Lance Armstrong 5k

I hope he runs a marathon or does a triathlon.

It was probably a 5 miler. This is Lance.

My friend at the race and said he ran pretty casual and didn't appear to be working too hard -- supposedly training for Chicago.

living strong wrote:

My friend at the race and said he ran pretty casual and didn't appear to be working too hard -- supposedly training for Chicago.

Yeah, he wouldn't want to hamper his Chicago effort by all out racing a 5K within 7 months of marathon day.

Word on the street is that it was an all out effort. There are several eye witness reports claiming Armstrong vomited after the race due to over-exertion.

I don't know why everyone thinks Lance can hammer it out. Fact is, he's a biker. He isn't used to running at that intensity for any length of time. Even with his phenomenal VO2 max, it will take him years of training to develop into a respectable runner, and I just don't think he has it in him.

Oh, and he'd have to lose lots of muscle mass off those quads.

Of Course! wrote:

he's a biker.

was he not at one time a triathlete?

pretty sure his quads are just fine...he just has to get a runners stride back and that will take time cause is muscles and ligaments are used to biking position.

Here are the results. This 5K is put on by his Ex, Kristin.

He could be the next Nico Medrano if he keeps training

It's definitely a rolling course ... maybe 45 to 60 secs difference to a flat 5k.

I'm bike racing this year and taking the year off from running to give my achilles tendons a chance to heal. Let me tell you guys something, take your 5k effort and do that for 2 to 3hours and there is your bike race. I can't wait till next year after all of this intense non-bone jarring work. I love running and will always do it but bike racing is an eye opening experience.

Go to a running race with a 1000 people and there might be 10 or 20 truely fast athletes there, if you are lucky. Go to a bike race and there are 4 or 5 different levels with 100 athletes in each and 90 percent are there to win.

I think Lance's background gives him the opportunity to be a sub 16 5k road runner within 12 months if he wants it.

There is a reason why there are only 10 fast runners at any given 5k or 10k -- it's because running fast takes natural talent and hard work. Biking just takes 100s and 100s of miles of riding. This is exactly why Armstrong will never ever ever be a good runner. He will never run under 16 for 5k and he will never run faster than 2:40 for the maraton. Running fast requires a specific morphology that he does not have. He can do a lot of hard work and run 100s of miles and maybe run 2:40, but he will never be fast -- he will never run under 5 for the mile or 16:00 for the 5k. The reason you see 100s of cyclist racing at 5 different levels is due to the fact that anyone who learns a little bike handling skills and rides two or three times a week for a year can sit in a pack and ride 30 miles an hour. You don't have to carry your weight, so you can have high (if not sloppy) body fat and you can have little highend speed. Biking well requires just two things: a nice bike and A LOT of free time to mindlessly ride 100s and 100s of miles.

Now to be as good as Lance on the bike takes more, but that is another story.

Actually I would take this argument further.

Distance running is much more competitive compared to biking, both on a local scale on on a global scale. The bottom line is than that you need to buy all sorts of crap to be a bike racer, to be a runner you just need some shoes. There will be a much smaller talent pool competing as cyclists.

I would say that the world's best cyclists are about the physical equivalent of a 15 minute 5 k runner. Decent but worlds apart from guys like Goucher, Bekele and Haile.

The only hard things about cycling are that you can fall off the bike and this hurts and that you can be really exposed to the wind and cold. ANY Joe Schmoe who can tolerate these aspects will have no problems becoming a pro bike rider providing they don't injure themselves badly in a fall.

Jon Gill should have tried cycling instead of trying make it to the olympic 1500m team. He would have gotten far more mileage out of pursuing the latter.

lance ran a 1600 in 4:18 in hs you realize and was a sub 16 5k xc runner.

a minute off a real race? the winner, corey welch, has a 15:37 5k track pr and won this race by a good margin. anyone think this course is short?

Sure Lance ran 4:28 (maybe, never seen documentation on this), when he was 17-18 not when he is 34. Big big difference!!!!!!!! He spent the last 15 years riding a bike, not running. This has completely changed his body! I am 38 and having been running for 25 years with a little bit of biking. I can't run anywhere near as fast as I could run when I was 17. Just not happening! Body changes, recovery changes.

Running is far more competitive than cycling for the same reasons that world class soccer/football is more competitive than American football. Running draws from a much bigger gene pool.

gabberjr wrote:

Go to a running race with a 1000 people and there might be 10 or 20 truely fast athletes there, if you are lucky. Go to a bike race and there are 4 or 5 different levels with 100 athletes in each and 90 percent are there to win.

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Those are dumb points on a NUMBER of levels.

1) if you go to a running race with ONE THOUSAND runners (that's a pretty good size race), I guarantee you that there are more than 10 or 20 "truly fast athletes". Well, of course, it depends on how you define "truly fast," but the way you seem to be loosely using it in relation to biking, there are more than the handful of good athletes that you suggest are at such a running race.

2) Then you suggest that at a bike race with 500 people, 400 are "there to win." What the hell does THAT mean??? anyone can go to any competition and be "there to win." It doesn't mean you have a shot in hell at actually winning, but you can SAY you are there "to win."

In short, it's meaningless. And in running races there are about 30 different age/sex categories (akin to your handicapped biking "categories/levels"), with lots of people capable of winning their categories, so.......what's your point?

3) if you are comparing the competition at a local running race vs your average bike race, YES.....there is more comp at the bike race. But why is that??? BECAUSE THERE ARE RUNNING RACES IN EVERY TOWN IN AMERICA EVERY OTHER WEEKEND OF THE YEAR! And Bike races??? There are LOTS less. Most people travel good distances to get to any sort of bike race. So of course the competition is better at the bike race. But that has NOTHING to do with biking being harder or more competitive in general, but only with there being more running races and less biking races.

Running is harder. And that's why you are taking a vacation from running to go biking....and it WILL be a vaction comparably.

To "The reality" : I'm a lot faster than a 15 minute 5k runner, and after a summer of cycling hard three hours per day because of injury I couldn't even keep up with decent regional cyclists on training rides. Yes, the talent pool is perhaps not as deep in cycling. But the sport-specific cream still rises to the top. The NFL doesn't have a deep talent pool to draw upon, but do you think the giant man-beasts with agility who play at that level are as common as 15 minute 5k guys? Lance is a great athlete, but his talent is cycling.