Gwen Jorgensen Quitting Tri, Going Full Time Marathon.

I like that she's aiming high for her goals. If she would have said I'm going to be a professional marathoner, I would have lost interest but since she threw down the gauntlet, I'm going to pay attention to see if she can dominate.

Jerry Maguire wrote:

ghjghjghjgh wrote:

Who has a greater upside, Kieffer or Jorgenson?

Who's tapped out the most, can Kieffer squeeze more time out now after a period of high mileage or will Jorgenson be able to drop similar amounts of time?

Who's first to 2:25?

My vote is Kieffer.

Jorgenson has a MASSIVE aerobic base already, yes she needs more running in her legs but I don't see a 2:25.

Keiffer is already 2:25 or better on the Berlin course, running even splits.

Gwen is way back for now, but has Jerry and a gold medal in her pocket.

Karl Hungus wrote:

I like that she's aiming high for her goals. If she would have said I'm going to be a professional marathoner, I would have lost interest but since she threw down the gauntlet, I'm going to pay attention to see if she can dominate.

Agreed!

Here is an interview with her from Slowtwitch.

http://www.slowtwitch.com/Interview/Gwen_Talks_About_Marathon_6643.html

Karl Hungus wrote:

I like that she's aiming high for her goals. If she would have said I'm going to be a professional marathoner, I would have lost interest but since she threw down the gauntlet, I'm going to pay attention to see if she can dominate.

I agree. She's totally exposing herself to a ton of criticism and derision by saying she wants olympic gold, but so what. That should be every pro marathoners goal.

We tend to marginalize our American elites because the eastern Africans are just that good, and we just want them to run PB's, or maybe podium.

We need to have more marathoners who attack the sport with the mentality of someone who wants to win.

I guess if you're already an Olympic champion you don't need to be afraid of stating lofty goals. And if you fall short of them, you're still an Olympic champion,

The one part you and I might differ on is on her ability to improve dramatically. At 10M and less I'm on board. It would be a shock to see her make any dramatic strides there. A few seconds a mile over her first few seasons or something would be very good. The marathon she should, and will, make dramatic improvements in. It's the one race that requires more than just a great aerobic base, and it's wayyy worse than her other races. I don't think you can go and give her 2:27...but bringing proper focus and mileage I expect her to do like almost every other runner that focuses on marathoning does, and bring her marathon into the normal range of what you'd expect a 71' half runner to do; so somewhere between 2:28 and 2:33 or so depending on just how her fatigue resistance, economy, etc. are.

If you don't expect her in current fitness, with marathon training, to have a shot at being near 2:30 I think you're hugely underselling her.

Where it's interesting with her is that she starts from a level of aerobic fitness that is essentially "Trials Longshot". Her fitness will probably* get a little better, with the slight chance she gets significantly better and the slight chance she gets slightly worse (*I've seen a few people, though rare, who seem to do better with a mix).

The thing that makes it interesting is that she is already at 71' or so. That's pretty good. If she found 10/s a mile in running improvement we'd be talking 68 or so for half. A 10/s mile improvement would be a big chunk but it's not an unreasonable or unheard of thing for a runner to take 30s off a 5k PR over the course of several seasons, even for seasoned runners.

68 for the half is Jordan/Shalane territory. Whether she can do it comes down to two things:

1) Does she take fairly well to the marathon? This is a total unknown, and I don't think we have any way to make a good guess

2) Does she have 10/s or so per mile to make in aerobic/running fitness gains over 5 or 6 seasons? It's a big improvement, but not so much as to be implausible.

Where does that leave us odds wise? To me a worse case scenario would be able a 10%-20% chance of #1. A decent number of runners are acceptable marathoners. The chances of her being a Hasay level marathon talent are, of course, quite low. Well below 1% I think. For part 2, that's hard to speculate on, but I'd say that's probably on the order of 10% to maybe as high as 40% depending on how much you think she will benefit from switching to full time running.

Those estimates give between a 1% and 8% chance of reaching a level compared to Shalane/Hasay level. Not great odds, but enough to make it interesting and not a pie in the sky wild goose chase.

