Western States is a JOKE!! - Kilian Jornet

lolzwut? wrote:

Here's your ultra-marathoning reality, bitch.

Throw down a $3 million bounty for first with five-deep prize money in two yeaars and have twenty of the top Africans train for Western States. Fly them in and give them a week's stay plus $20K in appearance money so they get something out of the deal.

Then you will see what real RUNNERS can do on what amounts to a decent cross country course like Western States. Hint, they would ameliorate the course record by hours, have done their interviews, showered, banged your wife into oblivion (or daughters if she is too uggos), eaten two steaks chased by Dos Equis beer, and have boarded their flights back to Nairobi and Addis Ababa, all by the time your ultra heroes come lurching across the line.

POD.

Africans don't race on gnarly cross country courses. Gnarly trail running means a single track trail covered in rocks and roots. For a vast majority of the race. Not saying it's better or worse than anything else, just educating you on a topic you clearly misunderstand. For a gnarly course go up to Northern Minnesota and run on the Superior Hiking Trail. They have ultras up there, give one a shot and then tell me how gnarly the world cross courses are.

ummmmm.........ever heard of Stephen Muzhingi????

Well you ultra guys consider Dean Karnazes "elite" and he can barely break 3:00 for a marathon. Ed Whitlock could crush him in his mid-70s and Paula Radcliffe would do the equivalent of lap him every mile in her WR effort. Ultra guys are nowhere near elite Africans, their best are two hours or more behind at Western States and that is being too kind.

You might want to put a muzzle on windbag joggers like Dean-o if you want any credibility.

lolzwut? wrote:

Well you ultra guys consider Dean Karnazes "elite" and he can barely break 3:00 for a marathon.

Ultra guys do not consider Dean Karnazes "elite". They consider him "annoying as all hell".

Ameliorate? Sometimes a thesaurus can betray you. To make better as in less painful, not faster.

lolzwut? wrote:

Here's your ultra-marathoning reality, bitch.

Throw down a $3 million bounty for first with five-deep prize money in two yeaars and have twenty of the top Africans train for Western States. Fly them in and give them a week's stay plus $20K in appearance money so they get something out of the deal.

Then you will see what real RUNNERS can do on what amounts to a decent cross country course like Western States. Hint, they would ameliorate the course record by hours, have done their interviews, showered, banged your wife into oblivion (or daughters if she is too uggos), eaten two steaks chased by Dos Equis beer, and have boarded their flights back to Nairobi and Addis Ababa, all by the time your ultra heroes come lurching across the line.

lolzwut? wrote:

Well you ultra guys consider Dean Karnazes "elite" and he can barely break 3:00 for a marathon.

stfu already, no one thinks of dk as "elite"... wardian, on the other hand, just ran a 2:17...

There are several 2:15-2:35 marathoners in the typical decent trail ultra. No not world elite road runners, but very solid.

The difficulty of trail running is on steep and rocky terrain. These runners etc are specifically adapted for this. Yeah, running up and down mountains at 10 minutes a mile may seem slow on paper. Try doing it on a loose surface, at altitude, and at a 10% or higher grade. Then keep doing it a few hours. It gets really hard. Then imagine doing it another 12 hours. Not really to be taken lightly.

All that said I imagine some elite EAs could light up some of these courses if properly motivated. However I don't think they could take more than 25-50 minutes off the average 100 mile CRs. Even that is likely generous.

lolzwut? wrote:

Well you ultra guys consider Dean Karnazes "elite" and he can barely break 3:00 for a marathon.

Neither can Usain Bolt. Do you not consider him an elite?

lolzwut? wrote:

Here's your ultra-marathoning reality, bitch.

Throw down a $3 million bounty for first with five-deep prize money in two yeaars and have twenty of the top Africans train for Western States. Fly them in and give them a week's stay plus $20K in appearance money so they get something out of the deal.

Then you will see what real RUNNERS can do on what amounts to a decent cross country course like Western States. Hint, they would ameliorate the course record by hours, have done their interviews, showered, banged your wife into oblivion (or daughters if she is too uggos), eaten two steaks chased by Dos Equis beer, and have boarded their flights back to Nairobi and Addis Ababa, all by the time your ultra heroes come lurching across the line.

