Is this the Hughes guy who sometimes runs with his son? The ridiculous ripped and huge, uh, “athlete”?
Yeah he set some records with his son. The other bald ripped British geezer running 2:30 is Graham Green
That’s him, Graham Green. lol is he still alive and/or running? Shouldn’t he be setting records with the new shoes? 2:30 thons while benching 350 for reps?😂
Sorry to derail this thread, the excellent performance and body-type of Hughes seems much more believable.
I'm 65 and still working full-time+ (I have a consultancy in a field in which I am really interested, and would hate to retire).
What I do find as the big difference from 55 to 65 is recovery. If I do a good session, I seem to need a couple of days of shuffling around 3 or 4 mile at 8:15 - 8:30 pace to recover for the next one. That's keeping the mileage down to the 35-40 miles a week at most.
Ed Whitlock ran 2.52.47 at age 69. He was 22 minutes slower than Hughes while only 7 years older.
7 years older is a huge gap.
Unless you are over 55 you have no idea what age does to you.
Hind: It doesn't make you faster.
As a 68 year-old I know well what aging does. It makes me sceptical about Hughes. You are suggesting he will slow more in the next 7 years than he did in the 30 or so years since his 2.13 performance in his prime. He won't - barring serious injury. The performance decline from 62 to 69 is nowhere near as extreme as you think.
Somehow I feel this should be part of the thread about doping in senior sport.
Just because you are decrepit it doesn't mean other older men have to be.
So any discussion of doping always has to be personal? I simply pointed out that Hughes is 22 minutes faster than Whitlock was when Ed was only a few years older. Hughes is not losing any significant time with aging. At his present rate he will be running around 2.35 or so in 7 years against Whitlock's 2.52. But it's always "training" and "shoes" that explains it - as though Whitlock had no access to either.
I'm not surprised by this. Hughes seems to be on an incredible roll, setting age group world records every time he runs. Great for him. It will be interesting to see if he can take down Ed Whitlock's records. He seems to be on the right path to do it, but a lot of bad stuff can happen from age 62 to 70-85+, when Whitlock went on his epic world record streak.
he is doing it in carbon plate shoes, something Ed did not have at the time. So what do we do here, add 4% to this guys time? Also reason why he does as many miles is the shoes prevent you from damaging yourself so you recover faster....
No, we don't add 4% to his time for the shoes. That figure is still speculation - or marketing. Nor is there anything that shows the new shoes enable you to train harder.
Hughes has declined only 17 minutes in the last 30 years. The chances he will now decline 22 minutes in the next 7 years look pretty slim. I wonder how he is apparently so much better than the great Ed Whitlock?
Hughes has declined only 17 minutes in the last 30 years. The chances he will now decline 22 minutes in the next 7 years look pretty slim. I wonder how he is apparently so much better than the great Ed Whitlock?
Sure but you would expect almost no performance drop from 30-40. Those 17mins are all in the last 20 years. He may have lost 2 mins in the last 2.5 years.
We really have no clue what age group records should be. Very few people go after them and even fewer stay healthy and have talent. You can look at the distribution of times to see that.
Hughes has declined only 17 minutes in the last 30 years. The chances he will now decline 22 minutes in the next 7 years look pretty slim. I wonder how he is apparently so much better than the great Ed Whitlock?
If he stays healthy, he'll destroy Ed's records. That's a big if. Heart attacks, strokes, tendons snapping, other physical injury...A lot can happen in the 60's. But you're right. If none of the catastrophic stuff that Whitlock avoided for 85 years can be avoided by Hughes for another 7 years, he's got it.
he is doing it in carbon plate shoes, something Ed did not have at the time. So what do we do here, add 4% to this guys time? Also reason why he does as many miles is the shoes prevent you from damaging yourself so you recover faster....
No, we don't add 4% to his time for the shoes. That figure is still speculation - or marketing. Nor is there anything that shows the new shoes enable you to train harder.
