The Age-Related Performance Decline in Marathon Running: The Paradigm of the Berlin Marathon The variation of the marathon period by age group was recently used to model the decline in endurance with increasing age. However, the previously studied paradigms for marathoning come mainly from the USA. The aim of the present study was therefore to investigate the age of the highest performance in the marathon at a European race, the “Berlin Marathon”. In this marathon of 2008 to 2018, the maturities of 387'222 finishers (women n = 93'022; men n = 294'200) were investigated. Men were +1.10 km / h faster (10.74 ± 1.84 km / h compared to 9.64 ± 1.46 km / h) and +2.1 years older (43.1 ± 10.0 years compared to 41.0 ± 9.8 years) as women. The age of the highest performance in the Marathon was 32 years in women and 34 years in men in 1-year age groups and 30-34 years in women and 35-39 years in men in 5-year age groups. The performance of women and men in ages 60-64 and 55-59 corresponded to “90% of the running speed at the age of the maximum performance in the marathon.
Based on these results, the conclusion was concluded that, although the age of the highest performance in the marathon occurred in women earlier than in men, the observed age-related differences indicate that the decline in stamina could be different with increasing age depending on gender. The whole work can be found under https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/11/2022