Yes, it was an outlier but that doesn't mean Matt was cheating, as you seem to imply. Athletes that cheat - whether it by PEDs, cutting corners, whatever - do it as part of a pattern. Not just for a single race and then never do it again.
Sometimes everything just comes together at the right time. Beamon's jump in MC, for example. Unless you have some evidence that something was off that day it seems blantantly unfair to insinuate Carpenter did something nefarious. There was nothing else is his career to indicate that he was anything but a by the rules competitor.
Focused and specific prep for a race (or season) can make a huge difference, especially in such as an out-of-the-ordinary, way higher altitude than other mountain races of the type race like Pike Peak. Look at Remi this race, Seth Demoor at every Pikes Peak compared to his low altitude mountain results, Jakob Ingebrigtsen in time trials this year compared to other track seasons, Remi doing the altitude tent, etc.
Sage has a huge outlier himself at Mt. Washington. His specific training in 2012 (I think he has said uphill training on a treadmill all winter or something like that) made a huge difference compared to the other years he raced it. His 2012 compared to his next best would be like being 5 minutes faster than his next best at Pike's Peak proportionally:
2012 58:27
2013 1:03:39
2014 1:01:30
2017 1:00:45
2018 1:03:11
Kilian's relatively unimpressive times in some races (or FKTs) is mostly because he doesn't focus as much on specific preparation, choosing instead to be more of a generalist in the mountain sports world. He's the type to run just fast enough to win. Sophia Laukli is similar in that she is doing mountain running off of ski training. I can appreciate a really specific prep for a race, but for longevity in sport, Kilian's more generalist approach is better for longevity/less likely to burn yourself out both mentally and physically.
As someone who also skis and bikes, where race times are meaningless, I think times/race records can be interesting, but better left to the track. It's too easy to discount greater performances in challenging conditions, bad weather, mud, etc. in favor of fast times in great weather which might not even be better performances. Sure, appreciate the CRs when they happen, but focus on times is best left to the track. Otherwise you risk dumbing down the sport like we see in high school cross country where kids want flat/fast/short courses to "PR".
And [to defend myself and provide actual context].
Where and how are you extrapolating this "5-minutes" from my MT. WA times to my Pikes finishing time?
FYI "5-minutes" at Pikes isn't a lot. Kinda proves my point and is a heck of a lot more consistent. I'd give Carpenter a 10-min "outlier" at Pikes but instead his record is 17-minutes faster than his next best time! 3:33 down to 3:16.
Also for data analysis/basic stats: You are comparing only 5 data points of race results for me (vs like a dozen data points for Carpenter at Pikes). In data analysis we usually draw stronger correlations and have better validity with more sample sizes!
But I can explain my 2012 run at MT. WA (which at the time actually took down Matt Carpenter's "American Record" there by over 1-min!). Since then Joe Gray has gone about 12 seconds faster:
2012 was a special year at Mt. WA because it was the US Men's Mountain Running National Championship. The competition was deep and we paced it very well the first few miles. It was a very, very good weather day also. Wind is probably more of a factor at MT. WA then it is at Pikes actually. Also I believe Kim Dobson (women's champion) ran a very fast time as well that year. But it was also a special year for me because I was basically "in my prime" at age 26 and had just come off a massive training block doing the Olympic Trials marathon that winter (where I finished mid-pack in 2:18 with a big positive split). But I was also only about 1.5 years removed from also running my half marathon PR of 1:04.
The biggest thing I had going for me in 2012 was I wasn't racing a ton of long ultras right before it like I was in all those other years (2013 and beyond) though! I actually did a few road half marathons in the spring/summer of 2012 (most specific to MT. WA duration and intensity). And the treadmill incline training.
Compare that to the year later in 2013 when I literally raced a 50-mile ultra 6 days before Mt. WA and I was running on tired legs (still beat Zach Miller though!). In 2014 and beyond I often was coming of all sorts of ultramarathons and mixing it up nearly every month with much, much longer distances.
And Kilian has tons and tons of impressive times and records at established races for the last 15 years. In 2019 he was going for the record at Pikes (And was fresh off his 2:25 course record at Sierre-Zinal that year). He ran 3:27 on a relatively warm day. Matt never even ran in the 3:20s once at Pikes!
