January 2012

[Bierzo Baggie]

My uncle used to run the Wolverhampton marathon between 2:50 and 3 hours. Now this was a city marathon with a field of a few hundred and I remember plenty of people used to finish ahead of him (perhaps 100 or so?)
A couple of years ago they staged the race again for the first time since the 90s. His best mid-1980s time would have given him third place!

Analysis like THIS tells you how things have changed. It seems to be the number of people between 20-40 that take the sport seriously that's declined. What are they all doing instead?

There's no doubt about it in my mind. In the UK (and elsewhere? ...Europe? the US?) everybody's running a lot slower than 25 years ago, for whatever reasons. In Spain we're probably talking about a shorter timespan, but the tendency is the same. More people are running, but almost everybody is running slower. In El Bierzo local hero Chus Alonso is still finishing in the top 3 in many races and he's just turned 50! Most of the new runners who are coming through still can't keep up with the old guy.

Now this is not altogether a bad thing as more people are getting involved in all sorts of athletic events and that can't be bad can it? But I'm still not convinced that the African athlete dominates solely because his/her calf muscles are smaller and more compact or whatever the theory was. I'm sure that socio-economic reasons are at least as relevent and Bruce Tulloch seemed to suggest the same.