Running is a sport governed by the clock. The four-minute mile. The two-hour marathon. The 10-second 100m. Recreational runners – a country mile away from breaking these barriers – still chase times, pore over “splits” (minutes a mile or kilometre) and obsess over shaving minutes, or seconds, from their personal bests.
But change is afoot. Away from the business end of the sport, where records continue to tumble, running’s vital statistics are getting slower. Between 1986 and 2018, the average finish time for a 10km race slipped by about 12 minutes and for a marathon, by 39 minutes.