There have been a few changes to the start line. From Matt Carpenter's 2005 course description: "When the race started in 1956 the start and finish were located in front of the COG depot. In 1960 the finish was moved .7 miles down Ruxton to its current location. In 1976 the race start was moved from the COG down to its present location in front of City Hall which added 1.1 miles. That was the last course change. However, over the years the written distances of the races have been changed several times even when the course remained the same!"
This extensive course description, and the time calculator, give a sense of how obsessed Carpenter was with this race:
Very interesting discussion. Could this be a simple timing error? Was there anyone at the finish line in 1993 who can confirm the time gap between Carpenter and Mejia?
Seth lost on the marathon by 21s, he easily could've got the W if he didn't also do the ascent. I'm sure this means he will double down on the double next year, because doing logical things is illogical if you are a mad scientist.
I'm not sure what "Avocado's Number" and "Just Another run of the Mill ex-D1" are getting at as I'm more interested in data and facts and not "feel good stories." Lots of us distance runners of the years work hard, and have bad days and walk it in for a 100-miler, and struggle with overcoming all sorts of challenges.
And to whatever poster who said I was only a"2:18 marathoner". My PR is 2:16:52. If you don't want to count that time you can't count anyone's PR on a course like CIM, Grandmas or Boston. I also ran a 1:04 half. Legit. Clean. No super shoes back then too!
When I wrote my first post on this thread (post #33), I was really hoping that you wouldn't show up with your annual irresponsible insinuations about Matt and your cherry-picked times, sometimes going so far as to suggest that some of your own running accomplishments are comparable to or even better than Matt's. I simply don't think it's worth my time to debate you, and I've even let some of your claims about your own accomplishments and comparisons to Matt's accomplishments go unchallenged. I also know that you have a big following among average runners, and I don't want to deal with any of them. But since you purport to be unsure about what a couple of us are "getting at," I'll provide some more information.
First, regarding your claim that your marathon "PR" (personal "record") is 2:16:52, you know very well what counts as a marathon "record." Among other things, it requires that you run on a record-quality course. Here is what World Athletics (WA) says about your performances:
First, note that WA lists your best performance at any recognized event to be your 2:18:24 at the 2012 Olympic trials (on a fast course under excellent conditions). Your 2:16:52 is not listed among any of your best performances. Even your 2:21:43 on the non-record-quality course at Grandma's (Duluth) is listed as one of your best performances.
Second, note that, in listing your PRs at various distances, WA lists your 2:18:24 as your marathon record. As WA often does, it also acknowledges your faster 2:16:52, but states that your performance in that race was "not legal," which is even worse than "non-record-quality" or "not record-eligible." And yes, I realize that my standards, as well as the standards of WA and ARRS, excludes times from CIM, Boston, and Grandma's as personal "records." I know many people who list times from those races as PRs, and they are, in my view, either ignorant about record standards or lying. I don't believe you're ignorant about record standards. I can at least understand why some people, with times on non-record-quality but not horrendously aided courses, might believe that those times better reflect their true abilities than their much slower times on record-quality courses and are therefore more appropriate or informative to list as PRs, but that's not true in your case, since your 2:18:24 is, to use your term, something of an outliner, with only two mid- to high-2:19s and a ton of marathons in the 2:20s or DNFs. It's simply dishonest for you to continue to claim that you are a 2:16 marathoner, even in response to someone's entirely correct statement that you are only a "2:18 marathoner," because you actually know better.
Third, I acknowledge your half-marathon PR of 1:04:32, but WA doesn't consider it to be better than your best marathon performances, and I'm confident that Matt would have been faster than that if he had been running any sea-level half-marathons in his peak years. He mentioned to me once that when he's asked for his half-marathon PR, he's not sure what to say, because he hasn't run any half-marathon races, and his fastest half-marathon was 1:05:26 for the first half of the 1990 national marathon championship (when he happened to be leading, among others, the world half-marathon record holder on a loop and record-quality course). In WA's list of your top ten race performances, I haven't seen anything that Matt couldn't beat during his peak years if he had chosen to pursue PRs in sea-level events.
