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The Slowest Generation
Younger Athletes Are Racing With Less Concern About Time
A lack of competitiveness among younger runners is turning some races into parades.
Chevrolet News Photo/European Pressphoto Agency
Saying I finished in the top 15% of my age group in last month's
Chicago Triathlon is like bragging that I could outrun your grandpa. My
age group was 50 to 54.
But against the entire sprint-distance field, I finished in the top 11%. That's right: Team Geriatric outperformed the field.
I'd
love to report that this reflects the age-defying effects of triathlon.
But my hair is gray, my hearing is dull and my per-mile pace is slower
than it used to be, even at shorter distances.
Rather, this old-timer triumph is attributable to something that fogies throughout the ages have lamented: kids these days.
They're
just not very fast. "There's not as many super-competitive athletes
today as when the baby boomers were in their 20s and 30s," said Ryan
Lamppa, spokesman for Running USA, an industry-funded research group.
While noting the health benefits that endurance racing confers
regardless of pace, Lamppa—a 54-year-old competitive runner—said, "Many
new runners come from a mind-set where everyone gets a medal and it's
good enough just to finish."
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Now,
a generational battle is raging in endurance athletics. Old-timers are
suggesting that performance-related apathy among young amateur athletes
helps explain why America hasn't won an Olympic marathon medal since
2004.
Of the two Americans who won marathon medals that year, one— Deena Kastor,
who is now 40—was the top finishing American woman at the marathon
World Championships in Moscow last month. The other—38-year-old Meb
Keflezighi—was the top American male finisher at the London Olympics
marathon last year. Hunter Kemper, the 37-year-old winner of last
month's Chicago Triathlon, remains arguably America's top triathlete as
he aims for his fifth Olympics.
"Why isn't any younger athlete knocking them down a notch?" said Lamppa.
Some
observers see larger and scarier implications in the declining
competitiveness of young endurance athletes. "This is emblematic of the
state of America's competitiveness, and should be of concern to us all,"
Toni Reavis, a veteran running commentator, wrote in a blog post this
week entitled "Dumbing Down, Slowing Down."
Median U.S. marathon
finishes for men rose 44 minutes from 1980 through 2011, according to
Running USA, and last year nearly 75% of road-race finishers were 44 or
younger, with 25- to 34-year-olds representing the largest age group.
Last
month, Competitor Group Inc. announced it would no longer pay
appearance fees for professional runners to compete at its Rock 'n' Roll
marathon and half-marathon series in the U.S. CGI still pays travel
expenses and more for the elite.
But to some observers, that change contributed to a growing embrace of mediocrity.
"If
you're going to get just as much praise for doing a four-hour marathon
as a three-hour, why bother killing yourself training?" asked Robert
Johnson, a founder of LetsRun.com, adding that, "It's hard to do well in
a marathon if your idea of a long session is watching season four of
'The Wire.'"
But instead of fighting back, the young increasingly
are thumbing their nose at the very concept of racing. Among some, it
simply isn't cool, an idea hilariously illustrated in a 2007 YouTube
Video called the Hipster Olympics. In those Games, contestants do
anything to avoid crossing the finish line—drink beer, lounge in the
grass, surf the Web.
Yet something remotely akin to that is
happening. Perhaps the fastest-growing endurance event in the country,
the Color Run, doesn't time participants or post results. "Less about
your 10-minute mile and more about having the time of your life, The
Color Run is a five-kilometer, un-timed race," says its website.
Then
there is Tough Mudder, a fast-growing series of obstacle-course
challenges that proudly dispenses with an endurance-racing staple: the
results page. "Since Tough Mudder is an event, not a race, we do not
post the finish times on our site," says the Tough Mudder website.
Arguing that results pages detract from camaraderie, Tough Mudder adds
that obsessing about finish times is "lame."
That idea sounds
downright un-American to Joe Desena, founder of the rival Spartan Race
obstacle-course series. His competitors are timed and their results
posted, with many aspiring to earn a slot in the Spartan World
Championship this weekend. Likening to communism events that promote
"hand-holding over competition," Desena said, "How well is that
everybody-gets-a-trophy mentality working in our schools?"
Desena
also contends that eliminating timing chips and results pages is a sure
way to increase profit—while shielding one's customers' names from
competitors. For Spartan, the cost of tracking and posting performances
is significant, he says. "If you can pull the wool over your customers'
eyes and convince them that communism is better, you can drop at least
$40,000 to your bottom line every race," he said.
Of course,
there are countless super-elite young athletes. And only because the
young have no need to prove they're not old was I able to outrace so
many of them last month. Still, apathetic competition offers little
comfort to some aging athletes.
After finishing last month's
Virginia Beach half marathon in the top 2% of the 50-54 age group,
Brendan Reilly was shocked to find he'd made the top 1% of the overall
field—despite running 27 minutes slower than the personal best he'd set
more than two decades earlier.
"I wasn't thrilled," said Reilly, a sports agent in Boulder, Colo., adding that "races are turning into parades."
Write to Kevin Helliker at kevin.helliker@wsj.com
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