Reading "Born to Run" and taking it with a grain of salt

Triathlon Forum
1

It’s probably no secret that a book like Born to Run is going to contradict a lot of “wisdom” of an experienced runner. I do try to read things with an open mind and assume both the idea that what I think I know may not be true as well as what the book reports may not be true.

I do like the book and think it’s a good read, but I kept coming up on information that seemd very cherry picked and seemd to be misleading.

Then I got to this piece of information. The question was asked at what age do runners slow down to the point where they are as slow as they were when they were 19 in the marathon. The answer based on NYC marathon results? 64!

I called BS right away. Granted one must take a lot of assumptions when making such a claim and I do underatand that everyone is different. I can tell you this much, at 37 I have been slowing down fast. I may be an exception, but I have a hard time believing that at 64 I’ll be in the shape I was in at 19 (when I could click off an 8K @ 5 minute pace and was running weekend 18 milers fast enough to win most 64 year old age group marathons). The 80% age grade mark for a 19 year old in the marathon is 2:40. For a 64 year old that time gets you a 99.65% (as it is just of the world record). In fact, holding to 2:40 and 80%, the break even point comes around 40…which is about what I’d expect.

This in and of itself doesn’t mean everything, so I checked the results of an average marathon (to try to throw out skewing that might come from lottery admissions, qualifying, and big purses attrcting more elites). I looked at the Philly marathon from last weekend. Here’s what I got:

64 year olds:
The fastest 64 year old was almost an hour behind the fastest 19 year old.
He would have placed 9th out of 18 finshers if he registered as a 19 year old.
The median of the 64 year olds (6th of 11) would have finished 2nd to last among the 19 year olds.
His time was 50 minutes slower than the 6th fastest 19 year old and 33 minutes slower than the median 19 year old.

The 50 year olds:
The fastest 50 year old was 10 minutes behind behind the fastest 19 year old, though the 2nd fastest would have beatn the 2nd fastest 19 year old.
The median of the 50 year olds (56th) would have finished 4th to last among the 19 year olds.

It is very difficult to come up with a solid number of where th ebreak even point is using race results since we don’t really know what portion of which age group was racing. For example, it i spossible that the 19 year old group represents only 19 year olds who were race ready where th eolder groups might include more pedestrian runners. Or, OTOH, we might consider that American 19 year olds are under trained for the marathon not because of an age ability limitation, but because of a late start thus having only 4 years to build a solid base. We might also consider the fact that most 19 year olds don’t train for marathons, or that many of the fastest ones won’t run a marathon to avoid risking injury and disrupting their college season.

We don’t really know and I might be a liitle more open minded if the numbers presented were a lot closer. I think one might be able to make an argument that 50 year olds are close to 19 year olds, and I think that 40 year olds definitely look like a more reasonable answer, but 64 year old??? No way!

My best guess is that the person the author quoted either grabbed a single data point that supported his case, or he just had no idea what he was talking about.

Again, it’s a very good boog, but take it with a grain of salt.

2

can’t really take a book seriously that throws out many facts, figures, and statistics, but has ZERO endnotes or works cited. The only footnotes talk about recipes.

3

It’s well written with some inspiring stories. The barefoot running concept is likely valid to some degree, but is “trending” so strongly right now that “barefoot” shoes (I love oxymorons) are so hot you can barely keep them in stock.

A lot of people are buying them that likely… would do better initially in other shoes, especially at first. A lot of people are buying them who simply aren’t ready to run yet- they need to improve their overall fitness and “injury resistance” before undertaking a “barefoot” (or any) running regimen. The book isn’t really a complete examination of barefoot running or a true training text. It’s lore, and popular lore at that.

“Insider knowledge” and “ancient wisdom” are always great pitches, and this one was ripe for the taking. It’s not unusual for it to swing back in the other direction due to some similar media that will swing in the opposite direction. Until that happens, it is the current mania and, like most mania, there is likely a measure of credibility to it.

Good read though. Fun. Inspiring.

4

ya good read, but people should take it for a grain of salt. ya, sure walk around without barefoot shoes sometimes to strengthen those muscles, but dont immediately switch to running barefoot just cause he sites examples from people that have been doing it their whole lives.

i think the book couldve been without the arguments which have encouraged people to change their running habbits, and sometimes causing injuries

5

I loved the book - as a book. Got many people thinking about running biomechanics (a good thing for me) and injured probably about as many (also a good thing for me) :wink:

6

Barry -
B2R isn’t just a good read, it’s a great read - to be able to have that sort of argument and keep readers interested, so many memorable characters and so many balls in the air, argument-wise.
But yeah, grain of salt is right.
He’s got some science, and some anthro. I don’t know science; I do know anthro, and his anthro isn’t very good. So that makes me wonder about his science.

i will say, though - i never took the 65 year old part to be about elite runners, or fast times. his argument about endurance running isn’t about the fastest times.

