Paul Petersen
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« Reply #1 on: September 29, 2009, 07:55:07 pm » |
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I think gaps at WR levels are much smaller than in "normal" circles, even NCAA. For example, during my running years in D-III, 15:00 5K men were a dime a dozen. The time would not qualify you for nationals. But a 16:51 woman would be rare, probably Top 3 in the nation most years. A 16:00 5K man would have been cut from our team, but a 17:59 woman would have been in the Top 5 on varsity. 15:00 would be more like an 18:00 equivalent, 16:00 is more like 19:30. So I think somewhere in the 3:00 range is actually quite accurate, when you are talking about everyone except the very top tier elites. Something else I also noticed during my college running (and also looking at Olympic Trials marathon qualifiers), is that the spread in a women's field is almost always much greater than the spread in the men's field. For example, for men's Olympic marathon Trials, top runner was about 2:08, worst runner was 2:22. In the women's field, top runner was 2:19 (I think), worst runner was 2:47. The gap between men's A and B standards were 2 minutes, the gap between women's A and B standards were something like 7 or 8 minutes. I saw similar trends for 5K and 10K qualifiers for NCAA. I'm rambling, but that's just what I've noticed over the years.
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