For Aging Runners, a Formula Makes Time Stand Still
By David Leonhardt
The New York Times
October 28, 2003
 For
hundreds of runners, the New York Marathon on Sunday will bring the same
dispiriting experience. Setting out to beat a personal best established
when their legs were years younger, they will fall short and become
convinced that they simply did not run a good enough race.
Dr. Ray C. Fair knows the agony, and he has a soothing explanation.
Dr. Fair is a professor of economics at Yale best known for devising a
mostly accurate formula to predict winners of presidential elections. He
is also the finisher of 17 marathons and counting, and he has turned his
social scientist's eye to a question that many a serious runner has
considered: how can you keep racing against yourself long after you can no
longer catch yourself?
His answer comes in the form of the most enjoyable research paper he
has written, he said, and a chapter in his recent book, "Predicting
Presidential Elections and Other Things" (Stanford University Press,
2002). Studying world records for runners all the way up to 92 years old,
Dr. Fair has developed tables that try to track the body's physical
deterioration and set an ever-moving target.
If a 50-year-old finishes the race on Sunday in four hours, 10 years
after having run it in 3 hours 45 minutes, for instance, she can know that
she is aging no more quickly than the world's fleetest runners.
"I'm right now at the age where things are getting worse in a
bigger way," said Dr. Fair, 61, using colloquial language to describe
the increase in second derivatives on his chart. "But there's always
something to shoot for. It keeps you young, psychologically, even when
you're not up there in the front anymore."
Having been published in The Review of Economics and Statistics, Dr.
Fair's work has an academic credibility rare in matters of sport. But his
tables are also part of a growing effort to help runners track their times
over a lifetime.
In 2001, the New York Road Runners Club began posting on its Web site (www.nyrrc.org)
"age graded" times that it calculates for all racers. Finishers
in the marathon on Sunday will be able to look up the equivalent of their
time for somebody at the peak running ages of the 20's and 30's. A
five-hour finish, after all, is much more impressive for a 70-year-old
than for a 30-year-old.
The New York Marathon's adjustments come from World Masters Athletics,
the governing body for many adult track meets. The group made an early
effort at adjusting times when it published a set of tables in the late
1980's. It plans to release a second revision of the tables in the next
year, said Norman M. Green Jr., chairman of the Masters Long Distance
Running Committee of USA Track & Field.
The new tables will include adjustments for women that are based on
their times, rather than on men's, as is the case with the current tables.
Dr. Fair became interested in the topic in the 1980's, when he realized
that the national circuit of masters races, open to men older than 40 and
women older than 35 and divided into age divisions, had created enough
data for him to perform the calculations. He studied the tables published
by the masters group and decided to approach the problem with the same
rigorous technique, known as regression analysis, that is at the heart of
much economic research, he said.
A few years earlier, in 1987, he broke three hours in a marathon for
the first time,
2:58:45
in
Philadelphia
, and he wanted to know his chances of doing so again.
"I was combining my statistical knowledge with the fact that I was
getting older and running slower," Dr. Fair said.
The answer, he found, was that he had a surprisingly good chance to do
so. The masters records showed that the world's best runners lost just a
minute or so a year in their 40's.
Two years after
Philadelphia
, however, he strayed slightly from his predicted path, finishing the New
York Marathon in
3:01:45
, and he has remained off the pace since then.
"After I finish a race," he said, "all my friends ask
me, `Are you on your regression line?' And I'm not quite on my regression
line." But he said he thought that the reason might have more to do
with his weaknesses as a runner, as well as a chronic thigh injury, than
his weaknesses as an economist. Other athletes who have used the tables
have been able to keep up with their predictions.
John Pistel, a fund-raiser for
Amherst
College
, had not competed in the long-jump in more than 30 years when he decided
to take up the sport again in 2000. As an undergraduate at the college in
the late 1960's, Mr. Pistel set the school record, which still stands, of
about 24 feet.
An
Amherst
economist who knows Dr. Fair gave Mr. Pistel a version of the tables for
the event. His best effort as a 52-year-old was seven feet shy of his
Amherst
record but almost precisely what Dr. Fair's table for the event predicted.
The reasons the body slows down are as numerous as they are obvious.
The heart can no longer pump blood at the same rate, and the lungs cannot
put oxygen into blood at the same pace, noted Dr. Edward G. Lakatta, chief
of the Laboratory of Cardiovascular Science at the National Institute on
Aging. Tissues cannot extract oxygen from blood as efficiently, and cells
are not as good at using oxygen after they receive it. Bones and joints
deteriorate as well, Dr. Lakatta said.
For marathoners, the process often begins to affect results shortly
after 30. It continues at a steady pace through the 50's, and accelerates
after that.
"There is a point," Dr. Green said, "when there is a
sudden decline."
Dr. Fair found it to be the age of 60, which is roughly consistent with
a long line of medical research. From 60 to 70, marathoners lose almost as
much time as they did in the 25 years from 35 to 60. Middle-distance
runners deteriorate faster at first, but they do not slow down as much as
marathoners in their 60's and 70's, he said.
Underlying all the research, of course, is an assumption that ordinary
people — or at least ordinary marathon runners — age at the same rate
as elite athletes.
If that is not the case, Dr. Fair's tables and the masters tables would
be setting the bar at the wrong place for most people.
Scientists have yet to agree on an answer, however.
"This is something people have argued a lot about over the
years," said Dr. Roy J. Shepard, an emeritus professor of applied
physiology at the
University
of
Toronto
who has written widely on aging and exercise. "My own view is that
very top people do age a little less rapidly."
Those athletes, Dr. Shepard said, are more likely to keep themselves in
peak physical condition and less likely to become injured performing a
given activity.
Dr. Lakatta at the National Institute on Aging comes from the opposite
camp. The gap between cardiovascular systems of top athletes and other
people in their 20's is greater than the gap when the two groups reach
their 80's, he said.
Either way, though, the age-adjusted tables offer a simple test for
athletes who would otherwise have little way to compare their results over
decades: are they keeping up with the very best performers in their event?
For Dr. Fair, the standard has switched, from 3 hours to 3 hours 20
minutes, according to his tables. He will have his next crack at it on
Nov. 23, at the Philadelphia Marathon.
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