Purpose This study aimed to characterize and describe finishing time trends of the fastest 100 performers in the men`s and women`s marathon, half-marathon, and road 10-km each year from 2001 to 2019 and assess the underlying basis for recent performance improvements. Methods The top 100 performers for each sex, event, and year were partitioned into four arbitrary ranking groups: 1-10, 11-25, 26-50, and 51-100. The percent improvement in mean performance time for each year beyond 2001 was calculated for each ranking group, event, and sex. Multiple linear regression was also used to determine improvement trend for each ranking group, both sexes, and all events for each 3-yr period between Olympic years. Results In total, 11,400 performances in the marathon, half-marathon, and 10-km road races from 2001 to 2019 were analyzed. The 3-yr period preceding the original date of the Tokyo Olympics (2017-2019) accounted for 44% and 35% of the overall improvement in marathon time from 2001 to 2019 for women and men, respectively. The years 2017-2019 featured the largest average improvement of any 3-yr period and was the only period where nearly every ranking group in every event for both sexes improved. Conclusions The results suggest that recent world record performances are a result of overall circumstances affecting road racing (e.g., shoe technology) rather than the outstanding physiology of individual top runners, per se.
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