44 seconds / 55 seconds = 20%
44 seconds / 55 seconds = 20%
If the trail and ultra-running talent pool is so shallow, why don't more runners seeking post-collegiate running careers focus on trail running and ultras? There may not be a ton of money out there, but my guess is that sponsored ultrarunners make quite a bit more than most post-collegiate track and marathon runners.
So it is agreed.
If you gave an elite African marathoners 2 years to train specifically for WS then he would easily win and destroy the course record.
So as of right now if any of them lined up for the Africans would get smoked. Therefore Geoff, Kilian, Tony, Karl, and the rest of the top 100 guys are the best in the world. Say they "would lose" is stupid because it has never been done.
Also remember what happened when Max King (2:15 marathon pr) raced Geoff Roes (2:48 marathon pr) at American River 50 (first 26 miles are flat pavement) last year. Geoff smoked him.
There is an extreme fatigue resistance endurance factor that no one seems to be touching on. The Africans are unproven and all of you need to get off of their jocks.
el condor wrote:
44 seconds / 55 seconds = 20%
Adding 20% to 15 min gives you 18; adding 20% to 44 gives you 52.8 (53 for rounding purposes). Thanks for playing though.
Ultras wrote:
extreme fatigue resistance endurance factor that no one seems to be touching on. The Africans are unproven and all of you need to get off of their jocks.
lololololol. yeah
I can forgive you for knowing nothing about Killian. His VO2 max is 92-95 and he is a world Skyrunning champion. In skyrunning and mountain running there are extremely high level athletes who often compete for their nations internationally on the track and at world cross. Had Killian run collegiately, he'd be your typical foreign NCAA stud. He'd run well under 8:00 for the 3000 and into the 13:20 range for 5000. This is just not what he has chosen to do with his life. And, given his endorsements and lifestyle, he is doing well for himself.
You need to think of Killian not as a Scott Jurek ultra runner but as a Jonothan Wyatt-type, who could compete internationally in any endurance running event.
By the way, Killian has been tested regularly on the Ski Mountaineering circuit. Anybody is capable of cheating, but there aren't really any rumors about him being a doper. It is just so far outside his relatively non-competitive personality.
Ultras wrote:
So as of right now if any of them lined up for the Africans would get smoked. Therefore Geoff, Kilian, Tony, Karl, and the rest of the top 100 guys are the best in the world. Say they "would lose" is stupid because it has never been done.
You are displaying great ignorance if you think none of the Africans could beat the ultra runners that race these things. Some could right now.
KilliansQuest,
I hate to burst your bubble, but Killian would not run under 8:00 and 13:20 for 5000m. Anyone that has run with Killian can judge his speed and he is a strong runner, a great climber, but does not have great speed. His biomechanics don't even lend to him running sub-15:00 for 5000m.
VO2 Max is rubbish. Don't forget, Scott Jurek is a sub-2:40 marathoner. I think Killian would be a sub-2:30 guy. Remember, Anton and Roes dusted Killian last year at WS (how short memory you have) and those guys are 2:40 marathoners.
Look, Killian is a great talent doing something NO ONE IN THE WORLD IS DOING. The pool of athletes that are being paid to run around the world on several courses for record attempts is .00000000000001%.
I love what Killian does. He inspires us all and it's pretty bad @ss. UTMB is going to be quite interesting and remember, what gives Killian an edge over the competition is lifestyle, youth, and the fact that he spends half the year skiing (his aerobic engine is huge, but his anaerobic engine is non-existent).
The message of letsrun is generally that you ought to just kill yourself if you're not the best at what you do. Even if you are the best, you should probably just kill yourself anyway, because if enough effort were directed at being better than you, you'd get "smoked." There's a message for you.
Ok dude this took some research. I don't know the road runner at all, and I only know of Ben Nephew (who routinely crushes road runners in trail races). I didn't want to bring my friend into this thread.
Check out these results for Soapstone Mtn.
http://www.runwmac.com/gt2010/soapstone2010.html
now check out the results of John Dudley
http://www.athlinks.com/myresults.aspx?rid=33806388
You'll notice Dudley lost by over 10 minutes to Nephew. Ben is probably quicker than my friend who runs 16:50, but I don't think he can hang with John in a road race. Note: Both of these runners could ask me to launder their jock. They are fast dudes in my opinion.
Ben has been known to chime in on here, so maybe he'll indulge the trolls. Regardless, I hope I haven't offended either runner by bringing them into this argument. The point is TRAINING SPECIFICITY matters!
You make a very good point and Ben is one of the first people I thought of in the context of this conversation. Overall, I agree that people are underestimating ultrarunners... but. In order for your argument to really work, you would have to give evidence that Dudley trains for trail races. It's a good point, just a little skewed in relation to the main argument here.
Dude, Ben is a 71-min half marathoner, which equals 15:22 on McMillan's Calculator, and does not compete in 100-milers nor 100km's and is a trail specialist.
Learn your fellow competitors more, buddy. Ben Nephew is a poor example.
Trail specialist... exactly my point!!!! Training Specificity!!! In order for people to win trail ultras, trail races, mtn races, people need to train for 'em!
Anton and Roes dusted Killian last year because he had just finished a traverse of the Pyrenees two weeks before, with 180k of vertical. If you had seen Killian run hard, you'd disagree with yourself about his high end running potential.
I'd fully agree that his anaerobic engine is untrained by choice.
