Cicirunner wrote:
He's not a long distance runner and doesn't have any sort of marathon base. As fast as he is, he also is not built for marathon running. He would need to slim down. It will also be his first and the first marathon for most runners is a sh*t show. Even for Lance Armstrong's first marathon with professional pacers, he only hit 2:59. I predict low 3:06 for Symmonds although that's a huge shot in the dark.
So your argument is that Symmonds, a recently retired professional runner, will run slower than Lance Armstrong, a professional cyclist who dabbled with running as a kid and hadn't run in decades?
Symmonds is obviously an MD runner, so won't go out and kill the marathon, and presumably he is not going to train at 100%, but he isnt completely lacking in endurance, he ran reasonably well in xc in college, getting under 25 minutes for the 8k on a cross country course.