Sub3 Marathon Performance and Age Related Decline

A unique research study published this month looked into 41 marathon veterans who ran sub3hr performances for 5 straight decades. This is a rare population of athletes, since only around 4% of marathoners achieve sub-3 hour timings according to years of data from worldwide marathon statistics (www.marastats.com).

The statistical findings are startling. Despite advancing age, performance degradation in these runners was only +1 min 29s per year, OR an average decrease in running speed of 0.67% per year.

What is the significance of this finding?

Commonly it’s held in the running community that an age related performance decline of 7–8% per decade is a given, presumably due to decrease in VO2max.

While some of this is true, I find this broad generalization to be a little perplexing, as from normal observation we find that some extremely well trained veteran runners in their 40’s and 50’s can achieve a better time than younger moderately trained newbies. And they also seem to hold onto their fitness year after year with a high training, at least until age of 60.

If we assume marathon running performance is dictated mostly by 3 factors — VO2max, lactate threshold and running economy — and if we assume 10% decline/decade in each of those factors, the combined performance decline should be 30%. Yet we know from observations in high performance veterans (and this study!) that this is not quite the case.

What the study seems to show is that despite a decline in VO2max, these exceptional sub-3hr runners were able to run at a higher fraction of their maximal aerobic capacity; they probably also had an exceptional running economy to maintain such a level of fitness for 50 years.

It has to be seen whether the observations are maintained even beyond age of 60.

Age seems to be just a number, IF you keep training and racing while staving off the injuries.

Feel free to reach out to me if you have comment, corrections or thoughts on twitter.