outsiderunner wrote:
I do not think anyone has said that Vail should have kept pace with the former WR holder. I think much of Vail, and I could have seen him finishing in fifth, behind Meb (as stated above). I also noted that I could be missing something here, and perhaps I am.
For me, being 11 years younger than Meb, with 150 mile weeks, good track work, and what seems a good attitude meant something, and so I thought I would explore this matter.
Meb is a statistical anomoly both with his age and how well he finishes in races despite having a relatively slow PR (2:08:37 which IS STILL way faster than Vail), so stop comparing Vail to him. Your mistake is that you assume because Vail has ran 2:10:57 and trained hard for this race, all of a sudden he should be at a different level. Either that, or you aren't realizing how far away he is from the type of level it takes to finish top 5 in NYC. You can train hard and not improve at all. Or train hard and get worse. Improvement (especially at the marathon) is not a linear progression.
Ryan Vail should not have been 5th. He shouldn't have even been 9th, but there were people better than him who ran poorly. Look at the profile of the top 20:
1) Wilson Kipsang - 2:03:23, former WR holder
2) Lelisa Desisa - World silver medalist, 2:04:45 PR
3) Gebre Gebremariam - 2:04:53
4) Meb - Olympic silver (2004), has won NYC and Boston, 2:08:37 PR from last year
5) Stephen Kiprotich - REIGNING OLYMPIC AND WORLD CHAMPION; 2:07:20 PR
6) Geoffrey Mutai - 2:03:02 aided at Boston, 2-time NYC champ and CR holder
7) Masato Imai - 2:09:30 on a course slower than London where Vail ran his 2:10:57
8) Peter Kirui - 2:06:31
9) Ryan Vail - 2:10:57 PR from less than a year ago on one of the fastest courses in the World
10) Nick Arciniaga - 2:11:30 PR
11) Yuki Kawauchi - 2:08:14 PR
12) Lusapho April - 2:08:32 PR
13) Birhanu Dare Kemal - 2:18:24 in NYC ... THIS is the first guy on this list who is truly worse than Ryan Vail. Nick Arciniaga is pretty much at the exact same level (in the marathon).
14) Micah Kogo - 2:06:56 PR
15) Danilo Goffi - 2:08:33 PR, but he's 41 so I guess we can cut him some slack
16) Stephen Shay - 2nd guy on this list who is worse than Ryan Vail
17) Michael Kipyego - 2:06:48 PR
18) Negash Abebe Duki - 2:11:14 PR
19-20) Two other guys worse than Ryan Vail
What's the point? Even if Vail was in 2:09 shape and executed a perfect race (and that's a stretch since 2:10:57 to 2:09:00 is a big jump at this level and it's VERY hard to get the marathon 100% right), then best case scenario, he was the 12th best guy in this race. And that's not even counting anyone who DNFd or finished outside the top 20 since I didn't look into that.
And all those other guys in this race were training extremely hard putting in the miles too. Realistically, Vail could have ran an average race and still finished 15th. So to finish 9th is actually an extremely good race for him and better than he technically should have finished. For him to finish top 5 would have just been insane. He would have had to beat the current World and Olympic champion who is about 4-minutes faster than him, not to mention 2:03:02 man G. Mutai and 2:06 man Peter Kirui.
Vail ran a great race and deserves props. He has done nothing (in any of his 4 marathons) to indicate he should have finished any better than he did.