7

glad you followed up on that. i’ve studied plenty of anthropology (i actually also spent some time in the kalahari, where that guy does a persistence hunt with the San) and most of what he said made good sense. but the marathon stat just didn’t seem to jive with my own horse sense and my experiences as a runner. i can totally believe that endurance peaks much later than other athletic abilities (my wife was a serious gymnast and peaked at about 17. . .). but 64?

i’m also a stickler for the data and would’ve appreciated sources on this, too. anyway, still think it’s a great book and highly recommended.

-mike

8

Yeah and everyone knows you won’t have any endurance eating corn, beans , and chia seeds.

9

i think the thing to keep in mind about BTR is that its not a book about elite super-fast runners. the most elite runner in there (at least from the US) is scott jurek, who although being perhaps the best ultramarathoner ever in the US, has as his main claim to fame his ability to run 9:15min/mile for 100 miles. i’d accept that ability in a heart beat (and its not coming my way any time soon), but it also doesn’t have a whole lot to do with the performances you’re citing from your 19 year old days.

BTR, in my reading, is much more about the average human runner, attempting to runs distances of 5 miles on up. the book has almost nothing to say to someone who wants to run a mile very, very fast, and really has nothing to say about someone who can.

if you throw this perspective into your reading of the book, then i suspect that the author’s egregious lack of citations will not rankle you quite as much.

another example of this perspective: there are very solid reasons why the world’s sprinters all wear spikes, which are the ancestors of just about all running shoe design until the last year or three. but the vast majority of the world’s runners do not wear spikes. the shoes they do wear have evolved to be nothing like spikes, and the shoes they should wear probably should be nothing like spikes, which were not made with running long distances in mind, but running very, very fast. BTR doesn’t really bother to spend much time distinguishing the two sides of the running world - people trying to run relatively short, often standard distances as fast as possible, and people try to run a long way for purposes other than beating a record of some kind. the needs, physiological capabilities and psychological stances of each group are really very different, and i think that BTR is mostly about the second group, not the first.

10

…but it also doesn’t have a whole lot to do with the performances you’re citing from your 19 year old days.

No, but that one piece of information did. Look, I understand what the main focus of the book was, but it was full of a lot of seemingly tall tales. Here was one example where I could verify that he was, in fact, completely full of crap. Like not even close! I don’t see any reason why targeting slower runners should absolve him of any responibility of at least writting correct information.

Don’t get me wrong, I liked the book. I’m just saying its not a very credible source of information. It’s kind of interesting, BTW, that I’m currently, yet again, running with a bunch of novice runners and am fighting my usual battles of trying to clear out all the misinformation they are working off of. This book was actually recommended by these guys, who happen to all be trying their own variation of barefoot running.

11

well, yes and no.

your analysis showed that his claim about “age equivalency” could be full of crap. but it didn’t show that it is full of crap, because of all the possible confounding factors (most of which you mentioned yourself).

i agree that he should have been offering citations for stuff like this. here’s what i suspect happened: he does have a set of citations that talk about physiological this and that, and how the average person doesn’t fall below their 19yr old baselines for each measured property until they are 64 or so. what he didn’t do (i am guessing) is what you did: look at race results and compare. so his citations would be correct, but don’t in and of themselves say what running performance is like.

btw, a good friend of my wife and i was 3rd in the phila marathon 60-64 category, and he would absolutely confirm your take on this. he was running sub-5:00 in his college days. these days a 5:50 is pretty hard core as an 800 pace for him, and he runs WAY more now than he did in college.

12

here’s what i suspect happened: he does have a set of citations that talk about physiological this and that…

which his editor asked him to cut.
that’s my guess.

