each year, or 10% in a decade. In those terms 1% is 1% - it isn't exponential.

So according to you people must get slower from 30 on no matter what they do?

It isn't according to me. It is what the studies say. It assumes that an athlete trains and competes to their potential. An improvement in an athlete's training could affect the rate of decline. But it also takes into account that as we age we can't train as hard as we used to and need more time to recover.

Of course, if an athlete hasn't competed or trained hard at an earlier age then they can continue to improve off a low base as they get older. Quite a few seniors do this. But the studies suggest they will still not be as good as they could have been at a younger age, if they had trained to their potential when younger. Your level at around age 30 would thus be about 10% higher than a decade later - and so for each decade that follows, until an exponential decline kicks in after about 75. Age group records show decline. What isn't certain is the extent that doping skews the figures - which the studies acknowledge.

I am pretty good example of the "fresh legs person who comes back as a marathon runner" and I will say that had I run continuously since college, I would have been out of the sport permanently before becoming a masters runner.

But since I had avoided injuries and burn out, I was able to come back to the sport after close to a decade off, and maybe 17 years since I was going at it hard as a collegiate. As a result, I came back in my early to mid 40s and ran the age adjusted equivalent times that I did in college (high 80s to low 90s, running a bit slower in the marathon (2:30 mid) than Groner. When you look at the open times that I ran that were the equivalent of the age adjusted times, those times would have been women's world records (or darn close) at the time that I ran those collegiate times. I ran under 14:20 and just over 30:20 in college and the only women running those times then were "Ma's Army" - those Chinese women who came out of nowhere, crushed the world records, then disappeared. Those are the kinds of times that project out to being a 2:29ish masters runner.

So when you put it in that context, I understand why people would have questions about the kind of performances that Groner put up. I would say that they are the same kinds of questions that Kevin Castille's performances raise because they suggest that they should have been among the best in the world, or at least in the US, in their primes.

But having questions in your mind and outright accusing someone of doping are very different things. For some athletes, the deterioration that Armstronglivs points out happens at a later age and at a slower rate than for the rest of us. for women runners, much of their running prime is consumed by child birth and post-partum recovery, so their open PRs are not representative of their overall ability. Some people are just much better suited for the marathon than for any other distance so their times don't line up well. For example, I am coaching a guy who has run 2:18, but has been unable to break 15:00 in the 5k despite being in the best shape of his life. So could her cumulative lifetime miles be offsetting the natural decline of age, especially considering that those miles may have accumulated more rapidly later in life after childbirth and recovery? I think that is a fair thing to consider.

So does Groner's performance make me ask myself "Wow, these are pretty incredible times, could there be something illicit going on?" Sure. But would I bet money on her doping if I was given the opportunity to do it? Nope - I would leave my money on the sidelines. Would I openly suggest that she is doping? Absolutely not. I feel bad enough even engaging in this conversation, but figure that since it was an ongoing conversation, it is okay to wade in to point out the real possibility that she is clean and to suggest that, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we shouldn't publicly and anonymously besmirch someone's reputation and take away from her success and all of the hard work that has gone into achieving that success.

If something happens someday that actually provides fairly clear evidence that an athlete is dirty - we should jump all over them and bury them and their reputations so that others get a clear message. But until then, let's let women like Roberta Groner enjoy their achievements and let's celebrate the hard work that went into accomplishing those achievements.

Your points are well made. But your experience is a reflection of someone who didn't train and compete to their full potential in youth. The figures provided for the estimated rate of decline of performance are not based on those who took a break from the sport or who came to it later.

It isn't necessary to make a direct accusation of doping to question an athlete's performance if there are anomalies that aren't easily reconciled with could be expected as a natural performance at any given age. A study of marathoners has shown that women runners peak at age 29 (27 for men) and thereafter the decline is 2-4% a year. At that rate of decline what might Ms Groner have been capable of at 29 if she can now run 2.29 at age 41?

Do we know what Roberta’s college/high school PRs were? I know many people have mentioned they were nothing special but I am curious to see some figures

You're right, I left some talent on the table because I came to the sport late (I started as a college freshman) and left early (I stopped running hard at age 23). To be clear, I am no where near my college times after my lay off. I am just still at that same 88-91% age graded place.

To your point that the expected rate of decline is predicated upon data from runners who didn't lost 10-15 years, I would say that this point may actually work in Groner's favor. I don't know Mich about her training - I don't think any of us knew much about her until a year or two ago - but I have to imagine that as a mom of 3, her training was possibly significantly interrupted for a portion of her prime. So the data set that you are considering may not be well suite to application to her.

But I would also note that physiological rules of thumb are just that - rules of thumb that are subject to deviations. I think that I've seen you appt these rules of thumb as invariable truths on another thread as well. I don't think it works that way. I think that this data should be viewed as what should be expected as a norm, and that we should expect the majority of people to be within a standard deviation of what the data suggests and for the vast bulk of people to be within a couple of standard deviations. But there are always outliers on those bell curves. The question is whether Groner is an outlier. I certainly think it's possible and I think a reasonable person could conclude that she is maybe less of an outlier than the data suggests when you consider personal circumstances (like the loss of a significant portion of her prime to child rearing and the possibility that she just has an affinity for longer distances).

