Correspondence (letter to the editor): Study Group Was not Representative

I read the well founded analysis of marathon running times with great interest. However, I was not able to share the authors’ main conclusion—“good news for our sedentary and aging society.” No one would contradict the scientifically proven fact that physical exercise can result in a substantially improved physical performance even in the 6^th and 7^th decades of life. However, what the authors describe in their article is primarily a sociological phenomenon. They analyzed a small proportion of the population—well educated, health conscious, with an affinity for sport, and, with increasing age, primarily male. After starting their career and families, the proportion of persons who pursue sports activities in any decade of life continually falls in the respective age cohort in the total population. The proportion of marathon runners who are older than 60 (n=12 558+x) among the total number of physically active persons older than 60 in the population (n=21 186 785 in 2009[1]) is about 0.6 per 1000—this means that one marathon runner corresponds to 1600 inactive peers. This is particularly notable in this study with regard to women (age >70, with n=62). By contrast, Germany’s population is continually getting more overweight (Federal Statistical Office, microcensus 2005 [2]) and the patients in accident and emergency-orthopedic wards older and more multimorbid (Bavarian Working Group for Quality Assurance [3]). A current study of the quality of care in old people’s residential homes is able to evaluate with any degree of scientific validity only one-third of its residents owing to a low score in the mini mental state test.

The description of the ability to run marathons in a tiny subgroup of the total population shows astonishing performance data, but does not allow any reverse conclusion about the total population. The data with regard to this are not as optimistic. The athletic potential of women, strata of the population with less access to education, and blue collar workers all have enormous scope for improvement.