Stats comparison of men’s and women’s marathon times

Introduction

Every four years (and usually when the new Olympic Marathon Trials standards are set), there’s a flux of men bashing women on message boards about how their standards are easier and it’s not fair. This is usually followed by the men trying to equate men’s and women’s times…of which they wrongly try to linearly compare men’s and women’s times based on XX minutes (or percent) difference between the World Records.

Anyone who closely follows women’s marathoning and performances knows that the times drop off significantly as you go down the list, moreso than the men. Why this is, is anyone’s guess (Less depth? Less African women? Training differences? Men are a more homogenious population, while women are more biologically diverse? Psychological and/or social differences?). Even as these factors improve/change, trying to make a linear comparison is still theoretical and doesn’t represent what exists in reality.

From a statistical standpoint, when you compare two populations, one assumption that must be met to make a linear comparison is that both populations must follow a normal distribution. If this assumption is violated, as is the case when trying to compare men’s and women’s running performances, you must use a non-parametric method of comparison. One way to do this is to rank-order the times. Thus, you can compare 1st to 1st…. 10th to 10th…. 50th to 50th…. and so on.

Using the rank-order method, I attempted to set the record straight on comparing men’s and women’s times in the marathon.

Comprehensive Comparison from 2008-2011

I created a spreadsheet through Google docs at the following link: Time differences between genders for marathon

I took the IAAF performance lists from 2008-2011, took out multiple performers, and then determined the rank-order time difference between women and men. The IAAF performance list only goes to 2:43 for the women, so I used this as the limit. As you can see from the data, with each successive year, both the women AND men’s depth has improved. There’s simply more bodies now!  You can read Marathonguide.com’s 2010 US Marathoning Stats – 36,000 more people ran a marathon in 2010 than 2009, of which the number of women grew by a modest .8%. Looking at elite depth improvement, women’s and men’s depth appears to be improving at a similar rate… and thus, the “time gap difference” between times isn’t closing.  If you take a women’s time, for example 2:34:52, and compare it to the men for each year, you get:

• 2011–2:11:54 (difference=22:58)
• 2010–2:12:04 (difference=22:48)
• 2009–2:12:02 (difference=22:50)
• 2008–2:12:01-04 (difference=22:48-51)

The comparison of times is very consistent from year to year– there’s simply more bodies each year, which is good too because it means more data to provide an accurate picture.

Furthermore, the time difference between genders increases as you go down the rank-order (NOT LINEAR), and this is consistent from year to year.

The bottom line:

• Elite women’s depth and men’s depth are improving at similar rates
• More African women are emerging in the marathon, and yet the gap on Paula isn’t closing.
• I can’t imagine the women at the very top aren’t already training like men, and yet there still isn’t a linear difference, even looking at the All-time lists.
• In my opinion, women are more biologically/anatomically/mechanically diverse than men across the timespan, which partially contributes to the non-linear time differences going down the rank order lists.

Given the above (esp. with the continued emergence of more African women in the marathon), I’m not convinced that in another 30 years you could make a linear comparison between genders. The stats are very consistent from year-to-year.

Americans at the Olympic Trials: What happens when you have more women than men?

As previously mentioned, one criticism of women’s running is that there’s significantly less depth compared to the men. However, the easier women’s marathon B standard at the Olympic Trials created the opposite situation– significantly more women (152 finishers vs. 85 finishers), followed by record shattering depth performances (see here ). And guess what…. there still wasn’t a linear difference between women and men’s performances. However, because there was a much deeper women’s field, it drove the women’s times to be relatively faster than the men’s times, as compared to the World performance lists. For example, my time of 2:37:14 matches up with 2:15:42 at the Olympic Trials. On the World list, 2:37:14 matches up with 2:13:19. Additionally, the time differences were mostly around 21-22 min., rather than 22-26 min..

Had USATF chosen equally “matched” standards (say, based on the World performance lists or deeper American lists)…. to create equal-sized fields…. the times would have likely matched up more closely to the World performance lists. However, I should point out there are significantly more American women than men on the World performance lists (in 2011, 40 women vs. 8 men, 5x more). In comparison, there are 3x+ more Kenyan men than women (in 2011, 310 vs. 96) but more Ethiopian women than men (in 2011, 115 vs. 102). Assuming you had an equivalent number of Kenyan men and women, there would likely still be more American women on the sub 2:43 IAAF World list than American men.

Judging by the 2012 Olympic Trials, there’s already ~63 American women who make the IAAF list, vs. 27 American men (equating 2:43 to 2:15:42). Granted, there was more women’s depth, but even doubling the men’s field (from 85 to 170, and assuming you’d double the number of sub 2:15:42 men), there’s still more women who make the IAAF list.

What does all of this mean? Well, it’s up to the USATF to determine what they want to do for future Olympic Trials. Apparently “dangling the carrot higher” for American men hasn’t made them any more competitive at the World level. Part of this may be because more men were trying to qualify through the HM and 10K, which diluted the number of World ranked American men in the marathon. Should there be an equally “soft” B standard for men and women? 

I found deep American lists from 2007 (see Google doc above)– unfortunately, the World lists only go to 2:18:00/2:43:00. Mind you, back in 2008, the Olympic Trials B standards were 2:22 and 2:47. Judging by these lists, these Standards were comparably matched (2:47:00 matched up with 2:22:13– slightly tougher women’s standard). The American women weren’t as strong at the top in 2007 compared to now.

Of note…. the Olympic B standard is 2:18/2:43, which matches up quite well with the 2007 American lists. However, whereas you have 40-55 American women each year on the sub 2:43 list, you only have 20-30 American men each year on the sub 2:18 list. Again, this shows that “dangling the carrot higher” hasn’t improved American men’s depth the past 4 years, and using 10K/HM qualifying times further dilutes American men’s depth in the marathon. In my opinion, qualifying should only be through the marathon. I also hypothesize if you use the Olympic B standard for qualifying (maybe as one “A standard”), you will get equal-sized fields (and everyone will be happy! ).