Posts Tagged ‘wall street journal’

Wall Street Journal Looks to Cheese Off More Runners

I guess the hate mail from “America’s runners have never been slower, fatter or more out of shape” was starting to peter out, so yesterday’s Wall Street Journal decided to up the ante with “It’s Time for Women to Run Faster.”

The Wall Street Journal is a pay site, so I excerpt the relevant portion here:

The record demand for Boston slots has much to do with the exploding popularity of marathons in the U.S.: The 10% growth in participation last year was the largest spurt in 25 years. The number of runners who qualify for Boston now far exceeds the available places (excluding about 5,000 spots reserved for charity runners).

But there’s another possible reason for the surging demand—one that has the potential to kick up a fair amount of controversy. It’s the notion that the qualifying standards for women are too soft.

By all accounts, the running boom is being fueled by women more than men. Women made up 42% of finishers in the 2010 Boston race—a proportion that is higher than the percentage of all U.S. marathoners who are women. But according to gender rules instituted in 1977, the marathon times women need to post to qualify for Boston are 30 minutes slower than the times the men in the same age group have to run. The problem: There’s no evidence that women really need that much extra time.

The typical gap in major 2009 marathons between the world’s elite male and female runners was closer to 20 minutes than 30—and has been shrinking over time. For less-than-elite runners, these gaps have created some questionable benchmarks. To qualify for Boston, for instance, a man aged 50 to 54 has to have posted a time of 3:35 or better. But that time is five minutes faster than the time required for women 34 and younger. In a nutshell, to make Boston, a 54-year old man has to run faster than the nation’s youngest and fastest women.

Before you get too worked up, the Boston Marathon organizers have no plans to change the standards for anyone.

Flash! Going from Couch to Marathon Not the Best Fitness Strategy

The Wall Street Journal has an article this morning headlined “The Fleeting Benefits of Marathons,” which I originally thought was going to be about the fleeting economic benefits of marathons, it being the Wall Street Journal and all. No, it’s a health piece, and since the Wall Street Journal is a pay site and I don’t want hear from them about copyright infringement, I’ll merely excerpt the highlights:

Fitness and dietary experts say marathons increasingly are the exercise equivalent of crash diets, with similarly disappointing results. There’s no evidence that running a marathon leads to lasting weight loss, marathon researchers say. And it’s unknown how often such runs initiate or perpetuate a lifetime of steady exercise. Indeed, in a long-term fitness sense, marathons are really sprints; the true marathon is the exercise program that lasts for decades, fitness experts say.

And:

Without question, participants who remain steady runners after finishing a marathon enjoy seemingly impressive benefits. Continuing scientific research suggests that consistent long-distance running not only improves cardiovascular health—a well-known benefit—but also lowers the risk of disorders of the eye and prostate, among other organs.

Still, even as the medical case mounts for people to get more vigorous exercise, behavioral studies are showing that hard-to-sustain regimens and painful routines can diminish the will to work out. Increasingly, public-health officials are questioning the value of the so-called boot-camp approach to working out. “The best can be the barrier to the good,” says Heather Chambliss, a University of Memphis professor specializing in exercise motivation.

And:

In a sport where 40% of runners are first-time participants, most won’t make a lifestyle out of running marathons, because of waning interest, a busy schedule or vulnerability to injury. “A good number of runners do a marathon and don’t come back to it,” says Ryan Lamppa, spokesman for Running USA.

None of this is very surprising. Unless marathon training is part of your lifestyle and not just a one-time event, you are simply beating up your body for the psychic benefits. I’m not sure anyone is suggesting that getting off the couch and running a single marathon magically transforms you into a fit human being.