Again, I'd point to my 2:18:26/15:10 guy. There is a ton of data out there that suggests that the guy should be able to run much faster than 15:10 based on his marathon, but he seems to be an outlier when it comes to racing that distance (despite the fact that he has done a fair amount of speedwork under my tutelage).

As to the fairness of questioning her performances, I don't disagree with you in theory, but I do in practice. We cannot ignore the practical realities - that raising those questions impacts a person's reputation, diminishes their accomplishments in the eyes of others, and is a kind of passive-aggressive way of suggesting that they are doing something illicit. At least you do it under a registered handle, and do it consistently and based on data (even if I don't agree with your view on the appropriate application of data sets).

Unless you study every person out there and review heir training you have no real idea if your sarco silliness is as accurate as you state.

I've been pretty inspired by Roberta Groner's story. As a female hobby jogger who never ran in college, unlike probably the majority of letsrun I listen to Lindsay Hein's podcast, where she has interviewed Roberta multiple times and tracked her incredible improvement.

The idea of her doping doesn't make much sense given the rest of her story. I realize that her times are incredible and physically perhaps it makes sense to have questions, but this is a lady who has explicitly turned down sponsorship offers because she doesn't want the associated pressure of running professionally, and enjoys the balance of having her career/livelihood come from elsewhere. She has explicitly said in interviews, she might be open to a low key shoe contract (something with limited strings attached) but never intends to make a livelihood out of running and is only curious to see how good she can get. Why would someone like that take PEDs?

In terms of shelling out 3K to go to Rotterdam to run a race, why does someone claim that is not a recreational thing to do? I have met plenty of people who run recreationally who like to use races as an excuse to travel. One of my friends has a goal of hitting each marathon major and even traveled to Tokyo just to run the Tokyo marathon. Several others have run Berlin.

Even crazier are the recreational ultrarunners I've met who travel to Chamonix, France, South Africa, and New Zealand for races. One thing about a lot of 40 something runners, they have disposable income to travel for their hobby.

Also cool--she recently (in the past year) PRed her 5K over her college time! So she's improving all around, not just at the marathon.

The figures I have quoted are not mine. They are the product of peer-reviewed research on aging in athletes, and are reflected in studies undertaken independently of each other.

There will be variations in rates of decline, some of it being genetic or training or both, but these variations are not as wide as you might think; they are subject to the limits of human biology and thus are not simply statistical variations. You cannot be an "outlier" that doesn't conform to human biology. The studies also all agree that the process of biological aging - for all of us - begins at around age 30, regardless of whether we are elite or not.

That means an athlete of age 40 or older will not have the physiology they would have had up to age about 30 - even if by coming back later to the sport, or by improving their training, their actual performances at 40 are superior to their younger performances. Thus, in the study of marathon runners, the peak ages for men and women are in their late-20's (27 for men and 29 for women).

From that age-peak the study showed that the runners' performances declined 2%-4% each year after that. (Some other studies - but not of marathon runners - have put the rate of decline, generally, at a more conservative 1% per year.) But individual variations aside, the principles affecting human physiology require that there will be some degree of decline in all of us.

We can then infer that those runners in the study will have declined at least 20% by the age of 40 from their late-20's, and quite possibly much more than that.

Conversely, it follows that an athlete of 40 would have been 20% better-performed in their late 20's - if they had been training and competing at that age. The studies indicate we can't be physiologically superior at 40 to what we might have been at 30; we cannot reclaim lost youth simply by starting later.

It may sound a little stark to put it this way, but a performance that is 20% better (or even only 10%) at around age 29 than 2.29 at age 40 would leave Radcliffe's record in the dust. That is why I question it.

We fundamentally disagree on a pivotal point - the universal application of data to specific individuals - so I will disengage from the discussion with you on this particular point.

Smoove wrote:

We fundamentally disagree on a pivotal point - the universal application of data to specific individuals - so I will disengage from the discussion with you on this particular point.

With respect, that is not what we are disagreeing about: it is that you choose to believe some runners like Ms Groner are not subject to biological aging. The data on that however is universal - we all age biologically and decline physically from around age 30, even with some individual variation in the rate of decline. I would be interested to know what you think Ms Groner might have been capable of at 30..

As I have also indicated, at the predicated rate of decline it is difficult to see Paula Radcliffe at age 41 running as fast as Ms Groner, if she had continued with the sport.

Predicted rate. Predictive text.

Armstronglivs wrote:

Smoove wrote:

We fundamentally disagree on a pivotal point - the universal application of data to specific individuals - so I will disengage from the discussion with you on this particular point.

With respect, that is not what we are disagreeing about: it is that you choose to believe some runners like Ms Groner are not subject to biological aging. The data on that however is universal - we all age biologically and decline physically from around age 30, even with some individual variation in the rate of decline. I would be interested to know what you think Ms Groner might have been capable of at 30..

As I have also indicated, at the predicated rate of decline it is difficult to see Paula Radcliffe at age 41 running as fast as Ms Groner, if she had continued with the sport.