Fourth, although it's true that Matt has only run one sub-2:20 marathon, he did that in the January 1992 Houston Marathon, when he just wanted to get in an Olympic trials qualifier before the fast-approaching trials qualifying cut-off and race. (He said that he ran it very easily to get the qualifier, though he cut it a lot closer than I did or would have under similar circumstances.) Matt's goal in the late '80s through at least the fall of 1990 was to make the U.S. Olympic team in the marathon and compete against the best (non-U.S.) marathoners, and many knowledgeable people thought that he could do that. I think his meltdown in the 1990 national marathon championship after leading for the first seventeen miles was a big blow to him. He shuffled to the finish in over 2:30. I'm pretty sure that you or I would have dropped out to avoid a 2:30+ on our running resume, but -- unlike you and me -- Matt never dropped out of a marathon or any other race, except in a little local race that he was leading when his ankle was injured and a bone in his foot broke.
Finally, you seem to go out of your way to avoid discussing Matt's greatest wins and records around the world, and you often focus on times that he ran many years after his peak. Consider, for example, this: In 1990, when he was 26 years old and still fairly young in the sport of mountain running, Matt ran 2:07:36 to win the Pikes Peak Ascent. In 2006, when he was 42 years old and long past his peak years, Matt won the Pikes Peak Marathon (which also served as the World Mountain Running Association Long Course Championships) in 3:33:07 with a 2:08:27 Ascent. What do you think that you (or anyone else) will be able to do when you're 42?
For a complete list of Matt's racing over a period of close to forty years (almost all of which was at high altitudes), go to this link:
Matthew Edwin Carpenter (born July 20, 1964) is an American Ultramarathoner as a trail runner and in high altitude marathons. Early life Carpenter was born in North Carolina, before moving to Kentucky and then Mississippi whi...
I love this thread. Started because of SJD. SJD runs incredibly well and proves the haters wrong. Quickly details into a Sage vs Carpenter debate. Amazing.
I don't know much about SJD (I didn't even know his initials.) I watched one or two of his videos a long time ago and thought he seemed like a good-natured goofball. I'm surprised to see him in some dispute, which apparently has something to do with Sage.
Focused and specific prep for a race (or season) can make a huge difference, especially in such as an out-of-the-ordinary, way higher altitude than other mountain races of the type race like Pike Peak. Look at Remi this race, Seth Demoor at every Pikes Peak compared to his low altitude mountain results, Jakob Ingebrigtsen in time trials this year compared to other track seasons, Remi doing the altitude tent, etc.
Sage has a huge outlier himself at Mt. Washington. His specific training in 2012 (I think he has said uphill training on a treadmill all winter or something like that) made a huge difference compared to the other years he raced it. His 2012 compared to his next best would be like being 5 minutes faster than his next best at Pike's Peak proportionally:
2012 58:27
2013 1:03:39
2014 1:01:30
2017 1:00:45
2018 1:03:11
Kilian's relatively unimpressive times in some races (or FKTs) is mostly because he doesn't focus as much on specific preparation, choosing instead to be more of a generalist in the mountain sports world. He's the type to run just fast enough to win. Sophia Laukli is similar in that she is doing mountain running off of ski training. I can appreciate a really specific prep for a race, but for longevity in sport, Kilian's more generalist approach is better for longevity/less likely to burn yourself out both mentally and physically.
As someone who also skis and bikes, where race times are meaningless, I think times/race records can be interesting, but better left to the track. It's too easy to discount greater performances in challenging conditions, bad weather, mud, etc. in favor of fast times in great weather which might not even be better performances. Sure, appreciate the CRs when they happen, but focus on times is best left to the track. Otherwise you risk dumbing down the sport like we see in high school cross country where kids want flat/fast/short courses to "PR".
And [to defend myself and provide actual context].
Where and how are you extrapolating this "5-minutes" from my MT. WA times to my Pikes finishing time?
FYI "5-minutes" at Pikes isn't a lot. Kinda proves my point and is a heck of a lot more consistent. I'd give Carpenter a 10-min "outlier" at Pikes but instead his record is 17-minutes faster than his next best time! 3:33 down to 3:16.
Also for data analysis/basic stats: You are comparing only 5 data points of race results for me (vs like a dozen data points for Carpenter at Pikes). In data analysis we usually draw stronger correlations and have better validity with more sample sizes!
