A week or two back, which is to say the week of the 2013 NY City Marathon, a NY Times feature focused on marathon running's "Near Elites." These are the journeymen marathoners many of us know (and a few of us have been), the ones not quite good enough to be elite distance runners, who don't have the sponsors or the world-class speed, but who do have full-time jobs, and often families, and therefore all sorts of reasons not to train as carefully as they usually do or be as fast as they often are.
With top male marathoners now regularly running under 2:10, and sometimes under 2:05, the Near Elite is a proud and typically unheralded secondary fiddle in a huge and apparently growing athletic orchestra, a warrior who runs in the 2:20 - 2:40 range, yet is well aware that 2:29 (this author's PR) is now an incredible minute per mile shy of the men's world record pace of 4:41/mile! Thus, the Near Elite knows his place, and while it is clearly not at the edge of the starting line, huddled with the magazine-cover-shot masses of amazingly fast runners from across the globe, he is happy to tuck in just behind, hoping that an osmosis of talent can filter back and pull him along to a hallowed PR.
Yet the Near Elites aren't quite as near as they once were to the top, and this needs examining a bit. In previous articles I have touched on the burgeoning field sizes and the vastly larger number of huge endurance events occurring across the globe. At the marquee events in particular, gross participation seems to be the name of the game. The just finished 2013 NY City Marathon was the largest marathon ever - anywhere - with 50,000 entrants, many of whom paid upwards of $200 to strut their stuff in the Big Apple's five boroughs. You do the math. Yet as field sizes have stretched the tape measures toward XXL, you'd think there would be a proportional increase in the both the size and quality of the Near Elites, just as there has been at the very top. Not so.
The Near Elite article featured a local guy who had run NY City before, had a PR of 2:30, and was hoping to break into the Nearer Elites category by eclipsing 2:30, a goal of many Near Elites. What was most interesting, to this author at least, is that in his previous NY City marathon he'd run 2:37 to finish 64th overall while, a generation earlier, I'd run 2:29 to finish 72nd overall. Eight minutes faster to earn eight spots lower in one race do not a trend make. Yet I'm betting you'd find similar statistics in many of today's bigger races. Which begs the question: Is sport imitating life?
Legion are the articles about financial disparity. Maybe you, and me, mayors, cities, countries, even whole parts of the globe (like the Eurozone, from where I type) are worried about the growing schism between the haves and the have nots. This widening economic rift is a fact of life in many parts of the world; persistent and possibly prescriptive going forward in unfortunate ways, this growing gap has many worried.
Intriguingly, if you look closely at America's wealth disparity, the top 1% may be pulling ever farther away from the rest of the field, but the top 1% of that 1% group are pulling away much faster, soaking up unimaginable fortunes along the way, with consequences even paid pundits can't predict. Those in the now famous "1%" may be fortunate, but the real fortune lies at the top, which is to say that many of those in this economically elite group are actually losing ground on the true leaders of the pack. They accumulate wealth very fast indeed, but apparently not quite fast enough... not by a few decimal points, actually.
Art can imitate life. So apparently can sport. Near Elites, while good, are finding themselves further removed from the heaviest cream at top of the milk jug, yet at the same time they are finding less and less in common with the growing legions, battalions and myriads slogging through the 42.2 K behind them. In an endurance sports participatory universe seemingly ever expanding, the Near Elite remains the faithful moon, ancillary but quietly proud, dearly hoping not to lose orbital contact to the main attraction planet. Money or minutes, should we be concerned that virtually all of us are losing ground to the top few? I'm not sure, but it's an interesting parallel nonetheless.
With top male marathoners now regularly running under 2:10, and sometimes under 2:05, the Near Elite is a proud and typically unheralded secondary fiddle in a huge and apparently growing athletic orchestra, a warrior who runs in the 2:20 - 2:40 range, yet is well aware that 2:29 (this author's PR) is now an incredible minute per mile shy of the men's world record pace of 4:41/mile! Thus, the Near Elite knows his place, and while it is clearly not at the edge of the starting line, huddled with the magazine-cover-shot masses of amazingly fast runners from across the globe, he is happy to tuck in just behind, hoping that an osmosis of talent can filter back and pull him along to a hallowed PR.
Yet the Near Elites aren't quite as near as they once were to the top, and this needs examining a bit. In previous articles I have touched on the burgeoning field sizes and the vastly larger number of huge endurance events occurring across the globe. At the marquee events in particular, gross participation seems to be the name of the game. The just finished 2013 NY City Marathon was the largest marathon ever - anywhere - with 50,000 entrants, many of whom paid upwards of $200 to strut their stuff in the Big Apple's five boroughs. You do the math. Yet as field sizes have stretched the tape measures toward XXL, you'd think there would be a proportional increase in the both the size and quality of the Near Elites, just as there has been at the very top. Not so.
The Near Elite article featured a local guy who had run NY City before, had a PR of 2:30, and was hoping to break into the Nearer Elites category by eclipsing 2:30, a goal of many Near Elites. What was most interesting, to this author at least, is that in his previous NY City marathon he'd run 2:37 to finish 64th overall while, a generation earlier, I'd run 2:29 to finish 72nd overall. Eight minutes faster to earn eight spots lower in one race do not a trend make. Yet I'm betting you'd find similar statistics in many of today's bigger races. Which begs the question: Is sport imitating life?
Legion are the articles about financial disparity. Maybe you, and me, mayors, cities, countries, even whole parts of the globe (like the Eurozone, from where I type) are worried about the growing schism between the haves and the have nots. This widening economic rift is a fact of life in many parts of the world; persistent and possibly prescriptive going forward in unfortunate ways, this growing gap has many worried.
Intriguingly, if you look closely at America's wealth disparity, the top 1% may be pulling ever farther away from the rest of the field, but the top 1% of that 1% group are pulling away much faster, soaking up unimaginable fortunes along the way, with consequences even paid pundits can't predict. Those in the now famous "1%" may be fortunate, but the real fortune lies at the top, which is to say that many of those in this economically elite group are actually losing ground on the true leaders of the pack. They accumulate wealth very fast indeed, but apparently not quite fast enough... not by a few decimal points, actually.
Art can imitate life. So apparently can sport. Near Elites, while good, are finding themselves further removed from the heaviest cream at top of the milk jug, yet at the same time they are finding less and less in common with the growing legions, battalions and myriads slogging through the 42.2 K behind them. In an endurance sports participatory universe seemingly ever expanding, the Near Elite remains the faithful moon, ancillary but quietly proud, dearly hoping not to lose orbital contact to the main attraction planet. Money or minutes, should we be concerned that virtually all of us are losing ground to the top few? I'm not sure, but it's an interesting parallel nonetheless.
