Elite marathon runners: do East Africans utilize different strategies than the rest of the world?

Jamie Emerson () and Brian Hill
Additional contact information
Jamie Emerson: Salisbury University

Economics Bulletin, 2017, vol. 37, issue 3, 1851-1860

Abstract: This paper investigates the recent dominance of East African runners at the marathon race distance. Do East Africans utilize different race strategies than runners from other countries? We find that runners who pursue the three strategies of (1) running a negative split, (2) running with the lead pack at the 30 kilometer mark of the marathon, and (3) running faster from 30 kilometers to 35 kilometers than the previous 5 kilometer split (25 kilometers – 30 kilometers) are more likely to win the race and to finish in the top three. We also find that East Africans are more likely to successfully utilize these strategies than runners from other countries.

Keywords: Race Strategies (Tactics); East African; Elite Athletes; Endurance Running (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L8 Z0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-08-31
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.accessecon.com/Pubs/EB/2017/Volume37/EB-17-V37-I3-P168.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-17-00576

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economics Bulletin from AccessEcon
Bibliographic data for series maintained by John P. Conley ().