Marathon Performance Depends on Pacing Oscillations between Non Symmetric Extreme Values

Jean-Renaud Pycke and Véronique Billat
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Jean-Renaud Pycke: UMR8071—CNRS-Laboratoire de Mathématiques et Modélisation d’Evry (LaMME), University of Paris-Saclay (Evry), 91037 Evry, France
Véronique Billat: Department of STAPS, University of Paris-Saclay (Evry), 91037 Evry, France

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 4, 1-19

Abstract: A marathon was recently run in less than 2 h by a man who ran the three fastest marathons ever recorded in a span of three years—Eliud Kipchoge—in the Tokyo Olympic games. Here, we demonstrate that the best marathons were run according to a pace distribution that is statistically not constant and with negative asymmetry. The concept of mirror race enables us to show that the sign of asymmetry is not due to sampling fluctuations. We show that marathon performance depends on pacing oscillations between extreme values, and that even the best marathons ever run differ and can be improved upon. The utilization of extreme values and oscillations allows for recovery and optimization of the complementary aerobic and anaerobic metabolisms. Our findings suggest new ways to approach the pacing for optimizing endurance performance.

Keywords: extreme values; symmetry breaking; pacing strategy; optimization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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