Half-marathoners are younger and slower than marathoners

Age and performance trends of elite and recreational marathoners are well investigated, but not for half-marathoners. We analysed age and performance trends in 508,108 age group runners (125,894 female and 328,430 male half-marathoners and 10,205 female and 43,489 male marathoners) competing between...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:SpringerPlus 2016-01, Vol.5 (1), p.76-76, Article 76
Main Authors: Knechtle, Beat, Nikolaidis, Pantelis T., Zingg, Matthias A., Rosemann, Thomas, Rüst, Christoph A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biomedical and Life and Sciences
Humanities and Social Sciences
multidisciplinary
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Sports Performance and Exercise
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Age and performance trends of elite and recreational marathoners are well investigated, but not for half-marathoners. We analysed age and performance trends in 508,108 age group runners (125,894 female and 328,430 male half-marathoners and 10,205 female and 43,489 male marathoners) competing between 1999 and 2014 in all flat half-marathons and marathons held in Switzerland using single linear regression analyses, mixed-effects regression analyses and analyses of variance. The number of women and men increased across years in both half-marathons and marathons. There were 12.3 times more female half-marathoners than female marathoners and 7.5 times more male half-marathoners than male marathoners. For both half-marathons and marathons, most of the female and male finishers were recorded in age group 40–44 years. In half-marathons, women (10.29 ± 3.03 km/h) were running 0.07 ± 0.06 km/h faster (p  0.05). However, women and men marathon runners were older than their counterpart half-marathon runners (p 
ISSN:2193-1801
2193-1801
DOI:10.1186/s40064-016-1704-9