Olympic Gold on the other hand....well she needs #1, but then probably needs to improve by 15-20s mile. That I'd have to guess the odds are well below 1% she can improve that much.

adssFvqve wrote:

I guess if you're already an Olympic champion you don't need to be afraid of stating lofty goals. And if you fall short of them, you're still an Olympic champion,

I could argue that by virtue of being an Olympic champ, she knows full well what it takes to get there, physically and psychologically, so she's ahead of some of her peers.

So if Gwen wins gold in 2020 - can you argue that she is better than Hasay?

Karl Hungus wrote:

adssFvqve wrote:

I guess if you're already an Olympic champion you don't need to be afraid of stating lofty goals. And if you fall short of them, you're still an Olympic champion,

I could argue that by virtue of being an Olympic champ, she knows full well what it takes to get there, physically and psychologically, so she's ahead of some of her peers.

So if Gwen wins gold in 2020 - can you argue that she is better than Hasay?

Typo?

Seems pretty obvious that if Gwen won Olympic gold you could argue she is better than Hasay who has not won Olympic gold.

ghjghjghjgh wrote:

Who has a greater upside, Kieffer or Jorgenson?

Who's tapped out the most, can Kieffer squeeze more time out now after a period of high mileage or will Jorgenson be able to drop similar amounts of time?

Who's first to 2:25?

I think Jorgensen is right to dream, but ultimately probably won't have the upside that some people seem to think she does. It's possible she might be able to sniff at gold (if she makes the team) because Olympic marathons tend to be a bit slower and watered down due to the 3 per country athlete cap. Thus, a fairly talented, hardworking (but not GOAT-material) athlete with a good mind for tactics (such as Jorgensen) could prevail in the right circumstances, a la Hastings WC bronze.

But... I do think there is a lot of optimism about her upside. It's true, she has not been doing specific marathon running training, or mileage. But, she has been doing a lot of quality aerobic training for an event that is ~2hrs long. No doubt, triathlon training is not optimal marathon training, but I would argue that it is more specific than say, mid-D running training.

I trained with a club that shared facilities with a national triathlon training center (all Olympians/other international team members etc.). Sometimes they would join for workouts, or I would generally be around at the same time they did workouts. My observation is that though they ran lower mileage (40-60mpw), all of that mileage was pretty high quality - they were probably running the same amount of quality miles as our 5-10k guys. Their bikes and swims served as low-end, base aerobic training. All of them were quite good/talented at running, but it seemed to me that they struggled with the subtlety of run pacing/workouts - whenever they joined us, they tended to overrun workouts (ie. absolutely destroying unners in our group who were significantly faster than them in a 5-10k race scenario... or imploding very badly during the workout).

Anyways, I say this because a few of these tri guyss did try to switch to running, either because tri was getting too expensive (and they weren't winning enough/getting sponsored enough), or because they had caught some success in standalone running races and thought they should be pursuing it full time. All of them seemed to not really improve (or not improve significantly) after switching to running full-time. I think that this is probably a combination of Olympic-level tri training actually being more specific than presumed for events >10k, and also challenges in mentality switching for training (getting injured/burnt out due to overcooking themselves with intensity).

I'm suggesting a theory that she has precisely one more Olympic gold medal than anyone else commenting on this thread.

Thus I'm inclined to believe that she is a better judge than any of us of here on her ability to win another.

LM wrote:

Typo?

Seems pretty obvious that if Gwen won Olympic gold you could argue she is better than Hasay who has not won Olympic gold.

Wasn't a typo. A lot could happen in the next 3 years. I'm rooting for her to win Gold, because it would be nice.

And it would be interesting to see the Hasay fanboys go "But Gwen never ran Boston!"

V. Fernandes wrote:

Reality Really Bites wrote:

Another armchair athlete spouting incorrect facts.

Nobody yet knows if Tokyo will be a sprint or olympic distance race. Only that a sprint relay also will be included.

It's definitely going to be a sprint distance race.

The whole point of adding the mixed relay was that they could add another event without adding more athletes. If they really want the relay to have the racers at their best, the main race is most definitely going to be a sprint vs. standard distance. Add the fact that the broadcasters, the head of ITU, etc all have stated they prefer sprint distance as it makes for better viewing and it's essentially a done deal. All the triathletes are planning on it.

