Realistic First Marathon Target time (Read 3780 times)

Oh looks like he has runnerclay removed the comments below -   

 

"Good Lucky. If ,you succeed(3:30) I will donate $5  to RA. Anyone else up for"

 

yep I even more motivated. 

$20 bucks to RA if you BQ.

What if he OQs?

$100

I think being willing to blow up at races is good, it helps you gauge where you really are.  But man, blowing up at a marathon, with 4 months of work and whatever pegged to one day is tough. 

Especially somebody's first.  When I hit the second half of my training I turned down right paranoid.  When my kids got sick, I'd wear one of those face masks around the house and washed my hands constantly.  When I felt the little bit of knee pain, I'd back off the speed workouts.  There was no way I was not getting to the start line healthy.  Regarding the race, I made sure I started slow and easy and didn't let the excitement get to me.  It may be the only race in my short three year running career that I didn't start out too fast.

, I'm in also, $20 bucks to RA for a 3:30. MK, I hope you take this as a friendly challenge. Personally, I feel you have nothing to lose in striving for your goal. In fact, I'll donate $20 bucks to RA regardless of your finishing time if you at least post your race commentary here and tell us how it went. As for the comment " All due respect, your thinking is, whether or not intentional, a typical of "I wish I were more talented becaue then I can run so much faster with working less..." when they most likely haven't even gotten close to max" Not at all. As i said, most of us are below our potential. I truly respect those who work hard for where they are. Personally, I measure success on how far one can push themselves in whatever they want to do. If that is a 5 hour marathon, so be it. I am amazed in watching the elite runners click off sub 5 min miles at the end of a marathon. But it is not at all in envy. It is in admiration for what that have achieved to get there. Looking at their faces, it is almost always sheer determination. I agree that each of us has a "sweet spot", i don't see why you don't think that is in part inherent. As I posed, do you think we all can run sub 2:20 if we find the right training sweet spot?,

Well, you were sincere about your reply; so I'll reply to this sincerely as well.  However, you have given me such a specific target (2:20) in such a loose context (anybody?) and that's not fair.  I'm assuming you're talking about "average" individual, age between, say, 23 and 35 (I just picked these numbers out of my sleeves); and, most imporantly, who are willing to train "deligently, intelligently and for a number of years".  To me, this means more than anything else.  Assuming he would do that....  I'm not sure about 2:20, I think 2:20 might be a bit stretch...  Years ago, our fellow Minnesotan,Self-Made Olympian, Ron Daws,said that "healthy young male" should be able to run 2:24 for the marathon..."  I tend to agree.  But I probably go a bit softerand would say 2:28~32.  For young healthy female....I'd say  2:51.  It coule be a bit faster.  When I was at Hitachi, I coached this young girl (I think she was 24 at the time) who had run 3:20-ish marathon and turned her into a 2:42 runner within a year; and 2:38 the following year.  To me, this is such a testimonial to proper training approach.  Bear in mine; she was training twice a day,7 days a week. 

I'll put my foot in my mouth and say this though.  I think, within a certain age range (I'm talking about something like between 18 and 62...kind of thing.  Now, I might be stretching to say 62 but...), I think ANYBODY can do sub-4 hour marathon.  To me, that's a no-brainer.  I understand that some of you are probably struggling to crack 4.  But, to me, there's USUALLY a good reason why you can't dip under 4.  Those reasons could include things like; it's too early to try out marathoning, or you need both legs to do that, etc. But with good confidence,I can say ANYBODY can run sub-4 marathon with proper training.  To me,talking about "genetics" at that level is pure nonsense.  Might sound egotisticor condecending; I'm sorry if it did. 

I haven't really coached too many people.  I probably "helped" about 20 people total to run a marathon.  All of them but one went sub-4; first timers included.  That one was way too early to try a marathon but she wanted to run one just say she did it.  I helped her out via my wife (she was her friend)and she ran one and the thought of running another one had never come across her mind since.  I think she prepared for something like 15 weeks and did 5-hours 3 minutes or something like that.  Interesting thing is; she was my wife's running buddy and, at some times, my wife has a hard time keeping up with her, especially in the beginning of the run.  My wife had done 3:47.  Also interestingly, the only time my wife didn't go sub-4 was when she refused to ask for my help (she thought she knew all that is there to know about marathon training).  Whenever I helped her with the program, she went sub-4. 

In the days of CoolRunning, I was criticized by this lady (good old MaryT...) that I had never trained a slow runner and I wouldn't understand the slow runner's feelings.  Well, she's right in a way.  Everybody (but one) whom I had helped so far had gone sub-4.  It's got to be either what I do with them gotta be right or it's so happened everybody who had come to me for advice are all genetically talented...

I don't think we are all capable of a sub-2:20 marathon, but it takes several years of dedicated effort to find out whether you're in that category or not.

Ummmm...  So you drew this conclusion based on what?  A hunch or decades of coching experience?

...or even the possibility that we can read books and articles by people who have coaching experience and/or have studied these things in an academic setting. There's a pretty broad consensus that your genetics matter for things like distance running (and many other sporting pursuits) - and you can't change your genes.

...and as far as I'm concerned, he has answered it for us.

I'm not sure exactly what you think I've answered

But if it's your contention that you must be right on all questions simply because you have some coaching experience then I don't agree. There are plenty of good coaches and runners who will say exactly what I've said.

But I'm not even sure what we're arguing about... you haven't actually said that you disagree with what I said... and if you do exactly why.

Does it really take years of dedicated effort to find it out?

Let’s say you had a talent for accurately throwing a 5 oz. sphere 60.5 feet. There is tremendous financial incentive to being able to perform this task repeatedly if you can project the sphere at more than say, 90 mph. Almost immediately from the time someone could be physically capable of doing this (usually sometime b/w 17-19 years old), they know whether or not they’ll ever be able to do this. You take a 19 year old pitcher who throws 84 mph, with rare exception – unless he has had zero coaching and his mechanics are so unbelievably atrocious – he will probably never throw 90+. If this weren’t the case, everyone in college baseball would be throwing 90+, because almost everyone in college throws 84, and the financial incentives for throwing 90+ are staggering. Everyone who could just “do more”, would.

This may be a completely irrelevant comparison, but I’m curious to know from more experienced runners if it translates. Is 2:20 90+mph? Or 2:15? Or…