Sub-2:00 hr marathon?

[Tenderheart]

Where on earth but on this site could an achievement such as running a 2:03 marathon evoke such a profusion of crap. I'm certainly proud to be a member.

litefoot

[John B]

Nice article in the New York Times on this very subject.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/22/sp...=me&ref=sports

One quote I found interesting. In regard to Mutai's shaving time from his PR, which of course resulted in a world best if not world record:
"Such gains might not sound daunting to those who are not elite marathoners, but those at the top know what kind of math (and oxygen debt) they are up against. It required 24 years, after all, to move the marathon mark — incrementally — from 2:08:05 to just under 2:04."

Finally, there is a physiologist and statistician, who is also a marathon fanatic, who uses multiple regression analysis and some other statistical methods to predict when marathon records will be broken. He's remarkably accurate. To quote him,
" and projected that someone — probably an Ethiopian, Kenyan, Moroccan or Eritrean — would go under two hours in the spring of 2015.
That is much earlier than the projection of around 2030 that Martin said he came up with when he first crunched the numbers in 1996. That year, using the same methodology, he also predicted that a woman would break through the 2:20 barrier by the spring of 2001."

[The Counselor]

No offense but anybody who has convinced themselves that sitting at a computer pressing buttons is an athletic activity has stared at one too many LED screens. Now cross-stitch? There's some real hand-eye coordination! Knit one, pearl two.....

[Pedaling Fool]

Interesting article on why humans keep improving, but horses not so much. http://www.thepostgame.com/features/...why-not-horses

Humans Keep Getting Faster; Why Not Horses?

In a fifty-year span, the four-minute mile went from a human milestone to a starting point for elite runners. The record for the mile has dropped a whopping 17 seconds since Roger Bannister first broke four minutes in 1954.

But in horse racing, the two-minute mile-and-a-quarter is still the holy grail, almost 30 years after Secretariat ran 1:59.40 at the Kentucky Derby in 1973. Only one other racehorse, Monarchos in 2001, has broken the barrier at Churchill Downs since then.

Why?

Harness horses have gotten faster, but not thoroughbreds. In fact, if Secretariat somehow trotted onto your TV screen at the Belmont Stakes this weekend, he wouldn't look much different than the other horses. But if the fastest man in the world in 1984, American sprinter Carl Lewis, time-traveled and lined up next to the fastest man in the world now, Usain Bolt, he'd look kind of small. Lewis was 6'3" and 180 lbs.; Bolt is 6'5" and 207. Granted, bigger doesn't always mean faster. Maurice Greene was only 5'9". But over time, humans get taller and their strides get longer. Not so with horses.

Cynics will say the difference in human performance is drugs -- illegal drugs. And although that can't be ruled out completely, that charge is not necessarily fair and not necessarily true. And besides, there are rumors about horse juicing as well as human juicing. So it's best to look at some indisputable differences.

Like shoes. Track shoes have advanced rapidly over the years, and now weigh mere ounces. Michael Johnson's famous golden spikes from 1996 weighed a quarter-pound and would be considered on the heavy side next year at the London Games. But the horseshoes worn at the Belmont this weekend are basically the same as those worn decades ago. "Aluminum shoes have been around for 50 years now," says longtime racetrack veterinarian Luis Castro.

Now go beneath the shoes. Olympic runners a century ago, in the Chariots of Fire era, ran on the equivalent of loose gravel. Now the tracks are so advanced that they almost feel like trampolines beneath your feet. Horses run on dirt tracks, then as now. Put a horse on a polyurethane track, though, and watch times plummet.

But there's a reason horses still run on softer surfaces like grass and dirt, and that brings us to the biggest reason horses haven't gotten faster: their legs.

"A horse's legs can't really take the torque and pounding that a human leg can," says Castro. "It's like running on your middle finger and the hoof is the fingernail. The human foot is so complex, with multiple bones. The horse foot is one digit, one ligament, one tendon. There's a limit to what the horse can do without injuring itself."

And while a human leg injury can heal over time, racehorses who suffer serious leg injuries must often be put down. So while human racing is a win-or-lose affair, horse racing can be a life-or-death situation. Since so much money and time is invested in every top thoroughbred, it's not worth the extra risk to break a track record.

And let's remember, human runners are in their teens and 20s. Triple Crown contenders are age three. Humans want to be known as the "G.O.A.T." -- greatest of all time. Horses just want to run faster than the next horse -- when they want to run at all. A human is driven by the desire for fame and riches. A horse is motivated by a whipping and perhaps a feeding.

"People have tried interval training, like on humans," says Castro. "The problem is these horses are pretty young developmentally. A lot of times when you find something that works and doesn't hurt the horse, it's hard to change."

So although there are always rumors of performance enhancing drugs, it's not like horses can make incremental improvements like switching their diet. Don't expect the next Breeder's Cup contender to start eating lean chicken and turkey instead of oats. And racehorses are bred from only six percent of the total stock anyway, so the small gene pool doesn't really lend itself to generational change.

"We have made advancements," says Animal Kingdom trainer Graham Motion, "but there's only so much you can do with a horse."

[fiddlehead]

Ran the Laguna Phuket marathon (half) yesterday and although I thought my training was going so poorly that I switched to the half about 2 weeks before the race, I ended up having my best time in 5 years. 2:22 for the half.

I know it's not fast by any means but, keep in mind a cool day here is in the 80's.
Don't really know why I did better this year except perhaps because I didn't worry about it too much, and I trained a little EVERY day rather than normally I train hard 3-4 days a week. (this is in the month or month and a half leading up to any marathon or half)

Now, I am thinking about getting back into ultras again as I felt great at the end. (almost ran the 2nd half as fast as the first)
Problem is, it's so hot here, they only have one that I can find. a 100km next Feb.
Don't know if I want to start with the 100k but, well, if it's the only one................