Bandwagons and my first marathon

I am still thinking about the posts about some in the running community “not being welcoming” (whatever that means) to newer or slower runners.

That got me to thinking about what I saw recently, at an Indiana Fever WNBA game. Some lady had on a shirt that said “I watched women’s basketball when it wasn’t cool” and I had to smile. I did too: University of Texas from 1985-1991 then Bradley 1991-present. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing a woman’s final four (1986-1987…front row seats, no less!) and watching several highly ranked college teams, including several national championship teams.

But yeah, there are those new to the sport, either as fans or participants.

Back in 2022, the Illinois football team went 8-5, which, by Illini football standards, is a breakout season. And I remember long loyal fans posting stuff about bandwagon fans; many asked for tolerance of them.

And, I wonder if there is some of that going on between those who have been running a long time vs those new at races (e. g. the newbies lining up way too far up front, running/walking 4-5 abreast, coming to a complete stop without warning and realizing that there may be some behind them, going out way too fast and clogging things up, ESPECIALLY on trail runs, etc.)

And there are those like me, who kind of miss being with the “hard bodies” running the 6-7 minute miles and are now at the back of the pack with the slow, lame, overweight and fellow old people. I remind myself that walking slowly is a lot better than not being able to walk at all. I don’t love being this slow, but I love being able to walk and beat most of the current race cutoffs.

And I have to remember that, back in the day, I, in my current state, would have been too slow to make the cutoffs for many (most?) of the races. It was common to have 5 hour cut off for a marathon (San Antonio back in 1981) I ran a 3:48 and felt like an absolute failure.

So, without the army of slower runners, there would be no races for me to finish.

That leads me to think about my first marathon: the Maryland Marathon in 1980:

During my senior year in college, I decided to run the Maryland Marathon. That was me at about mile 18 or so; note the cotton shorts, cotton shirt and the New Balance 730s. Those were state of the art shoes back then.

Though I had several 50 mile weeks, I did no run over 15 miles. So the marathon was a bit of a rude shock. I hit mile 10 in 1:15, half way in 1:37 and slowed to 2:38 at mile 20. The finish: 3:33. Boy, was that last 10K a death march! It wasn’t just for me though; I managed to keep something like a shuffle (and flipped off a kid who said “here is a fat one”) and people were walking at this point; not everyone of course.

My buddies (who went to the race with me) ran 2:38 and 2:59. I ran 3:33 for 1054 out of 2229 men; the median time for the men was 3:36. There were 201 female finishers; two friends of mine finished in 3:30. The median female finisher was 4:05.

How do I know this? I still have the program!

I know that some racewalker finished in the 4:30-4:40 range; I remember asking “is that good?”

I knew that Olympic walkers walked at about 7 minutes per mile (3:05 pace) and didn’t know what a “good but not elite” walker would do.

Now, I wonder why the median time for both the women and men were so much faster than present day median times, even among the younger age groups.

It isn’t age, though the marathon used to attract a somewhat younger crowd; still the median Maryland Marathon time is about 30 minutes faster than the current median for men 20-40 by the above table that I linked to.

My guess is that more average people are attempting them now (it might have been more of a “sporting minded workout-bro thing”; something for people who had a background either in sports or in military physical fitness and the like. I have no data to back that up though.

Or could be that there was more of an emphasis on the 10K back then and people then moved up to the marathon after they’ve had some running under their belt.

And it could be that the current popularity of the marathon means that it is attracting those with no talent for it.

Example: one of my older buddies was a speed burner in college. He ran the then 440 yard dash in something like 47-48 seconds (slightly faster 400 meter time). Yet, his time for the 2 mile was over 13 minutes, 1 minute slower than I! And his marathon PR was about an hour slower than mine. He was faster than I ..a LOT faster but he has no slow twitch fiber at all (ok, very little of it).

Caution: when I talk about SLOW in a marathon, I am talking about people *I* might see were I to try one again; over 6 hours on a normal road course types. I used to consider 4-5 hours to be super slow but now, that is well beyond what I can do.