archaean: Elite Women Getting Older, and Better

After nearly a decade of running marathons — 19 races that add up to 497.8 pounding miles — Catherine Ndereba insists there is one thing she cannot live without. Not her coach. Not her agent. Not even the occasional Philly cheese steak, her reward for training 90 to 100 miles a week.

“When I was younger, I never used to have a lot of fatigue in my muscles — never,” Ndereba, 36, said recently in Norristown, Pa., her training base in the United States. “But now, if I don’t have a massage at least twice a week, I feel like I can’t move. I don’t feel old; I still feel like I’m in my 20s. But, yes, sometimes, there are a few signs that my body doesn’t agree.”

Ndereba, a four-time winner of the Boston Marathon and two-time Olympic silver medalist for Kenya, is among the 41 elite women in the field for Sunday’s New York City Marathon. And many of them have probably noticed uncharacteristically sore muscles or creaky joints.

Their average age is about 33, one of the oldest groups of elite women, if not the oldest, in the history of the race, organizers said. Two-thirds are 30 or older, including the favorites Paula Radcliffe, 34, and Gete Wami, 33. Nearly half are 35 and older.

“It’s unusual to see so many really good women of that age, but this is probably a fluke that they are all so good at once,” Mary Wittenberg, the race director, said. “I do expect to see a changing of the guard because we are probably looking at the end of a superstar generation.”

“Gete, Paula, Catherine are in a class by themselves, but time is ticking,” she added. “They are probably getting close to the point of diminishing returns.”

Those runners are not pioneers in racing marathons — and often winning — into their 30s. At that age, many distance runners are in their prime, some experts say, because their bodies are accustomed to the mileage required to train for the 26.2-mile races.

Many also started running marathons only after they had built a foundation in shorter races, to prevent burnout and injuries. A widespread belief is that elite runners have a limited number of marathons in them, so they also tend to use their time in competition wisely.

Grete Waitz was 35 in 1988 when she won her ninth New York City Marathon. The year before, the British runner Priscilla Welch was a seemingly ancient 42 when she crossed the finish line first.

This year in Beijing, Constantina Tomescu of Romania won the Olympic marathon at 38. In September, Irina Mikitenko, 36, won the Berlin Marathon. She began running marathons last year, she said, because she was mentally tough enough to do so after having two children.

To some, the current wave of older women succeeding in marathons makes sense. More women are running the distance these days, they say, so more they are training at a higher level.

More women are also sticking with the marathon because of the economic incentive, said Ryan Lamppa, a researcher for Running USA, a nonprofit organization that tracks trends in distance running.

Top runners like Radcliffe and her peers receive six-figures appearance fees from big-city marathons, agents and race directors said. So a hefty payday is guaranteed just for showing up and finishing. Five of the women in Sunday’s field have made at least $1 million in prize money in their careers, according to the Association of Road Racing Statisticians. The top 10 women on Sunday will also receive prize money.

First place is worth $130,000 of the $301,000 purse, second place $65,000, third $40,000, fourth $25,000, fifth $15,000 and so on down to $1,000 for 10th place. In addition, bonuses ranging from $5,000 to $70,000 are paid for reaching certain time standards.

Twenty years ago, though, the total women’s purse in the New York City Marathon was $134,500, organizers said, and a decade ago, it was $165,000.

“If the sport was back in its amateur days, you definitely wouldn’t see as many 30-plus marathoners than you do now,” Lamppa said. “I don’t think they’re staying in the sport purely for the love of it. It’s a nice gig if you can do it long enough. But, you know, it’s a painful gig, too.”

To make a decent living at marathon running in your 30s and 40s, Lamppa added, athletes must remain fast enough to finish in the top 10. That could be a challenge for an aging athlete.

Hirofumi Tanaka, an exercise researcher at the University of Texas, said endurance athletes had the edge over sprinters as time marched on. He said sprinters peaked at 22 to 24, and marathoners peaked at 28 to 31. Some marathoners reach peak performance around 35, he added. The trick is finding the way to extend that time frame.

High-level marathoners should be able to do so, said Dr. Vonda Wright, a professor of orthopedics at the University of Pittsburgh. In a study published in March that looked at male and female American masters record-holders in distances from 100 to 10,000 meters for the past 50 years, Wright said she found less than a 1 percent decline per year in performance as they aged from 30 to 50.

The slow-twitch muscles needed in endurance sports do not decline significantly until athletes reach their late 30s or early 40s, she said. But fast-twitch muscles that sprinters rely on begin deteriorating in their late 20s and early 30s.

“If you are a runner in your 30s or 40s, it’s really a sweet spot to be in,” Wright said. “You’ve trained longer, so your heart works more efficiently and your lungs exchange oxygen more efficiently. You know your race, you know your body. Biology might not have taken over yet, so you don’t see that muscle physiology decline that would prevent them from being amazing.”

That decline, however, could happen any day — and there is no telling when the athlete will notice it. Waitz, one of the best female marathoners, said from the time she was 35 until she retired at 38, she could sense her body changing.

“The end sneaked up on me,” she said.

After 10 years and 20 marathons, Waitz said, it took longer to recover from races. She became injured more easily. But she said the change in the mental aspect of the marathon prompted her retirement.

Waitz said she did not feel as hungry to win as she once had, partly because she sensed that her body was not as strong.

“I always say that there are two ages of a person: a running age and your biological age,” she said. “So after all those marathons, I was old as a runner but still young as a person. I still felt fast, but I was not. It was time for me to go.”

Ndereba, a marathoner since 1999, said she had no idea when she would retire.

“Now why would I quit if I can still finish in the top five?” Ndereba said. “Why would I quit when there are people out there, so many people, who would want to run like Catherine, but they can’t? I will run until I feel I can’t do it anymore.”

With her massage therapist, she said, she still feels much faster and stronger than she did at 26, when she made her marathon debut in Boston.

Ndereba said she was in so much pain after finishing sixth in that race that she needed to be carted off in a wheelchair.

“So now, I don’t need a wheelchair when I finish,” she said with a smile. “It shows that I’m only getting better, right?”

nytimes.com

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Sunday, November 2, 2008

Elite Women Getting Older, and Better

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