Marathon Trials - Quick Recap, Player by Player

Maybe that's his talent: he can ride the line close to bonking longer than anyone.

Quick shout out to Makenna Myler also, a veteran club team racer with Cal Coast and Valor, who ran a five minute PB to finish 7th.

She’s just entering her prime marathoning years and is a tough competitor. This bodes well for her.

You're wrong about Des Linden. She ran 2:28, not 2:30. I listen to her podcast, she was very low key about her expectations for the trials, even considering skipping the trials for Boston.

I viewed Sisson as merely running to safely qualify as best as possible, which doesn’t require covering a one woman move. Considering she hadn’t made a team before, why risk blowing up unnecessarily?

Quibble - she hadn't made a marathon team before.

🙄 I thought that was obvious enough with the context, but yes.

I agree with this. He seems a lot like Ritz in this regard. Someone mentioned this in another thread that he always looks like he's hurting so that alone probably isn't the best sign of whether or not he's actually hurting. He also has an unorthodox running form so even at his freshest he still doesn't look as fluid and graceful as most others.

21150/22902 were the previous fastest times in Florida. The biggest marathon prize in Florida is $4500 outside of the olympic trials.

Just curious how you think the coach thinking they would finish in the top 5 would affect their races? Do you think Colley went out too hard in keeping up with the lead pack for so long? I was hoping he would hang in there. I think Tristin may struggle in the heat.

Don’t know if it had an affect or not, I just think it’s funny he said they’d be on the podium. Of course he had Simpson up there as well. He also claimed Izewski wasn’t ready to race at that level and apparently he’s the only one that was. van Ord was seeded 17th and finished there despite 10 of the top 20 seeds dropping out, so not really a tremendous effort there, but certainly acceptable.
Colley had no business being up there and would have been better served picking up the deadwood. I guess he gave it a shot so good for him. It wasn’t like he did yeomans duty like Panning did. Pennel, Tuxbury and Macon haven’t had a decent race in well over a year. In Tuxbury’s case she seems to have gone backwards since joining the team. Macon was beaten up, had surgery and probably should have sat this one out. I hope this didn’t set her back another year. Pennel seems to be done.

Interesting. I follow them as well. I'm glad Izewski finished above what they predicted. It seems like Colley may be very fit and capable but has issues late in the marathon.

I get holding him to high standards, but America's greatest ever marathoner? Consider America's greatest marathoners in no particular order:

1.) Khalid Khannouchi - 2:05:38 BEFORE super shoes. Has Conner Mantz given any indication he can outdo Khannouchi's performances time-wise? Also, won Chicago as an American and probably some other things I can't remember.

2.) Meb - won both Boston and New York, AND an Olympic silver medal? To achieve that takes more than speed; it takes the ability to perform on game day. I sincerely doubt Mantz will outdo Meb.

3.) Others: Rupp - olympic medal, plus the old guys before my time.

Really, there is no reason to think Mantz will be America's greatest every marathoner. (and that's just the men - plenty of awesome women he'd have to outdo as well to really earn the title as stated.)

McClain was not gutted at all w 4th

she ran a perfectly executed race.

the cj interview was the interview of the trials

Sisson is so much better than nearly every other American marathoner that she has a bad day, still runs 2:22, and easily qualifies. We are spoiled with how good of marathoner that she is. IMO she has the best chance to medal of any of our qualifiers, men or women, because she still toughs out results on a bad day. Yes, the Africans are running much faster in the newest super shoes on extremely fast courses in ideal conditions, but championship marathons on a hilly course in hot weather are completely different animals. The Olympic marathon record is still only 2:23, which both Sisson and O'Keeffe beat today.

The only question is how they perform on a hilly course that will certainly be a quad destroyer. It has more elevation drop than Boston. It's very difficult to prevent quad destruction on that type of course. I think some runners that haven't experienced a Boston-type course will pound the downhills and blow up, so the winner will have to hold back until after the downhill portion at 32k or so.

Surprised that Saucony had 0 sponsored athletes in the top top of either the men's or women's fields this weekend.

Mantz had an impressive run. He had to dig deep to cover the last couple miles, he stated. If there was any problem, it's probably that he lost some training with the stress reaction he had. But he competed like total bada$$ to get his spot on the squad.

Going forward, hopefully he is fully recovered from the injury and can train and race at 100%. And yes, Young was clearly stronger on the day.

Same. Were I her coach, I would have been screaming at her to slow way down over the last few 4/5 miles and just coast in. It's those last miles of the marathon where the damage is done. Hard to overstate how much it could help with recovery by not running hard over those final miles, especially with the heat.

The last miles are where the damage is done, but the last miles are also where you'd expect a first time marathoner running in the heat to blow up so you can catch her!

Yeah I am confused why you would say that blind patriotism had people picking Rupp to make the team. Aren’t all of these runners Americans? So it makes no sense unless you think somehow Rupp is more of an American or some other convoluted explanation which rings hollow or is absurd. I didn’t believe Galen would make the Team, as I had categorically declared, and it has nothing to do with Houston, which meant nothing to me, but rather that he was facing younger runners who didn’t have the injury history which would be deleterious for Galen. I see Galen as a guy who once ran 26:44 and now maybe could run 28:14. I think Galen, if super shoes were available 10 years ago, might have been able to run 2:04xx, but it was not to be, and so his career winds down in anticlimactic fashion, as most careers do.