marathon convergence

after a surprising third-place showing in the world track and field championships, kara goucher continues to outpace some of the greatest runners in the world. today, the duluth native bested paula radcliffe in london, posting a 1:06:57 half-marathon -- the quickest half ever for an american woman. dang. this is sort of like taking a late-bulls-period michael jordan off the dribble, or knocking ali to the canvas in the mid-1970s.

ms. radcliffe is legendary among distance runners, though she's been snarkily savaged in the british press and burdened by impossible expectations. she's run a few poor races and has yet to medal in the olympics, but she's been so much better than the competition for so long that she might be the greatest distance runner of all-time. most notably, she has held the women's marathon record for five years. moreover, the radcliffe effect is a major factor in the recent convergence of male and female marathon times graphed below.

this handy marathonguide.com figure charts male and female marathon record times since 1900. the brand new men's recordholder is haile gebrselassie, who covered 26.2 miles in 2 hours, 4 minutes, and 26 seconds today in berlin (a wicked pace of 4:45 per mile). the women's record had plateaued around 2:21 from the early 1980s the late 1990s, but has since dropped precipitously. ms. radcliffe holds the current women's record at 2:15:25, run in london in 2003, as well as the second, third, and fifth fastest women's marathon times. nobody has ever gotten within three minutes of her london time. to put these numbers in perspective, the quickest of my 20 marathons took about 3:27 and i've often been out there for 4 or more hours.

though there are many races to be run in the meantime, i can't wait to see ms. goucher and ms. radcliffe and mr. gebrselassie (and mr. webb and mr. konrad and ...) in beijing.