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...

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Main Authors:	Knechtle, Beat, Nikolaidis, Pantelis T., Zingg, Matthias A., Rosemann, Thomas, Rüst, Christoph A.
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Springer International Publishing 2016
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4726642/

id	pubmed-4726642
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-47266422016-02-03 Half-marathoners are younger and slower than marathoners Knechtle, Beat Nikolaidis, Pantelis T. Zingg, Matthias A. Rosemann, Thomas Rüst, Christoph A. Research 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 < 0.001) than men (10.22 ± 3.06 km/h). Also in marathon, women (14.77 ± 4.13 km/h) were running 0.28 ± 0.16 km/h faster (p < 0.001) than men (14.48 ± 4.07 km/h). In marathon, women (42.18 ± 10.63 years) were at the same age than men (42.06 ± 10.45 years) (p > 0.05). Also in half-marathon, women (41.40 ± 10.63 years) were at the same age than men (41.31 ± 10.30 years) (p > 0.05). However, women and men marathon runners were older than their counterpart half-marathon runners (p < 0.001). In summary, (1) more athletes competed in half-marathons than in marathons, (2) women were running faster than men, (3) half-marathoners were running slower than marathoners, and (4) half-marathoners were younger than marathoners. Springer International Publishing 2016-01-26 /pmc/articles/PMC4726642/ /pubmed/26844023 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40064-016-1704-9 Text en © Knechtle et al. 2016 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Knechtle, Beat Nikolaidis, Pantelis T. Zingg, Matthias A. Rosemann, Thomas Rüst, Christoph A.
spellingShingle	Knechtle, Beat Nikolaidis, Pantelis T. Zingg, Matthias A. Rosemann, Thomas Rüst, Christoph A. Half-marathoners are younger and slower than marathoners
author_facet	Knechtle, Beat Nikolaidis, Pantelis T. Zingg, Matthias A. Rosemann, Thomas Rüst, Christoph A.
author_sort	Knechtle, Beat
title	Half-marathoners are younger and slower than marathoners
title_short	Half-marathoners are younger and slower than marathoners
title_full	Half-marathoners are younger and slower than marathoners
title_fullStr	Half-marathoners are younger and slower than marathoners
title_full_unstemmed	Half-marathoners are younger and slower than marathoners
title_sort	half-marathoners are younger and slower than marathoners
description	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 < 0.001) than men (10.22 ± 3.06 km/h). Also in marathon, women (14.77 ± 4.13 km/h) were running 0.28 ± 0.16 km/h faster (p < 0.001) than men (14.48 ± 4.07 km/h). In marathon, women (42.18 ± 10.63 years) were at the same age than men (42.06 ± 10.45 years) (p > 0.05). Also in half-marathon, women (41.40 ± 10.63 years) were at the same age than men (41.31 ± 10.30 years) (p > 0.05). However, women and men marathon runners were older than their counterpart half-marathon runners (p < 0.001). In summary, (1) more athletes competed in half-marathons than in marathons, (2) women were running faster than men, (3) half-marathoners were running slower than marathoners, and (4) half-marathoners were younger than marathoners.
publisher	Springer International Publishing
publishDate	2016
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4726642/
_version_	1613528376946982912

Half-marathoners are younger and slower than marathoners

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