You the same guy who says drug doping doesn't work, it's just faith?
Doping until proven otherwise. Shoes might help a bit too but not more than 2-3 min. Very impressive I mean running 100 mi per week not ez after 50’s this dude is 62. I mean he was an elite athlete when young but still unbelievable performance. In order to run that much at that age you don’t do anything else but running and resting I bet he doesn’t have a job.
Doping until proven otherwise. Shoes might help a bit too but not more than 2-3 min. Very impressive I mean running 100 mi per week not ez after 50’s this dude is 62. I mean he was an elite athlete when young but still unbelievable performance. In order to run that much at that age you don’t do anything else but running and resting I bet he doesn’t have a job.
I tend to be of the mind that all elites are doping until proven otherwise. But let me take the other side for a minute. If Hughes "must be doping" only because he's able to tolerate 100 mile weeks after age 60, are you saying Ed Whitlock was doping? Whitlock ran 140 mile weeks into his 70's and 80's! If you're going to make an assertion, that's fine. But stay consistent.
Although I believe all elites are suspect until proven otherwise, based only on the times we live in, I personally, would put Hughes very low on that suspicious scale, and Whitlock even lower (near zero). Still, nothing would surprise me.
Doping until proven otherwise. Shoes might help a bit too but not more than 2-3 min. Very impressive I mean running 100 mi per week not ez after 50’s this dude is 62. I mean he was an elite athlete when young but still unbelievable performance. In order to run that much at that age you don’t do anything else but running and resting I bet he doesn’t have a job.
I tend to be of the mind that all elites are doping until proven otherwise. But let me take the other side for a minute. If Hughes "must be doping" only because he's able to tolerate 100 mile weeks after age 60, are you saying Ed Whitlock was doping? Whitlock ran 140 mile weeks into his 70's and 80's! If you're going to make an assertion, that's fine. But stay consistent.
Although I believe all elites are suspect until proven otherwise, based only on the times we live in, I personally, would put Hughes very low on that suspicious scale, and Whitlock even lower (near zero). Still, nothing would surprise me.
I agree. Nobody is above suspicion, but I'm as confident as I can be that Whitlock was clean. He was a low key guy, didn't like to draw attention to himself or seem interested in accolades and he showed glimpses of his running talent throughout his life. Plus his training consisted of lots of really slow, easy training mixed in with occasional races. Seems like a good formula at that age.
Hughes also showed earlier in life that he had the right pedigree, so I can believe it's possible that he is the #1 runner in his age group. Nothing would surprise me, but I'd like to believe he's clean.
Doping until proven otherwise. Shoes might help a bit too but not more than 2-3 min. Very impressive I mean running 100 mi per week not ez after 50’s this dude is 62. I mean he was an elite athlete when young but still unbelievable performance. In order to run that much at that age you don’t do anything else but running and resting I bet he doesn’t have a job.
I tend to be of the mind that all elites are doping until proven otherwise. But let me take the other side for a minute. If Hughes "must be doping" only because he's able to tolerate 100 mile weeks after age 60, are you saying Ed Whitlock was doping? Whitlock ran 140 mile weeks into his 70's and 80's! If you're going to make an assertion, that's fine. But stay consistent.
Although I believe all elites are suspect until proven otherwise, based only on the times we live in, I personally, would put Hughes very low on that suspicious scale, and Whitlock even lower (near zero). Still, nothing would surprise me.
The only thing you say that I would argue with is the "until proven otherwise." There is just no way to prove otherwise which is a big part of the problem. The other thing I might quibble with is that we never really got anything definitive about Ed Whitlock's paces. Nine minute pace seems something we all think likely and seven days of three hour runs like that would give you 140. But I've never seen a training diary of his so maybe he ran even slower or maybe he didn't do three hours every day, maybe it was just a typical day when he was getting ready for a marathon. But I'm sure he was well over 100 a week.