"You can only read them and weep."

That quote is from an article about the most recent world record set by Ed Whitlock at the Toronto Waterfront Marathon. The author was referring to Whitlock's 22 single-age records, for 5K, half marathon, and marathon. The first part of the quote is "If you are a 60- or 70- or 80-year-old runner, ..." I guess one could respond that way to Whitlock's new record--3:56:38 at age 85--and all his other records. They do seem almost superhuman.

Or, one can read about these records and think, hey, that means the potential is there! It is humanly possible to run a sub-4 at age 85, or a sub-3 at age 74! All those records of Whitlock can either be fascinating statistics but totally unrelated to "regular" runners, or powerful motivation pulling one forward to test what a human body--what a specific human body--can do. How far into one's life can the adaptation curve be kept above the aging curve?

In the article, there's a comparison of the marathon time/5K time ratio between Galen Rupp and Whitlock. For Rupp, his bronze finish time at the Rio Olympics of 2:10:05 and his best 2016 5K finish of 13:21 result in a ratio of 9.78. For Whitlock, the two finish times of 3:56:38 and 24:04 result in a ratio of 9.82. What this ratio indicates is how well one maintains pace as distance increases from 5K to marathon. So, despite the 55-year difference in age, Whitlock maintains pace nearly as well as does Rupp. Me? My best marathon time this year was 3:55:00 (BQ run at Pocono this past May) and best 5K was 24:53, for a ratio of 9.44. Now, I ran this 5K during the post-Pocono recovery period, so the time was relatively slow, resulting in the relatively low ratio. If I use my 5K PR of 22:54 (2013), then the ratio becomes 10.26. My current potential marathon time, based on one of those race time predictors, is about 13 minutes faster than my PR (BQ), or 3:42:00. The following chart shows my predicted vs. actual times for five distances, based on my half marathon PR time. The predicted times are quite close to actual times, for all distances except the marathon. I regard this 13-minute potential as realistically realizable. I just haven't quite figured out what adjustments I need to make, to close this gap between predicted and actual marathon times. Anyway, if I use the predicted time of 3:42:00 with the 5K time of 22:54, then the ratio becomes 9.83, comparable to those of Rupp and Whitlock.

The bottom line to all this? Age really is just a number!