Different ways of seeing stats:
Marathon winners are getting faster. But don't be fooled into thinking this means distance running is in rude health, says Michael Blastland in his regular column.
When my dad ran his first marathon, it was considered a strange, almost deranged pursuit. Few tried. There was no Great North run. The mass participation we see today was unknown in the UK.
Meanwhile in the US in the late 1970s, Jim Fixx put on his trainers, lost 30 kilos, wrote The Complete Book of Running, became a jogging guru and helped start a boom. The boom came to the UK.
In 1981, the London marathon began, motivated by race-founder Chris Brasher's experience of the New York marathon. Since then, the London event has multiplied five or six times in size - from about 6,000 finishers to about 34,000 last year - and become the inspiration in turn of hundreds of thousands.
Winning times today would have stretched the imagination of those who ran it 28 years ago. Faster by nearly 20 seconds in every mile of the men's race, and 30 seconds per mile in the women's race, the pace at the front of both the men's and women's races would feel to many spectators like a two-hour sprint.
The winner last year was within a whisker of two hours five minutes - astonishing. By many measures, marathon running has enjoyed a phenomenal boom.
But something odd has also happened, not in the headline performance of winners, nor in the steady increase in popularity.
To discover what's peculiar, we need to look deeper - at the distribution of times across the field. It's a good lesson that there's seldom a just one story - in this case, that winning times are being cut - for any lump of data.
The chart, below, shows how many people finished within certain times at one of the first London marathons, and again last year. These were not unusual races in their period.
In 1982, a time of two hours 40 minutes would have placed you 457th. Last year, it would have been good enough for 184th - this despite the huge increase in competitors.
Matthew Parris, the Times columnist and former MP, finished in 1985 in the best time ever by an MP - an impressive two hours, 32mins, 57 seconds, for 385th out of about 20,000. Last year, this would have placed him 83rd out of 34,000. The year before (a hot day, admittedly), his time would have been good for 46th.
Of course, the weather can make a difference and you would expect some variation anyway. But not of this order, especially given that the old-timers argue the course is quicker these days (corners smoothed, cobbles carpeted, etc). But whilst there is now a flood of finishers at four hours-plus, it's become no more than a dripping tap just below the top.
Demand for places is high
How does this affect the way we think of the health of the sport? We could say that road running, including the marathon, is best measured by how many take part. On that basis it looks vibrant. We could look at the times of the winners, or at Paula Radcliffe - for years the best female marathon runner in the world - and we could say that excellence thrives (although not for the best British men, who are off the pace.)
So does it matter if the equivalent of the bottom half of football's premier league, the good but not great, has all but disappeared? It might, if this is where champions begin. Or it might matter simply for its own sake.
Where have all the good runners gone? There should be several hundred people out there in the UK who could perform to a high standard, but don't. It could be that good runners are avoiding the glitzy, big ticket events. But road races around the country are not recording good times in the numbers that they used to be.
The London marathon is glorious. To complete it on any terms is an achievement. But where is the tradition that pre-dated the boom? It was a small part of British life, to train and race as hard as you could on the heels of the best, important only really to those who loved it. But they did love it and the data suggests that, ever so quietly and amidst all the success, a part of running is dying.
No comments:
Post a Comment