Guy runs a 3:46 marathon and claims to have done it off of no training. Is he lying, or is he just really talented?

Agreed. His 3:46 was in April 2015, so that was before the super shoes. Which makes his claimed "no training" story pretty fishy if he was indeed an average person with no talent.

An average sedentary young male doing 3-4 miles at his 8:38 min/mile pace is believable, assuming a healthy weight. But 26.2 miles is a whole different ballgame. For 99.99% of the sedentary population (and yes, doing only three runs in two months would be counted as sedentary), the wheels are going to fall off at mile 10 if not before.

My neighbor ran a 1:41 1/2 marathon in June on 2 days of trianing and a 1:34 1/2 marathon on 12 days of training in September. I think that is pretty good. He is 21 I think.

One of my friends ran under 2:30 in his first marathon with a 12 mile long run. So, yeah, I think someone could run 3:46 with literally no training and a moderately athletic build.

If you've never ran a marathon and you ran 4:20s in hs I bet you'd be well under it. A 3:46 is a jog walk effort.

Guy I know trained 4 months x 35 mpw and runs a 2 :46 with one prior marathon and no other running experience. So I have no problem believing someone can do it. Good genes also helps.

I ran in college (sub 29 10000m) after college I took about 5 years off with sporadic running. A friend mentioned that he wanted to run a marathon so I signed up (first marathon). About a month before I figured I’d better start running so I started doing about 30-mile weeks with one long run of 12. Went through the half at 7:00 pace and then miles 14 and 15. At 16 I fell apart and shuffled/walked the rest and ended up running 3:30-something. It was an awful experience but I would say, yes, it’s possible.

I've broken 4 6 times. 3 of the times were on 20-30 mpw and 2 of the times was off virtually no running at all.

3:46 is not indicative of any talent other than you avoided walking most of the way.

The most talented person I know ran 3:50 and brought it down to under 3:35. I know it’s not 3:33.7, but it’s a very good time

I wouldn’t be shocked if a few people here have run faster than 3:56 (mile). Not many, but a few

Really? How do you know they are non-runners? How do you know these non-runners are running 7 minute miles for an hour? How often do you see all these non-runners doing this?

My guess is that the number of people who can run a 3:46 marathon off of almost no training is extremely small. And those who can are doing some type of exercise that has some carryover.

I thought this was a typo... I know many non-runners just generally fit people who could do this with a little training... much less a guy who has done a half ironman which as mentioned previously is a heck of a lot harder than a marathon.

I took 3 months off due to health reasons (No walking even) and could have walked in the last 6 of a 20 mile long run and still been under that time. I'm not very fast by letsrun standards either..

In his version of events his legs don't start to complain seriously until about 23 miles. Regardless of underlying fitness and "talent", if your legs haven't had the conditioning that only time on your feet gives them then you are at that point by about 16 miles. I know a sub 1:50 800 guy who didn't do any training runs longer than a half who hit 20 miles in 2 hours then took 1:30 to do the last 6.2 due to frequently having to stop and let the legs recover whilst contemplating dropping out.

As long as he doesn't pull a "Rossi" and for his next marathon attempts, he's ok.

I ran 33:50 for 10k about 3 years after college not having run once. I ran 2:58 for a marathon 2 years after that by running a few times per week for 4 weeks prio to the marathon. I was fine after the 10k but I was miserable for 10 days after the marathon. I could barely walk the first 3 days.

The red flag in all of this is that he claims to be feeling "good but bored" at miles 18-21. No truly sedentary person who only ran 3 times in 2 months would say that.

Prolly was on some kind of magic juice. Plus, it looks like he's wearing a sack rather than a shirt.

While the first sentence is correct, the second sentence is probably the biggest crock of sh!t I've ever read on this board. And that's saying a lot.

I ran an indoor 4:58 1600 a few weeks ago. I could definitely run 8.6 miles at 7 min/mile pace (which is what 7 min/miles for an hour essentially is), but it wouldn't be easy and would definitely fall into that "greyzone" pace that is too hard for a tempo run and not hard enough to be an all-out effort.

Yes, there's probably at least one person on Earth who can beat me without training, but he would need to have an astronomical amount of talent in order to do it. You cannot find "a number of people" in a small city in Australia with that talent. Even if you got ten cities in East Africa, you still wouldn't be able to find it. That ability is not one in a dozen, it's literally one in a billion.

And just to hammer this home, our school record holder was a 4:10 miler who now runs a 3:45 1500 in college. And even he was nowhere near a 4:58 when he ran his first mile as an untrained freshman.

I searched for running a marathon off of no training, and that link was the first one that came up. After a recent marathon attempt, I can say that at least one of the following is true:

A.) He was lying about his lack of training

B.) He has an extremely physically demanding job and took some days off before the race to taper

C.) He is very talented. He may not necessarily have world-class talent, but he'd definitely be D1-material if he trained consistently for a few years

As far as my background goes, I graduated in 2021 and barely did any running since then. Maybe 8-10 miles a month, which is about the same as what he did. I ran a 2:12 800 off of 12-15 mpw in high school, so I definitely have a lot more talent than the average person even though I'm nowhere near Kipchoge's level.

August comes around, and a co-worker persuades me to run the marathon. He claimed that he signed up for it, got injured, and is willing to sell me his bib number for a heavily discounted price since he can't get a refund. The catch is that the race is 2 days away, so there's no opportunity for me to train for it.

I figured I'd see what I could do and ran a mile that evening just to see how out of shape I was. My time was 5:56. Not great, but this was a solo run in trainers and 90-degree weather, so it's not that bad either. In any case, there's not much I could do at that point besides carb-loading and driving the course to get some familiarity with it. Fortunately, it was flat and fairly straightforward.

I had a target of sub 4 hours and wanted to go out at 8:00/mile pace in order to "bank time" for the last few miles where my pace would inevitably drop. For the first 3 miles, I averaged 7:50/mile, but mile 5 took me more than 8:00 to complete, and things just kept getting slower and slower from that point onward. I had to take my first walk break at mile 11, and I went though the half-marathon mark in 1:52. By mile 15, I was no longer at sub 4 pace, and at mile 18, things were pretty much shutting down - about half of my time was spent walking, and the other half was more like an awkward shuffle than a jog. Every step was agonizing, and mile 19 took me 13 minutes to complete. Mile 20 was walking-only, and I pretty much called it and stepped off the course at mile 21 since I had no hope of finishing.

So yeah, 3:46 off of no training isn't possible for the vast majority of the population even if they're young and not obese. Perhaps I could have finished the course with better pacing, but it certainly wouldn't have been under 4 hours, and none of my splits were faster than his (not even the first 3 miles). What that guy did is seriously impressive if he was indeed telling the truth.