Serious question: what would the Marathon WR be if it was ran on a track?

actually slower, hills, assuming they are manageable such as with Berlin, actually help with motor unit recruitment so the same muscles dont keep getting used and therefore fatigued, not to mention running on a track would have significantly more turns

I know personally of Kenyan sub-elites who do 20+ miles on a 400m track (as intervals) as marathon prep. They do not seem to get injured every session - I think the body could handle this much better than you suspect.

college runner wrote:

a 400 meter track would be ridiculous. It would have to be like an 800 meter track for the sake of the athletes, and yes there out there. And now it is highly dependent on the wind/weather cause your going in a circle. The next question would be flats or spikes. Also everyone who finishes the race will probaly have some muscle imbalance injury to deal with from all those turns. Another thing to compare would be the responsiveness between the road and track (this is probaly already calculated) as well as how hills/downnhills favor fast times etc.

Overall I think is you could pave the dubai course in a nice thick layer of track, then we would see substanialty faster times, but if you had it on any old oval track it would hurt and hinder performance

DontFeedTheTroll wrote:

mondorondo wrote:

it would be slower.

I can't imagine why. The road 5K and 10K records are slower than the track records. A half marathon was first covered in under an hour on the track. Why would a marathon be slower?

That's because none of the mega studs who ever ran a 10k on the road at their peak. Gebrselassie could have gone faster than 26:44 on the Singelloop in 1998. Leonard Patrick Komon (road 10k world record holder) is faster on the road than on the track.

How about a marathon on 84-meter track. 502 laps alternating directions every mile.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhhFaWS6OxE&feature=c4-overview&list=UUnOBOWNQQzNXxF_g82C8vXg