What allows these guys to race so often at such a high quality level..? Kawauchi especially is killing it ..65 sub-2:20 marathons and he's only 30yo..! Is it an individual trait of theirs or something they do in training and recovery that is why they can rack up these marathon..?
Did you just compare Eggleston to Kawauchi?
2/10 for making me laugh.
..just asking
I think you know the answer to that question.
IAAF isn't great at their jobs wrote:
I think you know the answer to that question.
+1
There have been plenty of guys have run lots of good marathons frequently. It's just become fairly uncommon in recent years. Young John Kelley for many years would be the first American finisher at Boston and then win the National Championship at Yonkers three weeks later. Guys like Kjell-Erik Stahl and Doug Kurtis ran sub 2:20s almost monthly. If you look at world rankings from the 60s and 70s you'd see guys running 4-8 marathons a year. Kawauchi is certainly the fastest but there are probably a lot of people who could run multiple fast marathons in a year.
HRE, is there something in your opinion that Kawauchi is doing or is it his physical makeup that allows him to reel off these sub 212 and sub 220 marathons ..?
HRE wrote:
There have been plenty of guys have run lots of good marathons frequently. It's just become fairly uncommon in recent years. Young John Kelley for many years would be the first American finisher at Boston and then win the National Championship at Yonkers three weeks later. Guys like Kjell-Erik Stahl and Doug Kurtis ran sub 2:20s almost monthly. If you look at world rankings from the 60s and 70s you'd see guys running 4-8 marathons a year. Kawauchi is certainly the fastest but there are probably a lot of people who could run multiple fast marathons in a year.
I suppose the question everyone wonders about with Kawauchi is how fast he could run if he only did 3-4 marathons a year. In interviews I've seen he doesn't seem to think he'd go faster or maybe even as fast as he does now with all the races. I recall an interview with Stahl where he said that he thought that because he couldn't run as fast as the absolute best guys he didn't do as much damage to his muscles as those guys did and therefore could recover faster and race more. Doug Kurtis had a best of 2:13 (?) and I know he once said he'd rather run ten sub 2:20s in a year than one 2:11. Again, I may be a minute off on his times. But maybe Kawauchi is a potential 2:06 guy, at least physically, who's just not damaging his muscles much with a ton of 2:08-2:12s.
I know that Kawauchi pays a lot of attention to recovery, hot baths, cold baths, acupuncture, etc. and I imagine those things play a role. But I suspect that the real key is that he WANTS to run all those races. We don't talk much here about the mental side of running. I imagine that's because it's very hard to quantify. But I suspect that his big "secret" is that he likes doing it so rather than look at reasons not to run marathons he looks for reasons to do it. But that's all supposition.
RIP: D3 All-American Frank Csorba - who ran 13:56 in March - dead
RENATO can you talk about the preparation of Emile Cairess 2:06
Rest in Peace Adrian Lehmann - 2:11 Swiss marathoner. Dies of heart attack.
I think Letesenbet Gidey might be trying to break 14 this Saturday
Running for Bowerman Track Club used to be cool now its embarrassing