KINEMATICS OF MARATHON RUNNING. PART TWO: DISTRIBUTION OF VELOCITY

Abstract

The paper presents description of kinematics of marathon courses’ data for men and women. The following courses were taken into account: Edmonton 2001, Boston 2002, Berlin 2002, Athens 2004. The purpose of the paper was to investigate tactics of running by mechanical data. The highest mean velocity obtained for the whole distance was 5.55 m/s for men and 5.00 m/s for women. Usually second half of a distance was run slower, but few first runners at the finish ran second half of a distance faster. Not earlier than after 30 – 35 km correlation coefficient between 5 km fragment time and the end time surpassed 0.8 value. Usually first ten runners ran with lower absolute acceleration value.