But I can explain my 2012 run at MT. WA (which at the time actually took down Matt Carpenter's "American Record" there by over 1-min!). Since then Joe Gray has gone about 12 seconds faster:
2012 was a special year at Mt. WA because it was the US Men's Mountain Running National Championship. The competition was deep and we paced it very well the first few miles. It was a very, very good weather day also. Wind is probably more of a factor at MT. WA then it is at Pikes actually. Also I believe Kim Dobson (women's champion) ran a very fast time as well that year. But it was also a special year for me because I was basically "in my prime" at age 26 and had just come off a massive training block doing the Olympic Trials marathon that winter (where I finished mid-pack in 2:18 with a big positive split). But I was also only about 1.5 years removed from also running my half marathon PR of 1:04.
The biggest thing I had going for me in 2012 was I wasn't racing a ton of long ultras right before it like I was in all those other years (2013 and beyond) though! I actually did a few road half marathons in the spring/summer of 2012 (most specific to MT. WA duration and intensity). And the treadmill incline training.
Compare that to the year later in 2013 when I literally raced a 50-mile ultra 6 days before Mt. WA and I was running on tired legs (still beat Zach Miller though!). In 2014 and beyond I often was coming of all sorts of ultramarathons and mixing it up nearly every month with much, much longer distances.
And Kilian has tons and tons of impressive times and records at established races for the last 15 years. In 2019 he was going for the record at Pikes (And was fresh off his 2:25 course record at Sierre-Zinal that year). He ran 3:27 on a relatively warm day. Matt never even ran in the 3:20s once at Pikes!
Straight percentage. 1:00:45/58:27 is +3.9%, so that's like 2:05/2:00. If you are talking the full, then adding 3.9% to 3:16 is 3:24. If he's leading and there's no reason to push the downhill anymore, it's easy to see jogging it in for 3:30s. What's the point of racing the downhill if you are already winning; you already have the record; and your ascent was slower than your PR pace so there's no chance of resetting your PR? Makes no sense to rip the downhill and work your legs over when you've already got it won. It's like asking why cyclists or skiers coast in and ease up when they win solo. With the win, time doesn't matter.
I see you have a track/road runner mentality that time always matters and you want to have an impressive sequence of times, but it really doesn't when you win. Only the ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.) in front of the names matter for many people. Kilian might have said he was going for the record at Pikes in 2019, but considering he had great low altitude fitness, he likely underestimated the altitude part. I doubt he did as much specific altitude training/prep as Remi this year, for instance.
I'm not sure what "Avocado's Number" and "Just Another run of the Mill ex-D1" are getting at as I'm more interested in data and facts and not "feel good stories." Lots of us distance runners of the years work hard, and have bad days and walk it in for a 100-miler, and struggle with overcoming all sorts of challenges.
And to whatever poster who said I was only a"2:18 marathoner". My PR is 2:16:52. If you don't want to count that time you can't count anyone's PR on a course like CIM, Grandmas or Boston. I also ran a 1:04 half. Legit. Clean. No super shoes back then too!
When I wrote my first post on this thread (post #33), I was really hoping that you wouldn't show up with your annual irresponsible insinuations about Matt and your cherry-picked times, sometimes going so far as to suggest that some of your own running accomplishments are comparable to or even better than Matt's. I simply don't think it's worth my time to debate you, and I've even let some of your claims about your own accomplishments and comparisons to Matt's accomplishments go unchallenged. I also know that you have a big following among average runners, and I don't want to deal with any of them. But since you purport to be unsure about what a couple of us are "getting at," I'll provide some more information.
First, regarding your claim that your marathon "PR" (personal "record") is 2:16:52, you know very well what counts as a marathon "record." Among other things, it requires that you run on a record-quality course. Here is what World Athletics (WA) says about your performances:
First, note that WA lists your best performance at any recognized event to be your 2:18:24 at the 2012 Olympic trials (on a fast course under excellent conditions). Your 2:16:52 is not listed among any of your best performances. Even your 2:21:43 on the non-record-quality course at Grandma's (Duluth) is listed as one of your best performances.
