Sunday, December 2, 2007

Science Wire: Marathon times - an age-old excuse dissected

Seems you need to blame your training more than your age for slowing marathon times, especially if you're under 50. A huge German study looking at the marathon and half-marathon times of over 300,000 runners found no real differences in finishing pace for those between the ages of 20 and 49 (study). Only after that did times really started to separate. But, even between age 50 and 69, finishing times increased by only 2.6 – 4.4 percent per decade. For a 3:00 marathoner that’s only an increase of about 5 – 8 minutes over 10 years. Not too bad.

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