Abstract
Sprint and distance running have experienced remarkable performance improvements over the past century. Attempts to forecast running performances share an almost similarly long history but have relied so far on relatively short data series. Here, we compile a comprehensive set of season-best performances for eight Olympically contested running events. With this data set, we conduct (1) an exponential time series analysis and (2) a power-law experience curve analysis to quantify the rate of past performance improvements and to forecast future performances until the year 2100. We find that the sprint and distance running performances of women and men improve exponentially with time and converge at yearly rates of 4% ± 3% and 2% ± 2%, respectively, towards their asymptotic limits. Running performances can also be modelled with the experience curve approach, yielding learning rates of 3% ± 1% and 6% ± 2% for the women's and men's events, respectively. Long-term trends suggest that: (1) women will continue to run 10–20% slower than men, (2) 9.50 s over 100 m dash may only be broken at the end of this century and (3) several middle- and long-distance records may be broken within the next two to three decades. The prospects of witnessing a sub-2 hour marathon before 2100 remain inconclusive. Our results should be interpreted cautiously as forecasting human behaviour is intrinsically uncertain. The future season-best sprint and distance running performances will continue to scatter around the trends identified here and may yield unexpected improvements of standing world records.
Highlights
Sprint and distance running have experienced remarkable performance improvements for more than a century
We argue here that improvements in sprint and distance running may likewise follow experience curve patterns and could be understood as the outcome of experience accumulated by athletes, coaches and the manufacturers of equipment, nutrition and drugs
The season-best sprint and distance running performances of women and men, expressed in terms of speed, have improved by 67% ± 40% and 25% ± 8% in the time horizons covered, translating into average yearly improvement rates of 0.5% ± 0.1% and 0.2% ± 0.1%, respectively (Figure 1; Table S5 in the Supplemental Data)
Summary
Sprint and distance running have experienced remarkable performance improvements for more than a century. We seek to expand the existing time series analyses in a step-wise approach: First, we establish sets of performance data that cover up to one and a half centuries and apply an exponential time series analysis. We contrast this analysis by establishing so-called experience curves that explain the improvements in running performances with the accumulation of experience. We use the rates of performance improvements identified in the first two steps to forecast running performances until the year 2100 This analysis allows us to address interesting but controversial questions such as:
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