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'It has been a popular belief that the increase of the average marathon finish time is due to the fact that participating in running competitions is gaining pop

by szemet 9y ago

'It has been a popular belief that the increase of the average marathon finish time is due to the fact that participating in running competitions is gaining popularity. With the popularity increase, the number of not so fit participants rises, and the average finish time increases. This argument is not exhaustive. Let alone that in the last two years (2015 and 2016) numbers of participants are declining and the finish time in all the four major race distances is still growing.' This is a wrong argument. It is enough if just running in general gains popularity. If you take races as a sample from the running population the sample size does not mean that much - the average/median/percentile performance of the sample (if it is representative) may follow the performance of the whole running population! This is the case for example if the racing population is a uniform random sample. But it may even happen that nowadays larger proportion of slower runners are going to races - because races are much more advertised/known for the hobby joggers than in the past, while elite runners were there always...

spunker540 9y ago
I feel like this counter-argument is glossed over and not thoroughly refuted. The stats go back to the 80s and yet it's not till the last two years that participation starts to decline? I think it's very likely that more and more amateurs are signing up for smaller races that didn't previously exist. There's probably enough variance that one year of decline is not enough to prove that participation increase is not a factor. Also, I think there's a chance that the running races are losing some of their top athletes to triathlons which are also growing in popularity.
- alistairSH 9y ago
  Triathlons, off-road running races, obstacle races (tough mudder, etc), and other races that aren't plain running. Local to me, there are also a few extreme distance races (longer than marathon), usually on hiking trails.
mannykannot 9y ago
Indeed - it is not implausible to suppose that the set of people who think 'maybe I could run a marathon' has expanded over the years, and that expansion would inevitably be predominantly in the direction of including slower runners (BTW, not all slow runners are unfit.) If so, the average performance could decrease over time for this reason, even if the size of the subset that actually do choose to run a marathon has been falling lately.

by szemet 9y ago

spunker540 9y ago

I feel like this counter-argument is glossed over and not thoroughly refuted. The stats go back to the 80s and yet it's not till the last two years that participation starts to decline? I think it's very likely that more and more amateurs are signing up for smaller races that didn't previously exist. There's probably enough variance that one year of decline is not enough to prove that participation increase is not a factor. Also, I think there's a chance that the running races are losing some of their top athletes to triathlons which are also growing in popularity.

alistairSH 9y ago
Triathlons, off-road running races, obstacle races (tough mudder, etc), and other races that aren't plain running. Local to me, there are also a few extreme distance races (longer than marathon), usually on hiking trails.

mannykannot 9y ago

Indeed - it is not implausible to suppose that the set of people who think 'maybe I could run a marathon' has expanded over the years, and that expansion would inevitably be predominantly in the direction of including slower runners (BTW, not all slow runners are unfit.) If so, the average performance could decrease over time for this reason, even if the size of the subset that actually do choose to run a marathon has been falling lately.