The time has come to eliminate categories across the board.
The time has come to eliminate categories across the board.
YMMV wrote:
The man was foolish enough to say "always", and then the VERY DAY his quote comes out, Camille wins easily. Zach and Camille are both the 100-mile record holders, so by definition among the "best-trained". And of course Patrick and Courtney qualify in that area as well. Arguably the real "upset" here is that Courtney didn't win the whole thing, as she is the most experienced at this sort of thing.
Of course the fastest men on their best day will beat the fastest women on their best day, but that is not what he said. On any given day in any given race, SH!T HAPPENS. And that goes 100x for a race past 100 miles. That's why the awards are handed out after the race, not before.
Courtney and Camille deserve every bit of the press they are getting, as they keep showing up ready to get the job done on even terms, and continue to defy the "experts". When you are on the extremes of human endeavor, it's the size of the fight in the dog, not the size of the dog.
YMMV doesn't even understands his own quoted quotes: "If you have the best-trained male and female ultrarunners competing against each other, the men will always win." -Dr. Martin Hoffman
The "best-trained male and female ultrarunners competing against each other" happens usually at World Championships and not at random small trail or track ultras.
YMMV wrote:
If you portray yourself as an "expert", at least have the humility or at least the common sense NEVER to say ALWAYS. The comedy gold is that he got nailed on the very weekend of publication. The Dr. dude got "chicked", big time.
Know who also got "chicked".......your boy ZACH. And he went home "devastated" as they say.
Know why? Probably 'cause he ain't eatin' enough carbs, and too much fat. His last few years seem a bit up and down. Has gotten dominated a few times by Mr High Carb/ No Meat, Jim Walmsley.
Maybe it's time to re-think his diet?
And as far as your lecturing someone about being humble and portraying themselves as an expert, that's rich. (you pretend to be a diet expert on here all the time)
(in all seriousness, Bitter is a great runner. After his 100 mile record, can take nothing away from him. But apparently his diet is not the super weapon some portray it as. He ran REALLY well before he switched to high fat from high carb. Who knows what he would have run if he remained high carb? We'll never know. But we know he is an elite talent, with a great work ethic. Like all top runners/ultra runners. And he has indeed proven that one can continue to run great when switching to high fat from high carb. But better? Better than he would have run remaining on high carb? That's unknowable. Better than the high carb/vegetarian/vegan runners? No, he hasn't proven that. Many of them have done things he has not done.
In summary, switching to high fat can work for some, but it certainly has not proven to be some clearly superior (in performance, weight loss, or overall healthy) diet to high carb, as many of it's proponents regularly, and falsely claim. The End.
Stay Humble.
Even a lot ultrarunners don't understand that a 24 hour race is a totally different thing than a fast 100 miler. I was not surprised that Zach and Pat bailed out. Camille did very well for her first fully run 24 hour race.
Anyway it has nothing to do what kind of nutrition you prefer.
Men are faster wrote:
If the top male marathoners focused on ultras, they would make a mockery out of these men and women.
+1
thread sucks wrote:
Men are faster wrote:
If the top male marathoners focused on ultras, they would make a mockery out of these men and women.
+1
If the top sprinters focused on marathons, they would make a mockery out of those men and women.
YMMV wrote:
"If you have the best-trained male and female ultrarunners competing against each other, the men will always win." -Dr. Martin Hoffman.
This is correct and can be extended to every feat of endurance, speed and strength. I wouldn't be surprised if women were better at limbo dancing or another sport in which being smaller was an advantage.
YMMV wrote:
thread sucks wrote:
+1
If the top sprinters focused on marathons, they would make a mockery out of those men and women.
Nobody jumps from sprints to marathons! But at longer distances, bigger jumps are more feasible. So it's not particularly common to go from 100/200 to 400, but it does happen. Similarly 400 to 800. Moving from 800 to 1500, or 1500 to chase, 5000/10,000 is more common. There is something of a natural progression here. You probably focus more on middle distance at school, then up to 10,000 in college, then move to marathon. This is partly dictated by the competition (there is no 10,000 at school or marathon in college) and partly because you need a lot of miles to ran a good marathon and it's thought to be a good idea to maximise speed whilst you're still young. The top distance runners have abandoned track 5,000/10,000 to run marathons as that is where the money is. Not all of them could be good ultra runners, but you can bet some would be good enough to be very competitive if they had the opportunity to earn more money there. Are there any good east African ultra runners? Wouldn't you expect there to be some good ones?