You do realize that you completely contradicted yourself in your post. You start off proclaiming that "It's definitely going to be a sprint" and then you conclude that it's "essentially a done deal." Inhale and repeat after me "nobody yet knows if Tokyo will be a sprint or olympic distance race."

You then make the laughable statement that "[a] the triathletes are planning on it." Really? I just so happen to know some of the triathletes on the short list to be racing in Tokyo and they really don't know which one it will be and most definitely "aren't planning" on anything 3 years out. Which triathletes do you know who have tailored their training programs already for a sprint distance in Tokyo?

This is a $$$$$ play by Gwen.

1. Wants a Nike contract.

2. Wants to join a high profile group.

3. Needs to do it now before she gets too old.

4. Wants a big Appearance Fee, marathon style.

We're debating internally and going to publish something but Raysism makes some interesting points.

First off her 10 mile time converts to 2:28 or 2:29. So if she is a good a marathoner as she is a part time runner at 10 miles she should run 2:28/2:29. I'm thinking she can do this and improve but neither are automatic.

And there are some current 2:29 girls in the US who I don't think have a shot at Olympic team or won't get much better.

It's a big jump from 2:30 to 2:25 level. I think 2:25 level is what it takes to make US team. Get to the 2:22 level or so I think that's medallist potential.

Bigger jump to sub 2:20 which is what I think Olympic gold is.

As for Hasay, she took to the marathon like a fish to water. I thought her career as a pro wasn't going to amount to much, but like Paula she's made for the marathon.

I've got some Qs for the Triathlon people. How would Gwen do in a sprint Olympic Triathlon? Is this like moving the Olympics from a 10,000m to a 5,000 (I know it's half the distance) or is it more like going from 10k to 1500?

How long do you all think she had this in mind? She moved to Portland a while ago. And the money impact is interesting. What was she making in triathlon? Obviously as Olympic champ there are tons of endorsement opportunities that are still there but there aren't appearance fees in triathlon right?

Kind of strange if Shalane's Nike contract is up and so is Gwen's Asics deal. Makes sense both might be year after Olympics.

Also curious what most of these women have written in their contracts about pregnancy. Being independent contractors pregnancy really could cost them but being Olympic champ has to help.

Amy Hastings is a 2:27 marathoner. She was 9th in the Olympics and was a World Championships medalist.

The Olympic champion was a drug cheat.

Of course it is a stretch for Gwen to win the Olympic marathon. As you say, always bet the field against an individual.

But clearly a 2:27ish marathoner can be in contention in a championship marathon.

So in the next two years, how many marathons do you think she will run before the Oly trials?

*stipe wrote:

Amy Hastings is a 2:27 marathoner. She was 9th in the Olympics and was a World Championships medalist.

The Olympic champion was a drug cheat.

Of course it is a stretch for Gwen to win the Olympic marathon. As you say, always bet the field against an individual.

But clearly a 2:27ish marathoner can be in contention in a championship marathon.

You forgot this about Amy...Oly Trials champion in brutal heat. Always gonna be a medal threat in hotter weather, which Tokyo will be.

For one, you have no comprehension of my mindset. I get her mindset. Making huge goals is necessary to reach the top. However this is a publicity stunt, nothing more, nothing less. THIS IS NOT A GOAL, it's social media/branding donkey show.

I will say this, if I was in her position I would say the exact same thing, I am sure there is a very good return on all the publicity she has gotten. However, she deserves all the criticism she is getting.

Your NBA/NFL reference is ridiculous. Of course everyones goal is the win at the beginning of the season, thats not crazy.... it is the sport they are involved in!

She is switching from one of the LEAST competitive sports in the world into hands down the MOST competitive sport in the world. She puts a F*&*&* check BOX up online like its going to get CHECKED....

She does not understand the caliber of US athletes she will face at the trials, let alone is she able to comprehend the talent that north africans bring to the table.

I mean seriously. LETS GET A POLL GOING ON THE FRONT PAGE!

You actually think she will make the team then you need to unplug your internet. You think she will get GOLD in the olympics? Burn your house down.

We truly are living in a fact free world.