Top Triathletes Alex Yee and Hayden Wilde both ridiculously fast runners!

Alex Yee also ran a 7:45 3k which is more impressive IMO

Jack Foster ran a 2:11 marathon for at the time was a masters record. He was very low mileage, but biked a lot. On the ultra mountain side of running, you have guys like Killian Jornet that basically doesn't run half the year to just skimo and still commits 20% of his training volume to cycling in the other half of the year when he is running. And he's been one of the most dominant athletes in the mountain trail world with a very healthy and very few injuries. And there's other examples I could point to.

I agree-swimming and cycling provide an excellent cross training benefit. You can push harder in training on swim/bike getting heart rate up there without risk of injury like running. I've been cycing most of the summer training (12hrs per week)+ for an event and running about 25% of normal mileage and for the most part. I've lost weight too becuase of the volume you can put in on the bike. Very common to ride 2-3 hrs per day and sometimes 4-6 hrs...the key is holding your power/watts as this takes a toll. Running my burn more calories per hour but most don't run more than 1hr per day. The extra cardio cannot be denied!

I must be losing my mind. Yee won? Not Blu?

Read the rest of the thread, bro

I don't know triathlon. What kind of penalties?

Whew!! I'm not losing my mind.

https://www.letsrun.com/2010/heightweight0504.php

Solinsky is an extreme outlier at 6'1 160lbs.

Blummenfelt is 5+ inches shorter and 10lbs heavier at approximately 5'7-8 and 170lbs. He also has a VO2max of near 90, even though VO2max is normalized for weight so heavy people tend to have a lower running VO2max.

Blummenfelt demolished Yee on the run. Yee ran 27:50 4 years ago and 7:45 for 3k two years ago. Yee is likely in 13:15-20 shape without focusing specifically on running. Blummenfelt ran away from him.

It's safe to say that Blummenfelt either has the most unusual physiology for a world-class runner in the history of the sport, or there's something else going on.

Considering he comes from the same place where 70% of their Olympic medalists endurance skiers somehow had asthma, I know what side I'm betting on.

A bit of ancient history, that many on this thread may be too young to remember: this would be a much more interesting conversation if a Canadian bureaucrat named Les McDonald had not f*cked up the sport of Olympic/ITU triathlon. Against the will of the athletes, he decreed that drafting on the bike would be legal (he also wanted the swimmers to have to climb up on raft/pontoons and jump back in the water during the swim, which supposedly would make it more interesting for spectators - lucky he didn't succeed in forcing that half-*ssed idea onto the sport!). If he had not turned olympic triathlon into "draftathon," it would have been a much more interesting and exciting sport: the fastest cyclists coming off the bike in the lead and battling to hold off the fastest runners, etc.... And to run as fast as the guys you mentioned after doing a really hard non-drafting bike would be amazing. Unfortunately, in draftathon, there was little reason to put out a lot of effort in the bike, so a huge pack would come into transition together, and then the fastest runner would win - it became a sort of running race with a warmup, but the best tri runners were not as good as the best pure T&F runners (an exception: Carol Montgomery from Canada). In the early days, the fastest swimmers would get out of the water but then wait for other swimmers to finish in order for them to have a pack to bike with (see Sheila Taormina in Olympic race), and it would be incredibly boring to watch the bike leg, as nobody wanted to take the lead. To the credit of the athletes, it's now become somewhat better, with lead cycling packs in some races working together well and going pretty fast in a paceline. But I haven't seen a superior cyclist (who was a solid runner but not the best in the field) ever win a draftathon and, imho, it will never be the kind of exciting event a real (non-drafting) triathlon would have been. This is not the fault of the athletes, who've done their best to maximize their abilities in the sport that has been handed to them. Given the draftathon format, it is not at all surprising that the athletes you mentioned can run nearly the same times after a drafting pack bike that they can in an open running race.

And 13:30 in a Diamond League race:

1GEBRHIWET HagosETH11 MAY 19941713:01.86 2INGEBRIGTSEN JakobNOR19 SEP 200019NRPB13:02.03 3KIMELI Nicholas KipkorirKEN29 SEP 19981113:05.48 4McSWEYN StewartAUS1 JUN 199510SB13:05.63 5BUTCHART AndrewGBR14 OCT 199118PB13:06.21 6KIPRUTO RhonexKEN12 OCT 199920SB13:07.40 7CRIPPA YemaneberhanITA15 OCT 199614PB13:07.84 8TIERNAN PatrickAUS11 SEP 199415PB13:12.68 9McDONALD MorganAUS23 APR 19967SB13:18.91 10CONNOR BenGBR17 OCT 19924PB13:19.47 11TANUI Paul KipngetichKEN22 DEC 1990913:23.27

12YEE AlexanderGBR18 FEB 199816PB13:29.18

13ROBINSON BrettAUS8 MAY 19915SB13:39.37 14SCOTT MarcGBR21 DEC 19938SB13:49.55 15PARSONS SamGER18 JUN 1994213:50.30 16McENTEE SamAUS3 FEB 19921213:55.07 17GOOLAB NickGBR30 JAN 199013SB14:02.27

Remember when Beth Potter ran a 14:41 5k at the end of a tri? Wasn't ratified as WR at the time due to a technicality on doping controls improperly followed at the race. But I don't believe anyone questioned whether she ran 5 Ks in 14:41.

runningmagazine.ca

WA rules prevent Beth Potter’s 5K world record from being ratified - Canadian Running Magazine

Ben Snider-McGrath

Potter shocked everyone with her 14:41 run in early April, but her time is not going to be listed as an official world or British record

Open link

It wasn't at the end of a triathlon, it was a park run. Something weird obviously happen there, as she's definitely NOT a 14:41 runner.

It doesn't take away from the point, just nice to have the facts straight.

Where to start:

- Stop body shaming Blu

- Alex Yee recently won the Commonwealth Games (Silver to Blu at the Olympics)

- Potter ran 14:41 at a Park Run, course wasn't measured so it couldn't get ratified

- Re penalties: You're getting penalized when you mount/dismount if you miss the line by a fraction of a second. You get penalized for not putting your items (swim cap, goggles) in your transition box. Wilde got penalized for taking his helmet off too early. You have to rack your bike before taking your helmet off. He undid a strap before racking. 10 seconds for that. For long course stuff, drafting is the big topic right now. Everybody does it. Some races are better at enforcing it.

- One personal thought: professional triathletes aren't simply cross training. They're training at a professional level for each discipline. Blu isn't fast at running because he's spinning easy a couple times a week. He's fast at running because he's an animal and is dialed in across each discipline. He's knocking out double threshold days left & right. He's up at altitude most of the year. Even though he's running less than a professional runner, he's doing more hours.

I'd agree with you on Blu's training. Its pretty well documented on YouTube. He and his training partners lay out everything they do and its insane. Typical weeks include 28 miles of swimming, 250 miles of biking and 75-80 miles of running. With a lot of threshold and brick workouts thrown in. For those who only look at the running distance and discount it, I can assure you that 250 miles a week of biking is extremely rough on the body, but 28 miles of swimming is more than a lot of college level swimmers do in a week. The dude is drug tested all the time as is his training partner Gustav Iden. If he is on the sauce, then they have a very good way of getting around the system. For now, respect him for flat out working harder than everyone else.

If someone is flat out working harder than everyone else, it's often a sign of possible doping.

So we now have two things he's an outlier compared to all other outliers in:
1. His physiology
2. The workload he can handle without breaking down

Either he's the outlier of all outliers, or there's something off.

ah my bad - yor're right

Yeah Morgan is a beast. Not every day you see a triathlete run a 61 minute half marathon