Shalane MF Flanagan - 2:32 ????

Dr No wrote:

Is that correct?

No it’s not

2: 33 ! That is insane !

No.

Its Shalane

Hardly retired anymore

She's rather talented and also fierce.

Those Shelburritos sure do the trick!!

Why didn't she run the elite women's race?

Less cookbooks to sell in the elite wave.

JK, I think she wasn't looking to make a race of it, just completing the challenge.

What were her places, in all of them?

This may actually be an indictment of women's marathoning.

This is her 4th NY and it's only 7 minutes off her best time. That's about 4.8% slower. If Shalane can run 95% of her previous best as a "retired" pro with 5 marathons in her legs, it's fair to wonder if her previous times were actually fast enough, or if all women's times should be 5:00 faster or more.

This is not good wrote:

This may actually be an indictment of women's marathoning.

This is her 4th NY and it's only 7 minutes off her best time. That's about 4.8% slower. If Shalane can run 95% of her previous best as a "retired" pro with 5 marathons in her legs, it's fair to wonder if her previous times were actually fast enough, or if all women's times should be 5:00 faster or more.

Or what burritos she is eating

This is not good wrote:

This may actually be an indictment of women's marathoning.

This is her 4th NY and it's only 7 minutes off her best time. That's about 4.8% slower. If Shalane can run 95% of her previous best as a "retired" pro with 5 marathons in her legs, it's fair to wonder if her previous times were actually fast enough, or if all women's times should be 5:00 faster or more.

Nah. Most of her runs were prior to super shoes

“So as a fan of my own sport, it’s hard to have full excitement and faith when you don’t know all the facts yet. ....o it’s hard to truly and genuinely get excited about the performances that I’m watching.

You have to think she can still run 2:25 after what she has done over the past couple of months

I also wonder what she could do if training for 1 or 2 marathons. I'm not a 2:33 runner. I imagine the difference vs 2:25 is huge though. There are many Marathon Junkies who run impressive times repeatedly but cannot produce an exceptional result.

MatthewXCountry wrote:

This is not good wrote:

This may actually be an indictment of women's marathoning.

This is her 4th NY and it's only 7 minutes off her best time. That's about 4.8% slower. If Shalane can run 95% of her previous best as a "retired" pro with 5 marathons in her legs, it's fair to wonder if her previous times were actually fast enough, or if all women's times should be 5:00 faster or more.

Nah. Most of her runs were prior to super shoes

her 2 previous NY PBs were in Super Shoes.

This is not good wrote:

This may actually be an indictment of women's marathoning.

This is her 4th NY and it's only 7 minutes off her best time. That's about 4.8% slower. If Shalane can run 95% of her previous best as a "retired" pro with 5 marathons in her legs, it's fair to wonder if her previous times were actually fast enough, or if all women's times should be 5:00 faster or more.

Why go the negative route - she's doing well now, so she must have been underperforming before? Wouldn't it make just as much sense to say something like, it's impressive how she can stay relatively close to her peak fitness despite her age and despite being retired? Among retired pros, there is bound to be a whole spectrum of fitness levels maintained, and Shalane just happens to be at the fittest end of that spectrum.

I'm impressed. Mainly I'm impressed that she is still running so aggressively and passionately. On the surface, it is pretty surprising that she can run a bunch of good times so close together, but then you could also look at it like this: for a competitive runner, it's actually not all that difficult to run a race 5-10% slower than your all-out level. For instance, someone who was in shape to run 4:00 for the mile could run 4:12 to 4:24 pretty easily and frequently. We know Shalane is in at the very least 2:33 shape, so those other races, while not a walk in the park, might not have taken that much out of her.

Of course, there are limits to this approach. Obviously she can't keep running a 2:40 +/- marathon every couple of weeks indefinitely.

broken arrow wrote:

You have to think she can still run 2:25 after what she has done over the past couple of months

She definitely could break 2:30, but it's a much bigger step to get to 2:25. In terms of recovery, running a marathon at 95% lets you come back way quicker than an all out effort. I think people are reading a little too much into the fact that Shalane has run 6 marathons in short succession.

I honestly just don't care