Second, note that, in listing your PRs at various distances, WA lists your 2:18:24 as your marathon record. As WA often does, it also acknowledges your faster 2:16:52, but states that your performance in that race was "not legal," which is even worse than "non-record-quality" or "not record-eligible." And yes, I realize that my standards, as well as the standards of WA and ARRS, excludes times from CIM, Boston, and Grandma's as personal "records." I know many people who list times from those races as PRs, and they are, in my view, either ignorant about record standards or lying. I don't believe you're ignorant about record standards. I can at least understand why some people, with times on non-record-quality but not horrendously aided courses, might believe that those times better reflect their true abilities than their much slower times on record-quality courses and are therefore more appropriate or informative to list as PRs, but that's not true in your case, since your 2:18:24 is, to use your term, something of an outliner, with only two mid- to high-2:19s and a ton of marathons in the 2:20s or DNFs. It's simply dishonest for you to continue to claim that you are a 2:16 marathoner, even in response to someone's entirely correct statement that you are only a "2:18 marathoner," because you actually know better.
Third, I acknowledge your half-marathon PR of 1:04:32, but WA doesn't consider it to be better than your best marathon performances, and I'm confident that Matt would have been faster than that if he had been running any sea-level half-marathons in his peak years. He mentioned to me once that when he's asked for his half-marathon PR, he's not sure what to say, because he hasn't run any half-marathon races, and his fastest half-marathon was 1:05:26 for the first half of the 1990 national marathon championship (when he happened to be leading, among others, the world half-marathon record holder on a loop and record-quality course). In WA's list of your top ten race performances, I haven't seen anything that Matt couldn't beat during his peak years if he had chosen to pursue PRs in sea-level events.
Fourth, although it's true that Matt has only run one sub-2:20 marathon, he did that in the January 1992 Houston Marathon, when he just wanted to get in an Olympic trials qualifier before the fast-approaching trials qualifying cut-off and race. (He said that he ran it very easily to get the qualifier, though he cut it a lot closer than I did or would have under similar circumstances.) Matt's goal in the late '80s through at least the fall of 1990 was to make the U.S. Olympic team in the marathon and compete against the best (non-U.S.) marathoners, and many knowledgeable people thought that he could do that. I think his meltdown in the 1990 national marathon championship after leading for the first seventeen miles was a big blow to him. He shuffled to the finish in over 2:30. I'm pretty sure that you or I would have dropped out to avoid a 2:30+ on our running resume, but -- unlike you and me -- Matt never dropped out of a marathon or any other race, except in a little local race that he was leading when his ankle was injured and a bone in his foot broke.
Finally, you seem to go out of your way to avoid discussing Matt's greatest wins and records around the world, and you often focus on times that he ran many years after his peak. Consider, for example, this: In 1990, when he was 26 years old and still fairly young in the sport of mountain running, Matt ran 2:07:36 to win the Pikes Peak Ascent. In 2006, when he was 42 years old and long past his peak years, Matt won the Pikes Peak Marathon (which also served as the World Mountain Running Association Long Course Championships) in 3:33:07 with a 2:08:27 Ascent. What do you think that you (or anyone else) will be able to do when you're 42?
For a complete list of Matt's racing over a period of close to forty years (almost all of which was at high altitudes), go to this link:
Great post that sets Sage straight. While I usually like Seth comments on ultra running related things, he also can go awfully wrong with his comments. And I am still waiting on his 100 mile track attempt which is probably never going to happen.
I don't know much about SJD (I didn't even know his initials.) I watched one or two of his videos a long time ago and thought he seemed like a good-natured goofball. I'm surprised to see him in some dispute, which apparently has something to do with Sage.
Yeah you have a lot to catch up about with Seth’s scamming, lying, and rude ways. He’s not just a good natured dolt.
I'm not sure what "Avocado's Number" and "Just Another run of the Mill ex-D1" are getting at as I'm more interested in data and facts and not "feel good stories." Lots of us distance runners of the years work hard, and have bad days and walk it in for a 100-miler, and struggle with overcoming all sorts of challenges.
And to whatever poster who said I was only a"2:18 marathoner". My PR is 2:16:52. If you don't want to count that time you can't count anyone's PR on a course like CIM, Grandmas or Boston. I also ran a 1:04 half. Legit. Clean. No super shoes back then too!
When I wrote my first post on this thread (post #33), I was really hoping that you wouldn't show up with your annual irresponsible insinuations about Matt and your cherry-picked times, sometimes going so far as to suggest that some of your own running accomplishments are comparable to or even better than Matt's. I simply don't think it's worth my time to debate you, and I've even let some of your claims about your own accomplishments and comparisons to Matt's accomplishments go unchallenged. I also know that you have a big following among average runners, and I don't want to deal with any of them. But since you purport to be unsure about what a couple of us are "getting at," I'll provide some more information.
