I think Julian Wanders is over training. I have been watching his training clips from iten Kenya. The work outs are brutal.He doesn't seem happy in fact he seems miserable and just going with the motions.Too much of a good thing is poisonous.
Wanders not even the best Swiss anymore. Jonas Raess is.
Following Wanders on Strava you could easily see his lack of tapering abilities is limiting him. Only tapering is one session excluded day berore
why would he taper? He’s deep in Marathon prep and it isn’t a particularly fast course.
Agreed, his Pb is 59:17 so he’s a minute and 11 seconds down on that which is pretty good considering all the training he is doing including a brutal 20 K timed run a few days ago at five minute mile pace average with Kiplagat and other luminaries. Wanders has 2:04:00 - 2:06:00 Marathon potential.
I think Wanders and Canova would be extremely disappointed with those times, especially at the higher end. Wanders is training to run 2:04 to 206, not 206 to 2:08.
Ghost, the real goal for a first marathon is not to run 2 minutes faster, but to know the event, possibly finishing with negative split and good final feeling. Personally, I like very much the interpretation of the German runner Ringer in Ampugnano, when finished in 2:08:49 after a split at HM of 1:05:30.
Personally I'll be very happy with a time around 2:08. Julien hopes in something better (around 2:07), but I well know that athletes need to have 3-4 marathons in their background because running their best performances. And European marathon runners have to last several years, while the most part of African are able to run fast for limited time only, of course with some ecception (not only Eliud Kipchoge), that don't change the statistical rule.
Ghost, the real goal for a first marathon is not to run 2 minutes faster, but to know the event, possibly finishing with negative split and good final feeling. Personally, I like very much the interpretation of the German runner Ringer in Ampugnano, when finished in 2:08:49 after a split at HM of 1:05:30.
Personally I'll be very happy with a time around 2:08. Julien hopes in something better (around 2:07), but I well know that athletes need to have 3-4 marathons in their background because running their best performances. And European marathon runners have to last several years, while the most part of African are able to run fast for limited time only, of course with some ecception (not only Eliud Kipchoge), that don't change the statistical rule.
Thank you for the update, and my bad for thinking that Julien W. should be gunning for a fast time the first time out in the marathon. What you say about the German, Ringer, makes perfect sense to finish with a negative split. I’m crossing my fingers that Julien will pass this first step in the marathon with success, not necessarily dependent on a super fast time.
Wanders looks so good on the road with his fluid style of running that I think he’s tailor made for the marathon provided that he doesn’t have metabolic or fueling problems in the longer race compared with the half marathon.
I could never understand why Z.Tadesse (Eritrea) only had limited success in the marathon. Could you or someone else explain the reason for this?
Z.T. Was a monster in the half marathon and even ran sub 27 minutes in the 10,000 m so it did not make sense, but perhaps there were other factors which meant that he could not be successful at the higher end in the classic distance of the marathon.
Thanks to the OP. Sad reflection on parochial British Running media that we need to go to a USA forum to pick up the leading European results that aren't set by Brits. We still don't really do 'abroad'