KilliansQuest wrote:
These threads come up every year after Western States. Ultra runners are slow and they suck....track racers and Africans are fast....blah blah.
I have spent time running with Killian and the he is a x-factor in trail and ultra running. He can run the 8:50 mile pace all day long in a hundred miler, but he can also drop an 8:50 two mile whilst training 30 hours per week at a really slow pace.
Killian is great at whatever he runs because he has a huge engine, incredible power, speed, and endurance. To him Western States is just an event that he gets paid to go to and he enjoys. He could run the course in 13:30 if there was something at stake to do so. He just runs to win and have fun.
No disrespect whatsoever to ultra runners, but no American ultra runners are in his league as a pure runner and so they won't beat him 9 times out of 10. The reason they would beat him 1 time out of 10 is because there is just so much that can go wrong in an ultra race. Managing the fueling and other body variables makes it possible for the best runner to lose in any ultra distance race. This was the case with Killian last year.
This is why Jurek's seven in a row is impressive. Not because Jurek is a super stud runner. He wasn't/isn't. He's a 2:40-2:50 marathoner who can run slow all day, but.....and this is a big, impressive but....He put it all together on the big day seven years in a row. Anybody who does these killer long races knows how hard it is to manage all the variables.
Killian is such a great runner, that he doesn't have to pay attention to all the details as much as the lesser talented, but even he can fail over 100 plus miles.
Two American runners were in his league last year. Anton Krupicka beat him by 49 minutes, and Geoff Roes beat him by 57 minutes to win in 15:07, which remains the course record.
This year Jornet won by 4 minutes with a 15:34. 3rd or 4th fastest ever, I believe.
Krupicka was injured this year, and Roes had a bad day and dropped out. Roes will be at Mount Blanc, so we'll see how it all works out in Kilian's domain. My guess is that, like the 2011 Western States 100, Jornet will have all he can handle.
One last thing: You say that Jornet could run a 8:50 2 mile and a 13:30 WS 100. You might be right, but I guess I'm a little sceptical...
KilliansQuest wrote:
Anton and Roes dusted Killian last year because he had just finished a traverse of the Pyrenees two weeks before, with 180k of vertical. If you had seen Killian run hard, you'd disagree with yourself about his high end running potential.
I'd fully agree that his anaerobic engine is untrained by choice.
Top ultramarathoners routinely compete in major events with little rest. A few years ago, Scott Jurek won the WS 100, and then two weeks later he won the Badwater 135.
Kilian Jornet is a great talent, but he won't run through the top guys in ultrarunning. There's plenty of worthy competition for him.
I have seen Killian run hard, I have also seen Galen Rupp and German Fernandez run hard, whom are sub-13:30 guys. Different ballparks, Questy. Jornet does not have the biomechanics to run that fast, nor the anaerobic engine. He is a strong runner, but even he says he would never run a flat road race, he just sucks at it.
This is true: "Jornet does not have the biomechanics to run that fast"
This is false: "nor the anaerobic engine [to run that fast]."
theohiostate wrote:
KilliansQuest wrote:These threads come up every year after Western States. Ultra runners are slow and they suck....track racers and Africans are fast....blah blah.
I have spent time running with Killian and the he is a x-factor in trail and ultra running. He can run the 8:50 mile pace all day long in a hundred miler, but he can also drop an 8:50 two mile whilst training 30 hours per week at a really slow pace.
Killian is great at whatever he runs because he has a huge engine, incredible power, speed, and endurance. To him Western States is just an event that he gets paid to go to and he enjoys. He could run the course in 13:30 if there was something at stake to do so. He just runs to win and have fun.
No disrespect whatsoever to ultra runners, but no American ultra runners are in his league as a pure runner and so they won't beat him 9 times out of 10. The reason they would beat him 1 time out of 10 is because there is just so much that can go wrong in an ultra race. Managing the fueling and other body variables makes it possible for the best runner to lose in any ultra distance race. This was the case with Killian last year.
This is why Jurek's seven in a row is impressive. Not because Jurek is a super stud runner. He wasn't/isn't. He's a 2:40-2:50 marathoner who can run slow all day, but.....and this is a big, impressive but....He put it all together on the big day seven years in a row. Anybody who does these killer long races knows how hard it is to manage all the variables.
Killian is such a great runner, that he doesn't have to pay attention to all the details as much as the lesser talented, but even he can fail over 100 plus miles.
Two American runners were in his league last year. Anton Krupicka beat him by 49 minutes, and Geoff Roes beat him by 57 minutes to win in 15:07, which remains the course record.
This year Jornet won by 4 minutes with a 15:34. 3rd or 4th fastest ever, I believe.
Krupicka was injured this year, and Roes had a bad day and dropped out. Roes will be at Mount Blanc, so we'll see how it all works out in Kilian's domain. My guess is that, like the 2011 Western States 100, Jornet will have all he can handle.
One last thing: You say that Jornet could run a 8:50 2 mile and a 13:30 WS 100. You might be right, but I guess I'm a little sceptical...
In all fairness, Kilian and another 5-10 of the leaders went off course and lost about 15 minutes this year, so his 15:34 would be more like a 15:19 if that hadn't happened.
Gotta love these threads... All the ultra crybabies coming out of the dark to defend their activity. Yeah, we understand that there are 2:40 guys running 50-100miles with a couple sub-2:30 guys thrown in, but Letsrun doesnt care. It's like trying to talk up chess on a checkers forum. Board games, but different realities.