First, regarding your claim that your marathon "PR" (personal "record") is 2:16:52, you know very well what counts as a marathon "record." Among other things, it requires that you run on a record-quality course. Here is what World Athletics (WA) says about your performances:
First, note that WA lists your best performance at any recognized event to be your 2:18:24 at the 2012 Olympic trials (on a fast course under excellent conditions). Your 2:16:52 is not listed among any of your best performances. Even your 2:21:43 on the non-record-quality course at Grandma's (Duluth) is listed as one of your best performances.
Second, note that, in listing your PRs at various distances, WA lists your 2:18:24 as your marathon record. As WA often does, it also acknowledges your faster 2:16:52, but states that your performance in that race was "not legal," which is even worse than "non-record-quality" or "not record-eligible." And yes, I realize that my standards, as well as the standards of WA and ARRS, excludes times from CIM, Boston, and Grandma's as personal "records." I know many people who list times from those races as PRs, and they are, in my view, either ignorant about record standards or lying. I don't believe you're ignorant about record standards. I can at least understand why some people, with times on non-record-quality but not horrendously aided courses, might believe that those times better reflect their true abilities than their much slower times on record-quality courses and are therefore more appropriate or informative to list as PRs, but that's not true in your case, since your 2:18:24 is, to use your term, something of an outliner, with only two mid- to high-2:19s and a ton of marathons in the 2:20s or DNFs. It's simply dishonest for you to continue to claim that you are a 2:16 marathoner, even in response to someone's entirely correct statement that you are only a "2:18 marathoner," because you actually know better.
Third, I acknowledge your half-marathon PR of 1:04:32, but WA doesn't consider it to be better than your best marathon performances, and I'm confident that Matt would have been faster than that if he had been running any sea-level half-marathons in his peak years. He mentioned to me once that when he's asked for his half-marathon PR, he's not sure what to say, because he hasn't run any half-marathon races, and his fastest half-marathon was 1:05:26 for the first half of the 1990 national marathon championship (when he happened to be leading, among others, the world half-marathon record holder on a loop and record-quality course). In WA's list of your top ten race performances, I haven't seen anything that Matt couldn't beat during his peak years if he had chosen to pursue PRs in sea-level events.
Fourth, although it's true that Matt has only run one sub-2:20 marathon, he did that in the January 1992 Houston Marathon, when he just wanted to get in an Olympic trials qualifier before the fast-approaching trials qualifying cut-off and race. (He said that he ran it very easily to get the qualifier, though he cut it a lot closer than I did or would have under similar circumstances.) Matt's goal in the late '80s through at least the fall of 1990 was to make the U.S. Olympic team in the marathon and compete against the best (non-U.S.) marathoners, and many knowledgeable people thought that he could do that. I think his meltdown in the 1990 national marathon championship after leading for the first seventeen miles was a big blow to him. He shuffled to the finish in over 2:30. I'm pretty sure that you or I would have dropped out to avoid a 2:30+ on our running resume, but -- unlike you and me -- Matt never dropped out of a marathon or any other race, except in a little local race that he was leading when his ankle was injured and a bone in his foot broke.
Finally, you seem to go out of your way to avoid discussing Matt's greatest wins and records around the world, and you often focus on times that he ran many years after his peak. Consider, for example, this: In 1990, when he was 26 years old and still fairly young in the sport of mountain running, Matt ran 2:07:36 to win the Pikes Peak Ascent. In 2006, when he was 42 years old and long past his peak years, Matt won the Pikes Peak Marathon (which also served as the World Mountain Running Association Long Course Championships) in 3:33:07 with a 2:08:27 Ascent. What do you think that you (or anyone else) will be able to do when you're 42?
For a complete list of Matt's racing over a period of close to forty years (almost all of which was at high altitudes), go to this link:
I don't have a dog in this fight, but wanted to correct the assertion that WA does not recognize personal bests at Grandma's. WA does recognize these times also allows Grandma's times to be used as a Championship qualifiers. (Grandma's net downhill is de minimis although some years there is a nice tailwind.)
The evolution of this thread is interesting. It started as a thread meant to bait people into bashing SJD (note the OP's handle) and has become a Sage vs. Matt Carpenter thread. Somewhere in the middle, the drone-flying, LRC basement-troll-bullied, good-natured goofball had a pretty good weekend.
