I registered for the New York City Marathon today, but it wasn’t because I qualified on time. That goal remains beyond my reach. Even though I have come tantalizingly close to both the full marathon requirement (2:57:52 to 2:55:00) and the half (1:23:46 to 1:23:00), I haven’t been able to cross that threshold yet.
Our conversation about that led to a questioning of why there is such a big difference between the men’s and women’s times. Just by looking at them, it seems as though the men’s are tougher. Helen suggested that I look up the age-graded percent of each. I, being the numbers dork that I am, did. Here’s what I found (based on an age of 26, using this calculator):
| Men | Women | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Half Marathon | 1:23:00 | 71.85% | 1:37:00 | 67.84% |
| Marathon | 2:55:00 | 72.48% | 3:23:00 | 68.40% |
Clearly the AG% for the men’s time is a lot higher. If NYRR had used the women’s percentages for men, we’d be able to qualify with a 1:27:55 half or a 3:05:25 full. That’s a huge difference. Does anyone know why they do this? Is it a money thing? Am I off base for thinking that this is unfair?
I have links to forum threads on the difference for BQs men vs women, but not NYCM. Age-grading comes from World records so maybe the women’s record is skewed farther from the masses? (just pulled that outta my butt)
It may be an attempt, however misguided, to achieve an equal balance of female vs. male participation. Or — another theory that may come from the same performance distribution — maybe the qualifying AG figures reflect what men vs. women are actually able to achieve on average. Said more simply, perhaps the number of women who can achieve ~68%AG is roughly equal to the number of men who can achieve ~72%AG.
Or, there’s Flo’s theory. Paula Radcliffe’s outlier of 2:15 is freakishly low compared to what any other woman has achieved thus far.
I say “yay” for more babe participation ;)
It might be some sort of ‘affirmative action’ policy to have roughly equal numbers of women and men in the race. There’d probably be more depth in men’s running, so the 10,000th best marathon time would be a higher AG% than the 10,000th best women’s time.
Interestingly, at the top, Paula’s time is 102.5% and Geb’s is 102.3%.
Boston has a similiar disparity between males and females. Females have it easier at first. But over time, the AG% of the expected times increase for the females while they become easier for the males.
When it comes to NYC though, I’d raise an issue with the performance expectations of a 39 year old (1:23:59) compared to the expectations a 40 year old (1:29:59). Same for 49 compared to 50. The age ranges are too wide for both genders. I don’t necessarily mind the differences between the genders for some of the reasons mentioned above.
I think both marathons should just pick a AG% minimum to apply across all ages. If there would be one for each gender, I think that would be acceptable too.
That’s true, there is a really big age gap there. I like your idea of have an AG% across the board for all ages.
I think you all are on to something with the number of men vs. women who are able to run a certain AG%. I checked 4 NYRR half marathons and (ignoring age) looked at how many people had run a qualifying time. In 3 of the 4, more men than women had. So, maybe they’re just trying to go for an equal number of men and women who are able to qualify. But when you adjust for the fact that more men than women are running the races, you find that a higher percentage of women are (3 out of 4 times) qualifying.
But that brings up another question: Why can more men than women run a 70% age-graded race? Is that because more men are training harder? Or do the frontrunning women outliers just naturally excel farther ahead of the pack? I’d be interested to read an answer to that question by someone who’s smarter than me (and has time to actually dig into the numbers).
Here’s the numbers I found:
2010 Manhattan Half
132 (3.7%) men qualified
108 (5.0%) women qualified
2009 Grete’s Gallop
70 (3.1%) men qualified
57 (2.7%) women qualified
2009 NYC Half
85 (1.7%) men qualified
101 (2.0%) women qualified
2009 Brooklyn Half
110 (2.1%) men qualified
96 (2.2%) women qualified
Of course, this is way too small a sample size to be meaningful. And it doesn’t take into account age. But, it’s a start.
I’m done thinking about it. It is what it is. I just need to chop 3 minutes off my marathon time and then I won’t have to worry about it anymore.
As someone who sits on 70%, I’ll take a wild guess on the answer to “Why can more men than women run a 70% age-graded race?” Pretty much what you said. There are more male runners who are ‘hard core’ competitive (i.e. want to run certain times, PBs). In my city there’d be equal numbers of male and female runners, but more of the females would run for ‘fun’ or ‘fitness’ or to ‘just finish’ a marathon.
Don’t know if this helps, but Jim2, the information man extraordinaire on Runners World and of course, on his own site http://mysite.verizon.net/jim2wr/ posted an interesting table today.
Putting aside the WR holders, between the average men’s and women’s winning times in 227 US marathons run in 2008, there is a 19.5% difference in Open Class. Which means the NYC Marathon qualifying times at your age are actually more generous for men than for women! 3:23 – 19.5% = 2:43.
Here’s the thread (scroll down for the full table)
http://www.runnersworld.com/community/forums/training/marathon-race-training/gender-equivalent
I’m starting to feel like the numbers could be rearranged to justify just about any qualifying time. There are so many different statistics to look at. I guess it is more complicated than just AG%.
This is a superfascinating post and stream of comments. Of course, for runners like me it’s just an exercise in fantasy (doubt I’ll ever be fast enough to “NYCQ”) but it’s good to know that the analysis has been done!
[...] like that, an awful lot… Here is a very interesting examination of how premier races set qualifying standards for women and men. The real meat is in the comments… I am pleased to announce the winnders of [...]
Women’s qualifying times have generally been much softer than men’s. For the 2008 OT, the men’s A was 2:20 and B 2:22 and the women’s were 2:39 and 2:47. I think it’s a question of depth of field. (And men’s standards are softer than they used to be; 1984: 2:19:04. But that trend is turning.)
For NY, the standards used to be higher. When I first looked at them, in 2004, the men’s 40-49 was 1:24. It then went to 1:28 and to its current 1:30. NYRR presumably concluded it could accommodate more runners. I think in part its an effort by NYRR to promote a certain level of local runner, make life a bit easier, which may not be fair and probably is arbitrary, but which I appreciate.
But the numbers themselves are somewhat arbitrary, I agree. You have 10 year ranges so in one day I gained ten minutes of cushion. Using age-graded figures makes sense and would probably be fairer, but there’s a certain beauty in a static number. I’d go for age-graded though.
And to be clear, Robert, for those four races I think you took how many people of each sex were under the open qualifying time, without regard to age. I’m surprised that Grete was so low since it was a club race.
You’re right, Joe, I wasn’t taking age into account. I realize my stats weren’t perfect, but I didn’t have the time to account for age as well or do a larger sampling of races.
Yeah, I was going to mention age. This is anecdotal, but I’ve noticed that by and large the women’s 35-39 and 40-44 AGs are the most competitive. If you really wanted to go all anal with the data analysis, you could review AGs for those qualifying patterns to see if that theory holds water.
Speaking of theories, mine is that a lot of women wake up in their 30s and 40s and realize that if they train they can run fast. Or maybe their kids are in school/grown, so they have more time to pursue running.
Anyway, this is one reason I’m happy to be moving into 45-49 in a couple of months…
So where’s the Run Up report?
It would be so interesting to see a comparison of what the human body is capable of at a certain age to the average times posted by that same age. I imagine that your theory is right and that you’d see (especially in women, but probably in men too) a significant increase in the percentage of achievement to potential after people move into their 30s.
I think that it’s the competitive aspect, or lack thereof for most women. They are trying to get more women running in the races but most women don’t care, really, how fast they go. At least, that’s been my experience.
I’d agree with that. It definitely seems like there are more casual women runners out there.