This would be the best answer to the "what if you had 1 billion dollars" thread.

DontFeedTheTroll wrote:

lolzwut? wrote:

Well you ultra guys consider Dean Karnazes "elite" and he can barely break 3:00 for a marathon.

Ultra guys do not consider Dean Karnazes "elite". They consider him "annoying as all hell".

Its non runners with no to very little first hand knowledge of running that consider him elite.

lolzwut? wrote:

Here's your ultra-marathoning reality, bitch.

Throw down a $3 million bounty for first with five-deep prize money in two yeaars and have twenty of the top Africans train for Western States. Fly them in and give them a week's stay plus $20K in appearance money so they get something out of the deal.

Then you will see what real RUNNERS can do on what amounts to a decent cross country course like Western States. Hint, they would ameliorate the course record by hours, have done their interviews, showered, banged your wife into oblivion (or daughters if she is too uggos), eaten two steaks chased by Dos Equis beer, and have boarded their flights back to Nairobi and Addis Ababa, all by the time your ultra heroes come lurching across the line.

The record books in almost every sport would be rewritten if you put $3,000,000 on the table. It doesn't make running 100 hilly miles at significant altitude "easy"

haha YO wrote:

carrion wrote:

The record books in almost every sport would be rewritten if you put $3,000,000 on the table. It doesn't make running 100 hilly miles at significant altitude "easy"

Name one other one.

I disagree with carrion's use of "every sport" as obviously it would not effect records in big time professional sports, but lots of secondary sports such as long distance swimming, long distance biking (Say the US coast to coast record), maybe speed golf could have the records broken.

i think most guys here get it that ultra running is a totally different sport from even marathon running...

that said, i think that running any event from 10k on up at max pace while peaked can leave any runner worth his salt pretty well destroyed

Well, ultra-marathoning is not easy. 100 miles at 9 minute pace is pretty difficult. If you are talking of those runnng 12 minute miles, then you are talking of those runners running 4 hr marathons.

I have run with Kenyans(2'15 marathon PR's) in rough trails, and they can go up trails fairly esily, but they have plenty of trouble going downhill. They are not used to the twisting and turning of trail running and they are very prone to injury, ankle and knee, from coming down too fast.

They flew by me going up (5'7" 145lbs for me, 6' 150lbs and 5'5 120lbs for them) and i did the same to them going down hill. We would regroup on flats and do the same on all the climbs and drops.

And weather changes are very hard for them, they are so used to the warm climate.

And no DK is not elite, he does more publicity for the sport than anyone else but he is not or will be elite.

Most people realize that WS is one of the "easier" 100 mile trail races in the West.

Here are profiles comparing WS with Leadville, Wasatch, Leadville, AC, and Hardrock.

http://www.run100s.com/profiles.htm

Wasatch and AC are definitely harder courses than WC and Hardrock is in a completely different category. Hardrock is probably the most difficult course in the country that people actually complete (ignoring Barkley).

Hardrock is also much more difficult to complete than Badwater. I would guess that half of the runners that complete Badwater every year would not finish Hardrock.

Hardrock is much more difficult to complete than Marathon Des Sables as well. Most people that can run a decent marathon are capable of finishing MDS and Badwater, but Hardrock requires something more.

i say again...ummmmm.........ever heard of Stephen Muzhingi???? Moses Mosop? Geoffrey Mutai?

numiler22 wrote:

I have run with Kenyans(2'15 marathon PR's) in rough trails, and they can go up trails fairly esily, but they have plenty of trouble going downhill. They are not used to the twisting and turning of trail running and they are very prone to injury, ankle and knee, from coming down too fast.

You make a good point about the downhills. What many don't realize is that a lot of these races are won on the downhills. And downhills negate a main advantage of the fastest road and track runners: efficiency of form.

Running downhill on trails requires a lot of braking and changing stride and it has to be practiced. There is no reason to believe that the top road guys are any better running down a steep rocky trail than anyone else. And WS is a downhill course.

There have been pretty fast marathon guys that have attempted WS. Wardian only finished 15th when he ran it a couple of years ago. He finished 3 hours behind Koerner, who has a marathon pb in the 2:40s.