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aging stats
Derick asked about aging stats for skiers as compared to runners, as
discussed in that NYTimes article. I did a bit of work on that for the Ontario Masters a few years ago, and, at the risk of boring some old-timers here, will try to summarize the thing below. After trying to get time for a few days to dig up the article itself by that Yale prof., I've decided to leave it and just go by what the newspaper guy wrote. I can't quite tell if the latter is an appreciator or a victim of the humour in confusing _regression analysis_ with the _regressing_ of us old farts! It's a bit surprising to see this kind of stuff turning up as refereed publications by academics, but maybe I'm being a snobbish mathematician, especially since I've not had a chance to read the real thing yet. Ken gave theoretical reasons why, if it did turn out to be the case, skiers and runners might have different rates of losing speed with age. It does sound from the Times article that the runners' and skiers' rate of aging deterioration is quite comparable. I seriously doubt that anybody can do this kind of study without a wide margin of error. I also have serious doubts about using world best times, in something like the marathon, because of widely varying courses, point-to-point courses with elevation differences, etc. You have to compare people in the same race, same day, use more than just the age category winners because of the existence of really exceptional individuals, but on the other hand, use only athletes from the top of the heap in each age category. I used quite a few years data from the Norwegian Birkebeiner (so results might be questioned for short races). The top 5 in each age category averaged is easy to get because of their use by the race in deciding who gets the "pin". Remember that, at least between ages 40 and 70, there are hundreds in each age category (5 year) for the men. (The women's data gave comparable results, but with less confidence because of smaller numbers.) Also, these top guys in Norway train like demons--Don Karig, who is probably the best of the N. Americans that do it regularly (top 20 this year as I recall), has some stories of 65 year olds ripping up and down mountain roads on rollerskis, through rain and hailstorms etc. for hours! So the dedication of the people I'm using is little if any less than that of national team athletes. A rough, but reasonably accurate, summary of the results is that you lose about 5% between ages 40 and 50, another 10% from 50 to 60, and another 15% from 60 to 70, so with 'compound interest', it's about 34% from 40 to 70. I wrote down a couple of formulas for that percentage, for example multiply 23 into (age - 40)divided by (90 - age) This gives ridiculous answers as you aproach 90 years old, but it's only intended for the range 40 to 70. I've been keeping my eye on the N. Birk. results each year since then, so there's about 12 years worth in there now, and no significant difference has emerged since the original stuff was done. Best, Peter |
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