I don't have the data, so the authors might be right, but honestly reading this that's the best gloss I can put on it. The second last chart (they aren't numbe

I don't have the data, so the authors might be right, but honestly reading this that's the best gloss I can put on it. The second last chart (they aren't numbered, because this is a study done by someone with a mathematical analysis Ph.D and a statistician, apparently) says it all - we've plotted two things and we have fitted a line and then we state a conclusion. I'm sorry, but stop the seminar there. The first two points, what does the line look like if we remove those? What do you mean by average? Can we have error bars on the points to cover 90% of the population? What are the distributions of the finish times? If they are normal, how come - aren't there elite and club peaks as well as everyone else? Did we try excluding the registered runners? The questions are endless and this study is "not exhaustive" - back to R guys.