The stroller should help except for going uphill. When you push the stroller the momemtum of it moving will literally drag you along so in a way that helps tons.
The stroller should help except for going uphill. When you push the stroller the momemtum of it moving will literally drag you along so in a way that helps tons.
Banana Bread wrote:
How fast do you think Bekele could run across America(how many days?)? What do you think would be his fastest mile split over the entire period and his maximum distance in a day?
Bekele wouldn't survive a couple of days.
Did he smell? Seems like running clothes would be pretty ripe by the end of the cross country run.
Banana Bread wrote:
The stroller should help except for going uphill. When you push the stroller the momemtum of it moving will literally drag you along so in a way that helps tons.
I would greatly urge the focus not to drift to Pete's current run. They are hard to compare, each very much deserving their own attention, and Pete's is in another world.
Banana Bread wrote:
The stroller should help except for going uphill. When you push the stroller the momemtum of it moving will literally drag you along so in a way that helps tons.
BS as usual.
Have you never seen children in the supermarket on trolleys. They run around with them and hang on and lift there feet onto the bar at the bottom of them and are pulled along freely by the trolley's momentum? That is what it is like.
Banana Bread wrote:
Have you never seen children in the supermarket on trolleys. They run around with them and hang on and lift there feet onto the bar at the bottom of them and are pulled along freely by the trolley's momentum? That is what it is like.
How fast do you think you could leave this forum forever?
Congrats Paul!
Good to see there is life after the Beatles!
old dude wrote:
Congrats Paul!
Good to see there is life after the Beatles!
Alas no :(
Congrats Phil!
Well done Phil.
Hi all - Thanks WeJo for coming out and sharing.
For now, Markus and I are probably best equipped here to answer any questions, though I have no deep knowledge of the operation; certainly not before I have a chance to speak further with Phil, and for now, we'll let him decompress.
Some background: Phil is a multi-time US national 24hr team member, national class 6 day runner (he should be capable of over 800 km, though he has yet to do so). He is perhaps most well known for his former American 48 hr record of 257 miles (broken last Nov with] Olivier Leblond's 262; Kouros' WR is 294).
Phil initially stated goal was to go for Pete Kostelnick's sterling FKT (Guinness calls it a record) of 42d:6h:30m. While there are shorter routes that can be taken to cross the continent, Guinness record attempts have traditionally followed similar routes with ~3100 miles. [As an aside, that mileage is useful for comparisons to some top Sri Chinmoy 3100 performances. Will share more later on that.]
Phil was facing a few challenges, among them,
1) not in his athletic prime as was the case with Pete (Phil is 50, Pete did his at age ~29), not quite the caliber runner that Pete is (Pete ran 2:40 for the marathon, 163 for 24hrs, but his transcon was firmly among the greatest multiday runs in history).
2) was chasing a mark that required starting at a blistering pace leaving no margin for error
3) Phil had a smaller budget and - this cannot be overstated - a much smaller support crew than Pete, consisting of one person (!?); something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.
Among the features of ultras, the longer the run, the more that can go wrong. The trick is to continue moving as efficiently as possible in the face of the inevitable adversity. In runs of these lengths, disaster will strike inevitably. Pete's support jeep was wrecked on the highway (yes, both runs had extensive time on highways. I will have more details on Phil's route later).
For potential 'record' purposes, Phil started at Town Hall in San Francisco and touched base yesterday (10/9/2018) at City Hall similar to other prominent runs (Pete, Marshall Ulrich, Frank Giannino), NYC in about 49d:10h), but to make it a proper transcontinental run, touched the Pacific and ran to his starting point a day or two before he began his run, and continued to Coney Island to touch the Atlantic 11+ miles past City Hall.
This spreadsheet is a work in progress. I will update further after I speak to Phil.
https://goo.gl/rtpmv3Markus from this thread wrote elsewhere and I think it’s rather accurate (you can quibble with the marathon times in the analogy as I’m sure some LR poster will do, but you get Markus’ point):
I would revise the last sentence slightly. Phil’s run is a huge success and monumental achievement for any runner at any age. His age and minimal support make it all the more impressive.
As someone noted above, Mike Arnstein was among the entourage that ran Phil down the West Side of Manhattan to City Hall and then to Coney Island. Mike in his peak was averaging ~200 miles per week while running mostly roads commuting to and from work, and racing with ferocious frequency, producing high quality results (look at 2012 in particular) that can be found on UltraSignup (those results do not include a number of road races and sub ultras he completed over the year as well). This while training in NYC city streets generally for very different kinds of terrain. After temporarily moving to Hawaii, he produced some outstanding runs / wins at the difficult HURT 100.
He kept saying as he was running with Phil that he couldn’t wrap his head around the a) enormity of the challenge Phil took on and b) the quality of the run that Phil produced. Kind of akin to 2:05 guys trying to process Kipchoge’s 2:01:39, or Tommy Caldwell & Co talking about Alex Honnold’s free solo of El Capitan. The closer one is in ability for the activity, the more s/he can appreciate what was accomplished.
RoJo was asking about records. This is the 2nd or 3rd fastest crossing, depending who you ask. All acknowledge Pete's as the fastest crossing. Comparing a short .55 mile loop to a point to point run is difficult, but it's the best we have to compare data. Ashprihanal Aalto of Finland broke a course record (3100 mile world best) held by Wolfgang Schwerk (one of Yiannis Kouros' few credible competitors) by 23 hours in 2014, completing the Sri Chinmoy 3100 mile Self Transcendence run in 40d 9hrs, averaging about 76.5 miles / day. A stunning feat. There are unique benefits and challenges to both the short loop course and the transcon, and ultimately I think that Kostelnick's transcon and Aalto's 3100 are reasonably comparable. As far as what's possible - the great Scottish ultrarunner (among the GOATs of ultrarunning, and whose 100km WR should still stand) Don Ritchie opined when asked in 1980 that the US could be conceivably crossed at an average of 80 miles / day. I wouldn't call that a Michael Joyner-esque prediction, but . . .
Fabulous! Give me an experienced (even at 50), low-key, runner in good form any day over some newbie! Do it again in a year or two, Phil, you may do even better! Forget that, brilliant run! You are the Ayatollah of Rock-and-ROLLA!
Good luck Phil at Six Days in the Dome!