I had to bite on this. First, this must be carpenter (avacado..). Sage is a better road racer than carpenter Period. You are talking about coulda shoulda with carp but did he actually run these times you claim he could? NO. If we sticking to facts, there are 3-4 guys currently still competing who are more accomplished than carp on road and even some of them on mountain. Carp did Jack crap at the World mountain champs. Sage has been top 20 there, Jo Gray (2x winner), Max King (1x win) and Hayden hawker I believe have all been top 10 in a much more competitive field. Carp didn't even place top 30 and that was with zero African teams!
Matt is legendary in Manitou but one race success doesn't make you a legend. Thats a 1 trick pony. Notice, worlds when he was blasted, not even top 30 had drug testing. That same year before and after that Championship Matt was crushing everything. Smells fishy. Pretty much every race outside of Pikes, Matt's times have been bested by multiple guys. Barr trail mountain event, incline, teva games, Mt washington etc. He has no World Titles at competitive champs or major events with actual drug testing. Again, fishy
I had to bite on this. First, this must be carpenter (avacado..). Sage is a better road racer than carpenter Period. You are talking about coulda shoulda with carp but did he actually run these times you claim he could? NO. If we sticking to facts, there are 3-4 guys currently still competing who are more accomplished than carp on road and even some of them on mountain. Carp did Jack crap at the World mountain champs. Sage has been top 20 there, Jo Gray (2x winner), Max King (1x win) and Hayden hawker I believe have all been top 10 in a much more competitive field. Carp didn't even place top 30 and that was with zero African teams!
Matt is legendary in Manitou but one race success doesn't make you a legend. Thats a 1 trick pony. Notice, worlds when he was blasted, not even top 30 had drug testing. That same year before and after that Championship Matt was crushing everything. Smells fishy. Pretty much every race outside of Pikes, Matt's times have been bested by multiple guys. Barr trail mountain event, incline, teva games, Mt washington etc. He has no World Titles at competitive champs or major events with actual drug testing. Again, fishy
People used to make fun of Seth if 20 “W” but that is Matt Carpenter. He continually went out too fast and crashed at the road. Does his superior dedication, talent and genetics matter if he couldn’t put it together. Who cares that Shorter thought he could win. Is Shorter the end all be all?
When I wrote my first post on this thread (post #33), I was really hoping that you wouldn't show up with your annual irresponsible insinuations about Matt and your cherry-picked times, sometimes going so far as to suggest that some of your own running accomplishments are comparable to or even better than Matt's. I simply don't think it's worth my time to debate you, and I've even let some of your claims about your own accomplishments and comparisons to Matt's accomplishments go unchallenged. I also know that you have a big following among average runners, and I don't want to deal with any of them. But since you purport to be unsure about what a couple of us are "getting at," I'll provide some more information.
First, regarding your claim that your marathon "PR" (personal "record") is 2:16:52, you know very well what counts as a marathon "record." Among other things, it requires that you run on a record-quality course. Here is what World Athletics (WA) says about your performances:
First, note that WA lists your best performance at any recognized event to be your 2:18:24 at the 2012 Olympic trials (on a fast course under excellent conditions). Your 2:16:52 is not listed among any of your best performances. Even your 2:21:43 on the non-record-quality course at Grandma's (Duluth) is listed as one of your best performances.
Second, note that, in listing your PRs at various distances, WA lists your 2:18:24 as your marathon record. As WA often does, it also acknowledges your faster 2:16:52, but states that your performance in that race was "not legal," which is even worse than "non-record-quality" or "not record-eligible." And yes, I realize that my standards, as well as the standards of WA and ARRS, excludes times from CIM, Boston, and Grandma's as personal "records." I know many people who list times from those races as PRs, and they are, in my view, either ignorant about record standards or lying. I don't believe you're ignorant about record standards. I can at least understand why some people, with times on non-record-quality but not horrendously aided courses, might believe that those times better reflect their true abilities than their much slower times on record-quality courses and are therefore more appropriate or informative to list as PRs, but that's not true in your case, since your 2:18:24 is, to use your term, something of an outliner, with only two mid- to high-2:19s and a ton of marathons in the 2:20s or DNFs. It's simply dishonest for you to continue to claim that you are a 2:16 marathoner, even in response to someone's entirely correct statement that you are only a "2:18 marathoner," because you actually know better.
