Runners Then and Now

When I was young, I ran a 5:02 mile, 16:00 three miles, and several sub one hour ten miles.  Those are good times but they would not impress real runners.  Cameron Stracher starts his Wall Street Journal article with the in-your-face title, “Slow and Steady Loses the Race: U.S. runners are pokier than they were in 1979.”  This title gave me perverse pleasure and pride.  He begins,

This summer, more Americans than ever have laced up their running shoes and entered road races. That's the good news. The bad news is that America's runners have never been slower, fatter or more out of shape. How is this possible? How can running enjoy a new wave of popularity while the sport itself has never been in more trouble? The answer lies in the peculiarity of foot races on the road.

As I read, I began to doubt that my generation was faster than today’s.  I thought that the explanation was easy.  If there are more runners, it is very likely that the increase came from slower runners joining races.  Stracher fires his first salvo pointing out that median times for marathons have increased from 3:32:17 in 1980 to 4:13:36 in 2009.  But my explanation is insufficient to cover all his observations.  In his second salvo he points out that fewer runners are matching past marathon qualifying times and that there are fewer “sub-elite” or club runners. 

After my first doubt was shot down, but I noted that he offers no data beyond slower times to support his contention that “America’s runners have never been slower, fatter or more out of shape.”  Before I accept his claim, and acknowledge my generation as America’s fastest, I want to know if the average age of American runners has increased with the general population, or if there are a larger percentage of women runners.  In a flight of fancy, I would like more direct evidence like the average weight, height, or percent body fat or runners then and now, but doubt that such evidence exists.  Indirect evidence will have to do.   

Why are runners slower?  Stracher suggests counter intuitively that the first running boom in the 1970’s is the culprit.  Americans began to view running as a pastime and not a sport.  I am looking forward to his book on the running craze of the 1970s.  I was there.  I wonder if my data point fits his aggregate data.  I hope he elaborates on his hypotheses about American runners.