A Deep Dive Into Marathon Data

Recently, I saw a post on r/advancedrunning that sparked some interesting discussion about trends in marathoning.

The OP asked: “How did people run so fast in the 70’s and 80’s without the training plans, nutrition, knowledge, and smartwatch data we have now?”

Then, they linked to a report put together by RunRepeat that claims, “American Runners Have Never Been Slower.”

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Are American Runners Slower Than Ever Today?

There are a lot of ways to answer the question, and it depends entirely on how you look at the data.

One of the non-controversial conclusions of the report was that the average finishing time of marathoners today is much higher than it was in the past. Specifically, they looked at the period 1996 to 2016, gathered data on medium to large marathons, and calculated an average finish time.

That time increased, pretty significantly over that time period, and there’s no real reason to dispute that.