From the comments:
the total numbers of athletes to ever break 66 minutes from a variety of countries other than the top 3 of Kenya, Ethiopia and Japan:
2015 National University Half: 265
Australia: 78
Canada: 53
England: 317
Eritrea: 57
Italy: 274
Mexico: 137
Morocco: 301
New Zealand: 38
South Africa: 399
Spain: 132
Uganda: 46
U.S.A.: 674
I can't imagine running sub-70 and finishing 643rd.
good gravy wrote:
I can't imagine running sub-70 and finishing 643rd.
I'm struggling to comprehend this. Not in a letsrun hyperbole kind of way, but really, truly finding it hard to imagine 643 people breaking 1:10 in one race, with only a domestic field.
This can't be true
shoesmcgoo wrote:
This can't be true
Why not?
It's remarkable, but collegiate runners in the US don't really compete at the half.
1:08:21 is the equivalent to a 14:55 5k, or 31:00 10k.
This is university-aged runners.
How many US collegiate runners can break 15 or 31 on the roads?
impressive impossible wrote:
shoesmcgoo wrote:This can't be true
Why not?
It's remarkable, but collegiate runners in the US don't really compete at the half.
1:08:21 is the equivalent to a 14:55 5k, or 31:00 10k.
This is university-aged runners.
How many US collegiate runners can break 15 or 31 on the roads?
100+ of them would've made the OT standard in that one race.
The ARS database returned 68 Kenyan times under 1:06 this year so far. Of course, domestic Kenyan competitions will be at altitude typically and you have to be really, really good to compete away from Kenya usually, but it is obvious that Japan has a terrific training system for half marathon. Given the depth at half, I'd even go so far as to say that they are much better at the half than the marathon, where they are still better than the U.S. There were 48 sub 1:05 Americans at Houston this year, in contrast to 159 Japanese collegians(!) under that time in this race. I would love to be able to train in Japan with some of these groups, or to have been able to do that in my 20s. What is their system? High mileage in the 150s? Any details? We shouldn't just wonder at the depth but do what we can to replicate it. I know that one thing would be to have the half marathon be a championship NCAA event on the Division I level. That would be fun to watch.
Amazing how many Japanese stop their watches BEFORE the finish line... sheisters...
I’m a D2 female runner. Our coach explicitly told us not to visit LetsRun forums.
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