What do you think is the most impressive distance world record?

M*O*T

Don Ritchie went to 40km in a 50km track race in 2:15:05 en-route to 2:50:30 finish (10th March 1979), he went through 25 miles in 2:15:51 and 30 miles in 2:44:36 (5:29 miling). Even given that I don't have his actual time you can still take his next effort, later that year (April 28th) in his failed 40 mile record attempt (it was too windy) he was timed at the marathon distance at 2:26:34 (He reached 25 miles in 2:19:16)

Michael Wardian's 2:27:21 (indoors), from last summer, as the track marathon WR.

Yiannis Kouros' 24 hour WR of 188 miles.

That 26:17:53 is pretty amazing.

INTERESTING HOW NOTHING 1k-3k HAS BEEN TOUCHED OR COME CLOSE TO SINCE THE 90'S

i think that you can get a better sense of how impressive some of these are if you break them down by splits

El G's 3:26.00

that's an average pace of 54.93 per lap!

I think that's pretty amazing. also averages 1:49.9 for 800!

DK's 7:20.67

that's 58.76 per lap, which is 3:55 mile pace!!

also pretty unbelievable

Bekele's 26:17

another great one. that's 13:08 for 5k (better than the A standard)...TWICE.

4:12 mile pace for SIX freaking miles.

26:17

go longer wrote:

Yiannis Kouros' 24 hour WR of 188 miles.

I second this one. May last for years and years and years..

go longer wrote:

Yiannis Kouros' 24 hour WR of 188 miles.

lada wrote:

I second this one. May last for years and years and years..

I just plugged this into a race time predictor for fun to see what his "comparable" 5k time would be, and it was a little over seven minutes. Interesting.

I know that predictors obviously become more and more flawed and irrelevant as the compared distances become further apart from each other, but this is over the top.

Now, I haven't watched all the races, but I have seen many. It seems with high probability that Bekele's outdoor 5k record is one of the most impressive, if not the most impressive. At this point in time most of the track and field world records are similar to each other in terms of strength. So then we must consider the conditions in which the record was set.

Bekele in that 5k race had pacemaking up to 2k, and at about 1500m if I recall, the pacemaker started to suck a good deal. This means that Bekele ran an incredible majority of a very difficult world record totally alone. In my mind it's the most impressive world record. I can't remember, however, how much of his 10k world record he ran alone.

But I definitely feel that his 5k world record, owing to the pacemaking, is more impressive than Komen's records, which had far better pacemaking.

In fact, until the video showed up online last year or so, I had never seen Bekele's 5k outdoor world record race. When I watched it, I was astonished (how much of it he ran alone) In other threads, I make the comparison between that race and Komen's outdoor world record race/s.

easy weeks wrote:

go longer wrote:

Yiannis Kouros' 24 hour WR of 188 miles.

lada wrote:

I second this one. May last for years and years and years..

I just plugged this into a race time predictor for fun to see what his "comparable" 5k time would be, and it was a little over seven minutes. Interesting.

I know that predictors obviously become more and more flawed and irrelevant as the compared distances become further apart from each other, but this is over the top.

For perspective, that is averaging 7.8 mph or about 7:40 mi pace for 24 hours straight.

For those that are interested, some of the world records in ultradistances are listed here (along with North American records):

http://www.ultrarunning.com/ultra/reference/finishers/alltime-north-american-ul.shtml

Kouros is listed many times.

i think the conditions under which David Rudisha ran 1:40 were pretty impressive....

3k - stunning. I disagree about the 24h. If there were decent money, that would go within a couple of years.

Half-marathon 58:23. That's a 27:40 followed by another 27:40 followed by another 1100 meters, on the roads no less. We still consider a single 27:40 on the track to be impressive.

After that I'd say Daniel Komen's 3000m, simply because the other greats (El G, Bekele, Geb) never came close.

That 58:23 was done on a short course. It's been verified (you can find the information from various sources).

Either the 3000 or the 800. I don't know how it compares time wise, you know whether it's "better" as a time than the 1500 or the 5000 or whatever, but dude led wire to wire to win the Olympic final.

Bekele's 5K WR coming out to 4:03.76 per mile!

SYM1971 wrote:

I disagree about the 24h. If there were decent money, that would go within a couple of years.

Yeah, I've been thinking about this. It's so hard to say, because I (and you, I assume) simply don't run much more than 20-22 miles ever, unless I'm racing a marathon, and even that is only a couple more miles. I've certainly never run more than around three hours, ever.

There's just no way of really understanding how hard or easy the 24hr record is compared to distances we have all trained and raced many times. I mean, I definitely have a pretty good comprehension of how incredible the various standard distance WR's are. I can't even run a single mile at WR marathon pace, or a single lap at WR 5k or 10k pace.

Yet, I feel I could run 7:39/mile pace for an awfully long time. Even though I know I would fall apart, it seems actually possible, even for a slow-ish runner like me. The challenge is clearly less about holding a pace, and more about food management, cramp prevention, sleep deprivation, and other things that don't come into play nearly as much in the standard distances.