Breaking3: Performance Characteristics Of A Sub-three-hour Septuagenarian Marathoner
Bibliographic record
Abstract
PURPOSE: In this case study we characterize the physiological profile of an elite 70-year old endurance runner who ran 2:55:18 at the Scotiabank Toronto Marathon on Oct 21, 2018, breaking his own American record for a 70-year old male by over two-minutes. METHODS: The athlete underwent a familiarization visit, health screening, and performance-testing. During the screening visit, a resting electrocardiogram and a fasted venous blood sample for biochemical analysis were obtained, and dual energy X-ray absorptiometry was performed to assess body composition. Performance testing consisted of graded treadmill running and indirect calorimetry for determination of maximum oxygen uptake (V̇O2Max), running economy testing (RE; 12-16 km/hr, 0% grade, 5 minutes each), and lactate threshold (LT; blood draws during running via venous catheter). RESULTS: Height was 176.5 cm, weight was 64.2 kg, and he exhibited exceptional cardiometabolic health for his age (body fat: 19.1%, blood pressure: 122/75 mmHg, blood glucose: 86 mg/dL, total cholesterol: 173 mg/dL, LDL: 84 mg/dL, HDL: 66 mg/dL, and triglycerides: 135 mg/dL). The only medication he reported taking was daily low-dose aspirin. His VO2Max was 46.9 mL/kg/min (max heart rate: 156, 104% age-predicted HRMax, RPE 19 out of 20). This VO2Max is exceptional for a 70-year old, but lower than what is expected for a performance-matched younger runner. He reached his LT at ~14 km/hr, which corresponded, to a VO2 of 44.0 mL/kg/min or 93.8% of his VO2Max, and a heart rate of 147, or 94% of HRMax. Near VO2Max levels of oxygen consumption were reached during the final stage of RE testing (16 km/hr, 46.0 mL/kg/min) and blood lactate also plateaued at 14.4 mmol/l. Running economy at the submaximal speeds was comparable to elite younger runners. CONCLUSION: Running a marathon in 2:55:18 requires a running speed of ~14.5 km/hr, a speed which is faster than this elite masters athlete’s laboratory-measured LT speed (14km/hr). Our data indicate that his ability to maintain a remarkably high percentage of his measured VO2Max (>90%) enable him to compete with performance-matched younger runners who have much higher VO2Max values.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".