Triathlete vs Road Racer for Boston Qualifier

You ought to win this bet easily with an intelligent marathon buildup. And your buddy will need to drop his half to around 1:31 in order to have any business going out at 3:14 pace. He lacks sufficient speed to achieve a BQ any time soon.

Marmite then? wrote:

You ought to win this bet easily with an intelligent marathon buildup. And your buddy will need to drop his half to around 1:31 in order to have any business going out at 3:14 pace. He lacks sufficient speed to achieve a BQ any time soon.

That is the hat trick, the time involved to hit the mark. I have to build up the miles and he has to get faster. Question, what would be a reasoable time horizon to hit the mark, 6 monthe a year? I am confident I have the speed, but he is an endurance monster and has schooled me in the pool and bested me in a sprint tri. So, he has got boat loads of confidence and that is why he presented me with this challenge. He thinks I am too short mileage oriented to get the qualifier before he does. So, I need to propose a time frame for the challenge.

Even assuming he is 'trained' and you 'aren't', he's giving up over half-an-hour based on your HM PRs. You just need some semblance of marathon training to get you withing 30 minutes of what you should run and you'll whoop him.

How long ago did you run your last half?

You need some mileage and patience. Spend some time running at half marathon pace and marathon pace. If your 1:29 is recent, you have a legitimate shot.

Your friend has absolutely no chance if that 1:45 doesn't come down. Now if that time came in a half ironman in 90 degree temps, it might be a different story.

You aren't racing against each other. You are just training for 3:15. A 1:29 half on limited mileage indicates a high potential to reach the time. A 1:45 half is not even in the same discussion for achieving 3:15.

How long ago did you run your last half?[/quote]

We ran the half back in Janurary. So, the time is not recent. The times were PR's for both of us. In fact, we trained together for it and we ran the long runs together but not the speed sessions. He was bummed that his time wasn't closer to mine because we ran a lot of miles together. He trains a lot harder than me between cycling, swimming and running, in addition to gym time.

He is in really good shape, 6' 3" 200 and I am 5'11" and 165. With all the training he has done he really thought he could pace me in the half marathon. But I explained that I have some natural running talent and running comes fairly easy for me. So I agreed to race him in a sprint tri in the spring.

He smoked me out of the pool by almost 2 min, I suck at swimming. He gained another 2 min on the cycling, I am not bad but it is his best element. By the time I got to the 5k run he had almost a four min advantage. I ran a 19: 28 5k to his 21:18. So I got solidly beat. But that wasn't enough for him, he wants to beat me at a running event. Also, the Boston marathon is on his bucket list and he knows my adversion to the marathon. So that led to his throw down.

He is convinced he can hit sooner than me. Of course we will be training together, he expects me to help him with speed and I plan to build my endurance base running the long runs with him. It will be interesting who benefits most. I am hoping we both qualify so I can beat him at Boston.

Your friend may have stamina, but he's much too slow to BQ this year or next. However you could do it as early as this fall. Q: what's your weekly mileage right now?