Third, I acknowledge your half-marathon PR of 1:04:32, but WA doesn't consider it to be better than your best marathon performances, and I'm confident that Matt would have been faster than that if he had been running any sea-level half-marathons in his peak years. He mentioned to me once that when he's asked for his half-marathon PR, he's not sure what to say, because he hasn't run any half-marathon races, and his fastest half-marathon was 1:05:26 for the first half of the 1990 national marathon championship (when he happened to be leading, among others, the world half-marathon record holder on a loop and record-quality course). In WA's list of your top ten race performances, I haven't seen anything that Matt couldn't beat during his peak years if he had chosen to pursue PRs in sea-level events.
Fourth, although it's true that Matt has only run one sub-2:20 marathon, he did that in the January 1992 Houston Marathon, when he just wanted to get in an Olympic trials qualifier before the fast-approaching trials qualifying cut-off and race. (He said that he ran it very easily to get the qualifier, though he cut it a lot closer than I did or would have under similar circumstances.) Matt's goal in the late '80s through at least the fall of 1990 was to make the U.S. Olympic team in the marathon and compete against the best (non-U.S.) marathoners, and many knowledgeable people thought that he could do that. I think his meltdown in the 1990 national marathon championship after leading for the first seventeen miles was a big blow to him. He shuffled to the finish in over 2:30. I'm pretty sure that you or I would have dropped out to avoid a 2:30+ on our running resume, but -- unlike you and me -- Matt never dropped out of a marathon or any other race, except in a little local race that he was leading when his ankle was injured and a bone in his foot broke.
Finally, you seem to go out of your way to avoid discussing Matt's greatest wins and records around the world, and you often focus on times that he ran many years after his peak. Consider, for example, this: In 1990, when he was 26 years old and still fairly young in the sport of mountain running, Matt ran 2:07:36 to win the Pikes Peak Ascent. In 2006, when he was 42 years old and long past his peak years, Matt won the Pikes Peak Marathon (which also served as the World Mountain Running Association Long Course Championships) in 3:33:07 with a 2:08:27 Ascent. What do you think that you (or anyone else) will be able to do when you're 42?
For a complete list of Matt's racing over a period of close to forty years (almost all of which was at high altitudes), go to this link:
I don't have a dog in this fight, but wanted to correct the assertion that WA does not recognize personal bests at Grandma's. WA does recognize these times also allows Grandma's times to be used as a Championship qualifiers. (Grandma's net downhill is de minimis although some years there is a nice tailwind.)
The evolution of this thread is interesting. It started as a thread meant to bait people into bashing SJD (note the OP's handle) and has become a Sage vs. Matt Carpenter thread. Somewhere in the middle, the drone-flying, LRC basement-troll-bullied, good-natured goofball had a pretty good weekend.
I realize that WA recently (within the last several years) changed its standards for points ratings (used for, among other things, determining eligibility for certain competitions) so that points would not be deducted for times recorded on so-called point-to-point courses as long as the elevation of the start and finish lines were within one meter per kilometer. At least within the U.S., the primary beneficiaries of that change were participants at Grandma's Marathon, which has produced times at least four to five minutes faster than equivalent times on record-quality loop courses. For actual record purposes, however (as opposed to so-called "personal bests"), WA's standards still exclude courses like Grandma's with start and finish lines separated by more than 50% of the race distance. Here, for example, is the AIMS summary of record-quality courses, which I have confirmed with WA Rule 260:
ARRS, by the way, to the extent that it remains in effect since the death of Ken Young, has continued to adhere to the IAAF's old standard for start and finish lines to be separated by no more than 30% of the race distance. ARRS's adherence to the old standard was justified empirically, but race organizers wanted a more relaxed standard.
As you can see in my earlier post, I carefully avoided the use of the phrase "personal best" and adhered to the phrase "personal record," so there was no reason to "correct the assertion that WA does not recognize personal bests at Grandma's," since no such assertion was ever made.
But I appreciate your comment that, somewhere in the middle of all of this, "the drone-flying, LRC basement-troll-bullied, good-natured goofball had a pretty good weekend." As I've said , I've never really paid any attention to him, and I've never understood why so much animus has been directed at him on this message board.