ETA a shameless blog post: my review/reflections on the book.
http://positivesplits.blogspot.com/2009/12/reading-chris-mcdougalls-born-to-run.html

13

I had the same response to that claim. It turns out to be true for the NY marathon, but not true in general…

I know my times at sixty-four (when I get old, and losing my hair, many years from now) will be a lot slower than I was running at 19. Checking with the WMA Age-grading calculator, using a 21-minute 5k, that performance at age 19 is roughly equivalent to the same time at… age 35. At age sixty-four, that performance is roughly equivalent to a 17-minute 5k by a nineteen-year-old. The same proportions apply to marathon times. Thirty-five seems a bit young as well so the truth may yet be somewhere else: still it shows not much effort going into finding facts. The WMA calculator uses world age group records as one of its inputs. Looking at the NY Marathon results for 2009, Dr. Bramble’s numbers are confirmed: top 3 for 19 and under have times 2:55 to 3:09, top 3 for 60-64 are 2:58 to 3:04. Looking at world age group records, 19 is 2:10, 64 is 2:42. That rather makes a nonsense of the NY marathon times, and the whole contention that sixty-year-olds can compete with the young guns.

Another age-based calculator that uses world bests only, can be found here.
The study on which it is based finds “the estimates show linear percent decline between age 35 and about age 70.” That only addresses the aging side of the equation though. Also, I’d contend that using world bests only has an inherent bias. Most runners reach a personal peak after five to ten years of consistent training, and it’s very rare that this peak can be sustained for more than a few years. Look at the list of world bests for the marathon, linked above: there aren’t many names that appear more than once, those that do are not far apart in time.

The WMA calculator also uses age-grading factors from the Masters Track website, motto: “older, slower, lower”. I can get behind that.

my review of “Born to Run”, with irritation, here.

14

surely there are better nits to pick in this book.

like how long before he clues you in, just once, that most of these people are walk jogging the race? =)

15

i don’t want to come across as defending mcdougall from claims that he isn’t rigorous in making some of the claims that he does - he has no defence against this claim.

but the age best study that you cite, although fascinating reading, doesn’t really tackle the core of mcdougall’s claim, because the study (and the data it was used to generate) spans an age range that begins at 35. it contains no information about how an athlete’s performance (especially for a multi-hour endurance event) may have improved from 19 to 35. it also suffers from the minor flaw that by being based on world best times, it doesn’t necessarily reflect the experience that a more average person may experience - lower peaks, but also less variation from “best” to “dead”.

the NY marathon vs. world age group records are not in conflict if you take the view that at the early end of the age spectrum, the bell curve kicks in even more dramatically than later in life - that is, the very best 19 year is very, very much better than the typical 19 year old (i.e. variance amid 19 year olds who actually run is larger than the variance amid 29 or 69 year olds who actually run). this is mildy defensible if one takes a view of physiological and psychological development as an accumulative/additive process that can occur much faster in some individuals than in others, but has a fairly well defined end-point.

i suspect that mcdougall is wrong in this claim, but just as he failed to offer citations to support it, he also didn’t make it precise enough to know exactly what he’s claiming. i don’t even know if he’s making a claim about 64 olds in general or just those who remain physically active. the idea that the average 64 year old is in similar shape to the average 19 year old is clearly ridiculous.

16

I would contend that it is very likely that, for whatever reason, the NY Marathon attracts higher end 64 year olds than it does higher end 19 year olds, if anything evidenced by the fact that those are elite times for 64 years olds (not too far off world records) and more or less pedestrian times for 19 year olds.

As I said before, it really looks like he cherry picked his data.

17

i suspect that mcdougall is wrong in this claim, but just as he failed to offer citations to support it, he also didn’t make it precise enough to know exactly what he’s claiming. i don’t even know if he’s making a claim about 64 olds in general or just those who remain physically active. the idea that the average 64 year old is in similar shape to the average 19 year old is clearly ridiculous.

Good point. I think you are right in that he didn’t actually claim that 64 = 19, only that that’s how the NYC marathon panned out. From there I guess we can draw our own conclusions, which I think might be more reasonable to say that if you stay active you should be able to continue to run at a relatively high level on into your 60s. I have no doubt that any actively running 64 year old of at least average talent can out run a vast majority of 19 year olds in long distances (considering that most 19 year olds *don’t run).

Maybe the only point he was making is that even old people can be part of a tribe that lives by going on endurance hunts.

18

the reason for this is in the physiology of the human body. Endurance comes at a later age with training and years of activity. that is why you see some of the pro triathleltes in their late 30’s or early 40’s.

also, the fact that we are more efficient at running than animals is fascinating. this has certainly been proven with tribes like the Kalahari (misspelled) or through history/prehistory. we have it way too easy now and way too much comfort in our western society.