Surely most men do not speed up as they get older, so how come the M40 age group is often more competitive than the M35 one?
Having just recently celebrated my 38th birthday, I got asked more than once if I was already dreading the big four-zero coming along. “On the opposite,” I usually replied. “I can’t wait to get the chance to finally win an age group award.” While this usually got a few laughs, it was also a blatant lie. Not only will I still be too slow to get anywhere near those awards, when I checked the results of some of my recent races, I noticed that the times for age awards are sometimes faster, not slower, as you move up.
The 2007 USA Marathon Report tells us that the average marathon finishing time for the men’s age groups are getting faster, not slower, all the way from M20 to M40. I found this hard to believe when I read it the first time, but the M40 age group had the fastest average finishing time of them all! The equivalent female age groups do not show the same pattern.
It’s not only the average time that gets better. The same applies even for the competitive end of the field. To pick an example, at my most recent half marathon in Blarney, Ireland, the third runner in the M40 category finished in 1:18:05, when the third M35 runner still had a minute to go. Of course this doesn’t always follow the same mould (I could easily have found a race result where the M40 runners were slower than their M35 counterparts), but it definitely happens much more often than you would think.
Personally, I find this fact truly astonishing. The only explanation I could come up with is that a lot of men start running (or, in case of many college runners, re-start running) sometime in their mid-30s and will therefore not reach their full potential until they are in their 40s. As someone who followed that very itinerary, I know it is very common, and I do indeed know a lot of runners who followed the same course. What makes us pick up a rather strenuous hobby like this as we get older? The fear of getting old and fat? An early onset of midlife crisis? Or, are our wives kicking us out of the house to enjoy some peace and quiet?
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