I think what Smoove is saying is that aging doesn't affect everyone the same way. Everyone ages but some people are less impacted by it and in different ways. Perhaps Paula couldn't have continued to run at such a high level at 41 but Roberta's body is wired differently.

If that is what you took from my posts, you either read them incorrectly or I communicated badly. Which one isn't important, particularly if we can find some common ground.

I think we all age and I think the effects of aging result in negative performance consequences over time. That, however, does not mean performance has to get worse over time. If a person was undertrained, or poorly trained, or had been missing significant periods of training in their younger years, then measurable performance in later years may be better than in younger years, despite the decrease in maximal physiological capacity.

I think it's pretty widely accepted that cumulative miles positively impact performance when someone was historically undertrained. So (barring injury) a sudden increase in mileage could yield training benefits that allow someone to come closer to their at-age potential. I don't know Groner's history, but for argument's sake, say she basically didn't train very much or very effectively while she was in her 20s because she was working long overnight shifts as a nurse. And let's say she didn't do it in her 30s either because she was either pregnant, recovering from childbirth, nursing, or just plain worn out from parenting. As a result, she was nowhere near her ceiling as an athlete during that time. But come her mid 30s, she was on a stable day shift and her kids matured to self sufficiency and she was able to start training in earnest and he hired a good coach. Now at age 41, she's performing up to her full potential as a 41 year old whereas her performances as a 20-something were at maybe 50% of her potential. Thats what I'm getting at.

You will, of course, then point to the 2-3% per year stat and say "Fine, but that means that she was easily a world record talent at age 29!" But as you pointed out, there is variability in the rate of decline and the point of commencement of decline. She can be an outlier with respec to when the decline commenced and at what rate it is occurring.

I'd like to see the regression on Ed Whitlock based on your assumptions.

I'd also point you to the Outside Runner training thread for someone who is in PR shape at age 50 after 6-7 years of running. Or I could point to myself having run a marathon PR at age 47 after having run my first marathon at 42 (I should be 10% slower at 47 than 42, right?).

Armstronglivs wrote:

Smoove wrote:

We fundamentally disagree on a pivotal point - the universal application of data to specific individuals - so I will disengage from the discussion with you on this particular point.

With respect, that is not what we are disagreeing about: it is that you choose to believe some runners like Ms Groner are not subject to biological aging. The data on that however is universal - we all age biologically and decline physically from around age 30, even with some individual variation in the rate of decline. I would be interested to know what you think Ms Groner might have been capable of at 30.

Like Smoove, I am a coach. And the point I think he is making, which I agree with based on personal and anecdotal evidence, is that Groner may not have been all that much faster at age 29 than at age 41. Maybe slightly faster, but not at the percentages you are throwing out as a hard and fast rule. I have coached many adult runners who competed in high school or college, took a substantial life break from running (7 or more years), and regained or came close to regaining comparable fitness to their youth later in life.

I was for all intents and purposes a 16:2x 5k guy in high school. Based off of average speed (12.7/25.9/55.1). This year at age 41, I ran 16:43 on a crap weather day on a certified course. I PR’d in the marathon last year (2:47) at age 40 even after having returned to running at age 30 following a 10 year break in my 20s.

The difference now is I am probably lucky to ever again crack 15 seconds in a FAT 100m, let alone even 60 seconds in 400m. The speed and power are both gone, as you would expect from a 41 year old, and as those age studies you cite would suggest.

But 5k to marathon fitness is still there. I expect to make more gains in the marathon for at least another year or so. Does this mean I would have been a sub 2:30 guy in my 20s under the same training? No.

I don’t know enough about Groner’s history to have an opinion either way. But I think it is unfair to make an accusation over these hard and fast percentages you cite regarding age when I don’t think it is so cut and dry.

I wonder is Armstronglivs has heard of the previous group of well known fast masters athletes. Jack Foster, John Campbell Priscilla Welch, Joyce Smith, Evy Palm.

Yeah, all dopers back in the day.

Armstronglivs wrote:

It isn't necessary to make a direct accusation of doping to question an athlete's performance if there are anomalies that aren't easily reconciled with could be expected as a natural performance at any given age. A study of marathoners has shown that women runners peak at age 29 (27 for men) and thereafter the decline is 2-4% a year. At that rate of decline what might Ms Groner have been capable of at 29 if she can now run 2.29 at age 41?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4039284/

I only got through the abstract, but you've willfully left out the enormous error bars -

"From this age on, running time increased by 2.4 ± 8.1 % per year in men and 2.5 ± 9.9 % per year in women."

2.5-9.9 = -7.4%...so by your referenced study it demonstrates cases of older people running faster than at the "peak" year. There's a graph showing levels of uncertainty that overlaps for at least the 10 year periods discussed here.

This also isn't a biological study as you claim. It's a correlation study for 2 years of one race looking only at the top 10 finishers at each age with any number of potential confounding variables. Biology is never so cut and dry anyway.

You're either terrible at interpreting data or you're just trying to get a rise out of people. I hope for your own sake it's the second one?

He's just not happy with how he aged. Apparently worse than even his science predicted.