Forums >Running 101>Realistic First Marathon Target time
Now, I do believe that nearly everyone is probably capable of running a sub 4:00:00 marathon given proper training. I wont ever be properly trained to run a sub 4:00:00 given my priorities and overall motivation. I am focussing on 'running more' but not targeting a sub 4:00:00 as my goal. (I say this as Im going to be training for my first ever 24 hour race--but for me, that will be a slow slog--speed has nothing to do with my training or strategy for that beast).
The King of Beasts
Does it really take years of dedicated effort to find it out?
no, Clearly you are right.
wow. I am suprised no one though of this before. truly shocking. we can all stop running now.
"As a dreamer of dreams and a travelin' man I have chalked up many a mile. Read dozens of books about heroes and crooks, And I've learned much from both of their styles." ~ Jimmy Buffett
"I don't see much sense in that," said Rabbit. "No," said Pooh humbly, "there isn't. But there was going to be when I began it. It's just that something happened to it along the way."”
no, Clearly you are right. wow. I am suprised no one though of this before. truly shocking. we can all stop running now.
Thank goodness, I was getting pretty tired from all that running.
The pain that hurts the worse is the imagined pain. One of the most difficult arts of racing is learning to ignore the imagined pain and just live with the present pain (which is always bearable.) - Jeff
2014 Goals:
Stay healthy
Enjoy life
Talking about 2:20 or lower. If it does take years to find that out, then okay. I'm not claiming to be right, I'm asking a question.
Come all you no-hopers, you jokers and roguesWe're on the road to nowhere, let's find out where it goes
2018 Goals:
Get Lucky Half 1:47:59
Grandmas Marathon
Fall Marathon - Twin Cities??
of course it takes years to find out. People don't just start running and go run a 2:20 marathon. A lot if not most elite marathoners were running YEARS before they even attempted the marathon.
MTA: I've heard so many people that discount base mileage like it doesn't count for anything
Your toughness is made up of equal parts persistence and experience. You don't so much outrun your opponents as outlast and outsmart them, and the toughest opponent of all is the one inside your head." - Joe Henderson
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…
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…
The difference between college/farm team players and pro players is not velocity. It's control. The exception was Ricky Vaughn, but now he's doing coke and chasing hookers.
"If you have the fire, run..." -John Climacus
This thread has gone off the rails crazy in several directions at once. SWEET!
The reason the "T" word is so poisonous to running discussions is that it's most often invoked by people who have trained so little and have so little experience that they haven't a clue what their real potential is and at the same time they can, even if unintentionally or in an attempt to compliment someone, dismiss the effort it took for someone much faster to reach their level of performance. Even if it starts innocent enough as in, I wonder what I'm capable of, it can come out in a way that sounds, at best, counterproductive and at worst, dismissive. Many people who have spent many years and thousands upon thousands of miles trying to close the gap between their ultimate potential and their real world race times have had to marginalize the contribution of talent in order to focus on the task at hand. And so when someone relatively newer at this muses on the subject of talent in can churn up some some serious resentment.
Think of it this way--if you had set aside all presumptions and guesses and instead spent your life diligently and open-mindedly going about your work every day trying to answer a single question that you knew could probably not be answered definitively anyway, and then someone came along presuming to already know the answer, or even offering a guess at the answer, you'd probably get more than a bit peeved.
Now I know enough people who are, by almost any measure, of above average running ability who worked long enough and hard enough at this project and never got within a whiff of 2:20 to say fairly confidently that that is not a time that "most" people can attain. However, just writing that stirs up some regret as I wonder if I had really believed it was possible and spent the time working toward it, how close I could have come?
I find it's just best most of the time not to think about that, but to go about my business of finding out what I can do, within the confines of the life I've chosen for myself--and leave the discussions of talent to those truly pushing the boundaries of what humankind is capable of.
Runners run
I'm so lost I'm not even sure what the T word is.
Do you think the Cubs have a chance at the world series this year?
realistic is 50 seconds to a minute a mile slower than your 5mile / 10 km pace,
or 30 seconds a mile slower than 13.1 pace
for the average 40 to 70 mile week non elite runner
ex. your recent half is 1:40:00, 26.2 target will be 3:33:00
10km 37:00 26.2 target 3:00:00
Good googly moogly, are you all really this bored? You all sound like a bunch of triathletes.
The number one reason people aren't faster is because of priorities.
Explanations such as "I don't have time" or "I don't have talent to be faster" are nothing more than saying, "I could probably be better at running, but being a better runner is a lower priority than the other things I have going on in my life at this moment."
And there is absolutely nothing wrong with this statement.
Not everyone can or should attempt to be elite runners. Or even AG-level runners. There is nothing wrong with having running as a lower priority in your life.
But you need to be honest with yourself. Saying that you aren't faster because you're not talented is a cover for the fact that you just don't want to put in the time. Plans based on "Run less, run faster" cater to this mentality.
And that's perfectly alright. No one says you have to make running your top priority. I don't. I have a lot of other things that are more important to me than running at the moment.
But I'm at least honest about it. I accept that running is a low priority, and I don't make any excuses for it. I accept it, and move on. If you are questioning why you aren't faster, don't look at your training log; look at your life. Look at how you spend your time. That should help you identify what your priorities currently are. Then it's up to you to decide if you want to change your priorities or not. If you are honest with yourself, and commit to change, you can do it. But you have to really want to. Saying "I want to be faster" is about as helpful as saying "I want to be President". You still have to commit. And you can't commit to something that is not a high priority.
And you never know how fast you can be until you try. It will take years and years to do it. You will likely never really know where the apex of your talent is. Most of us will never reach it, but a lucky few will. That doesn't make it any less worthwhile a journey; in fact, I'd say that it makes it even more wonderful. It gives you a chance to learn about yourself. Learn what your passions are, learn what you can do with your body and mind, perhaps even gain a higher level of mastery over both.
Yes.
The difference between college/farm team players and pro players is not velocity. It's control.
Unfortunately I had neither, which the imprint of my butt from a 4 year stint on the bench of a lousy (but fun) D1 team can attest to.
I assure that this counts for more than just pitching a baseball.
That's what she said.