Penalty: Men vs Women

aviendha

Hi - myself and himself have committed this year to running a marathon. We've both run a couple of half-marathons in the past, and this year have a bet to see who can get the fastest time in a marathon....within a certain penalty limit.

I know it's hard to compare like with like, but we're trying to gauge what an appropriate time penalty to apply to him, being a man and most likely to run a faster time than myself...

Forfeit proceeds are going to Charity, but we are both very competitive so I'd like the time penalty to be as fair as possible.

Any idea where I could get a rough average of this information?

Thanks a mill....

aburke

http://www.marathonguide.com/fitnesscalcs/ageequivalent.cfm

It might be of some use.

plodder

I had a copy of the complete result list for the 2004 Dublin marathon, so for pig iron, I put the top 100 male and female finishers (in the senior, ie. non veteran category) into a spreadsheet to see how the times compare.

The average male time was 2:43 and the average female time was 3:30, which is a difference of about 22%

So, you could use that percentage value as a yardstick .....

hunnymonster

problem with that analysis is that there are far fewer women than men in most marathons. It might be more appropriate to take the average of the top 10% men and top 10% women?

robinph

I think you would need to do it by %'ages alright due to difference in the numbers competing. Also if Paula is in it the set of numbers your looking at then pick another race as she would skew the difference even more.

plodder

hunnymonster wrote: »

problem with that analysis is that there are far fewer women than men in most marathons. It might be more appropriate to take the average of the top 10% men and top 10% women?

Good point. In those categories men outnumbered women by around 3 to 1. So by comparing the top 100 men with the top 30 women, the avg. difference was reduced to about 15%, which does sounds more reasonable ...

Stupid_Private

You could go with age graded calculators.

A 30 year old male running a 3.30 hour marathon would score 70%
A 30 year old female running a 3:49 hour marathon would score 70%

It does depend on the level though as a 2.30 male marathon would equate to a 2.44 female marathon.

Here's the link

aviendha

Thanks a mill for all the replies peoples!! Am working on the % game.. like I said, doesn't have to be an exact science (I'm trying to veer away from the bell curve normal distribution pitch!) but something that's relatively reasonable! Cheers!