So if instead of the sub 2 hour obsession, lots of money was on offer for taking a chunk out of the 24 hour or 100k or 100 mile record, marathoners would start preparing for ultras.
Men are faster wrote:
If the top male marathoners focused on ultras, they would make a mockery out of these men and women.
Patrick Reagan ran at the 2016 Olympic Marathon Trials. He's a 1:04 half marathon runner. 24 hours and beyond goes beyond running ability.
He is not a top marathoner.
9/10 troll by OP
Men are faster wrote:
He is not a top marathoner.
Yeah, only 33rd in the Olympic Trials. What a slowpoke! He certainly is no Sage Canaday!
/tongue-in-cheek
What will be interesting is that Desi is showing serious interest in going to ultras after 2020. Of course, then the criticism will be "She waited too late!"
Until then the best marathoner to transition has been Magda Boulet (15:17/31:48/2:26), who has done very well (2nd WS, 5th UTMB) but hasn't dominated.
The biggest mystery is why the $30K purse for both men and women for Comrades (a road race so perfect transition to ultras) hasn't drawn one of the army of 2:05-08 guys from Kenya, Ethiopia, or even Japan, for that matter. Yuki seems a perfect match. It's almost as if ~55 miles is a little intimidating to them for some reason.
YMMV wrote:
The biggest mystery is why the $30K purse for both men and women for Comrades (a road race so perfect transition to ultras) hasn't drawn one of the army of 2:05-08 guys from Kenya, Ethiopia, or even Japan, for that matter. Yuki seems a perfect match. It's almost as if ~55 miles is a little intimidating to them for some reason.
Because they all know that they would fail.
It's kind of interesting that nobody from Kenya or Ethiopia ever did well at Comrades.
I read the whole article on her. She is something else. Many ultra runners do not run much more weekly miles than most marathoners. But she does. She runs about 100 miles per week. The 200 mile trail races she does are ridiculous! They are not wide open trails either. She goes up and down nasty hills, rocky trails, and the article says some of the runners encountered mountain lions.
Camille is an amazing athlete. Let me get that out of the way. But the Desert Solstice is too small a sample size to make any definitive statement about women being as good as men at ultrarunning. Next October Camille will compete in the 24hr world championships. At that race you will have the best men and women 24hr ultrarunners in the world competing head to head on the same course at the same time. Let's resume this discussion after that race.
All-time U.S. list:
Mike Morton 41 FL 2012 172.457 miles
Jon Olsen 38 CA 2013 167.568
Scott Jurek 36 WA 2010 165.705
Rae Clark 38 CA 1990 165.243
Pete Kostelnick 28 NE 2015 163.54
John Dennis 32 MD 2013 163.255
Camille Herron 36 OK 2018 162.919
(Courtney Dauwalter 32 CO 2017 159.319)
You also have to keep in mind that there were and there still are almost no competitive 24 hour races in the US.
Everything always revolved around 100 mile trail races.
UltraDude wrote:
Camille is an amazing athlete. Let me get that out of the way. But the Desert Solstice is too small a sample size to make any definitive statement about women being as good as men at ultrarunning. Next October Camille will compete in the 24hr world championships. At that race you will have the best men and women 24hr ultrarunners in the world competing head to head on the same course at the same time. Let's resume this discussion after that race.
Let's say that Camille plans on competing in the World Championships. With her planned load of races chances are high that she will be injured.
YMMV wrote:
thread sucks wrote:
+1
If the top sprinters focused on marathons, they would make a mockery out of those men and women.
Here we go: evidence that you know nothing about running as a sport.
YMMV is a tool wrote:
YMMV wrote:
If the top sprinters focused on marathons, they would make a mockery out of those men and women.
Here we go: evidence that you know nothing about running as a sport.
Evidence you don't understand stand analogies.