Sabrina Moran: savior of USA ultra-distance or headed for burn out?

I know her, personally may be stretching it, but my beef with Avacado on the point is his outright declaration that as 2004 US 50K champ, he has apparently desclared her a not very good ultra runner. Makes his other assumptions pretty suspect.

I could declare Kiyoko Shimahara a not very good marathon runner, and if you didn't know of her you might even agree, but then if you found out she ran a a couple 2:26 marathons maybe you would consider my declarations quite suspect too.

I'm assuming 2:30 also, 2:32 may be more like it yes, but Avacado's assumption was that if you can run 6:00 for 26.2 you can run it for 50K. I consider that a bugus assumption.

No. If you look at the world all time list, there user just over 500 sub-2:30 performances total since they started keeping records. Sounds like a big number, but when you take into account several people that are on there 7 or 8 times, the number of unique people drop considerably. In any case I consider using the all time list bogus, since most of the people on that list couldn't run a sub 2:30 today, or this year.

That's why I went to the 2006 top list, which is a better indication of how many people at this point in time are capable. There were 97 sub-2:30 performances in 2006. That in and of itself doesn't indicate "hundreds", and when you take into account that like the top list, there are people that ran more than one, that makes it even more off base.

I don't dispute that it's possible to extrapolate a possible 50K time from a marathon time, but to declare that EVERY woman out that that's run a sub 2:30 (or sub anything) marathon can magically increase their distance another 5 miles is another bogus assumption.

No, he said hundreds and thousands, considerably wide ranges of numbers, not absolutes. Using somes percentage to reverse engineer an absolute number seemed a reasonable comparison.

Hey she is 20, runs a ton of miles and has okay track speed. If she can keep it up, she can go to the top of USA Ultra-distance. My orginal post is if she can keep it up.

Sorry, but being barely able to break 6:00 for a single mile, despite lots of training is hardly "O.K. track speed".

True 'toga Blue wrote:

Hey she is 20, runs a ton of miles and has okay track speed. If she can keep it up, she can go to the top of USA Ultra-distance. My orginal post is if she can keep it up.

Wow, thanks for the vote of confidence.

You guys miss the point talking about 50 Ks. She is almost running that in practice every day. The question is how will she do in 100Ks and 100 mile races. THAT is the question.

Keith Stone wrote:

Avacado's assumption was that if you can run 6:00 for 26.2 you can run it for 50K. I consider that a bugus assumption.

What an idiot. Of course I never made that assumption.

I said there are hundreds of women who can run sub-6 pace for 31 miles, thousands who can sub-7 pace for 31 miles, and thousands who can run sub-8 pace for 31 miles. Anyone who knows the sport wouldn't dispute any of those points.

You don't seem to have a quarrel with the sub-7 and sub-8 statements, but you're fixated on the proposition that a couple hundred women can run 31 miles at sub-6 pace, and you're trying to demonstrate its falsity by looking at the number of women who ran one or more sub-2:30 marathons in 2006. That's just a fraction of the women who can run sub-6 pace for 31 miles. Do you really think that, for example, T. Dibaba or any other top 10,000-meter runner can't run 31 miles at sub-6 pace? What about Paula R., who didn't run any marathons in 2006, but can run sub-6 for 31 miles in her sleep?

All of this debate about sub-6 pace, of course, merely obscures the point that a 3:40 50K (over SEVEN minutes per mile) is not world-class running. Nor is a 4+ hour 50K. And that's true even if a 3:40 50K is fast enough to win some "national championship" in which only a few very slow runners bother to show up. It's true even if it is the "national championship" of a big country, like India or the U.S., rather than the "national championship" of a small country, like Iceland or Luxembourg. For a decent runner, that's just a long, slow training run.

Compare what she has in training at a young age and raw 5k speed as opposed to other national 100K runners like Danielle Cherniak and Nikki Kimball. She could be the best.

Oh yes I do, you're getting desparate here. I'm saying every one of your numbers from top to bottom is a crock. What's next, extrapolating mile times? It's moronic. These thousands and thousands you keep blathering about need to show themselves, and they haven't, so your entire argument is bogus as a 3 Dollar bill. Can you really expect anyone to swallow a 10K to 50K conversion as true potential?

Next I assume you'll be talking about handing out awards based on 10K times for 2005? Maybe Wariner vs Webb at the marathon based on Hungarian points? The opportunities for your type of competition are limitless, you should look into getting sponsors.

Point of fact, someone that places in the top 10 in the world by definition is a world class runner. Someone that wins a national championship is a national class runner. Get over it. Could Deena or Paula best some of them, probably, but they haven't. Maybe Deena or Paula should try toeing the line on a muddy trail some day and see how they do. Dan Held did, but I don't see fleets of people trying so maybe it's not so easy as you claim. Until that day that they post up there AREN'T hundreds or thousands that COULD because quite simply, they haven't.

By your definition, because there's been a couple hundred sub-4 milers the only true world class marathoners are sub 2:08 becuase there are hundreds that could potentially do it. Get real.

The long and short of it is the best people at an event are those compete at it, not those that use a web calculator to compare theoretical times. The old no-post, no-boast rule applies. Your argument is simply a coulda, shoulda, woulda and your insistence on pulling bogus quantities of would-be competitors out of your ass to downplay someone's actual performance is nothing short of pathetic.

Keith Stone wrote:

Until that day that they post up there AREN'T hundreds or thousands that COULD because quite simply, they haven't.

That sentence sums up your argument nicely.

Sabrina, I very much enjoyed meeting you at the 50K and running with you in the early going. From our conversation, I got the impression you knew exactly what you were doing, despite your youth and the magnitude of your commitment. I wouldn't concern myself with the negativity of certain people who feel compelled to criticize anything and everything through the anonymous medium of the internet. Best wishes.

Avacado, I'm a 2:33 marathoner. If you're saying I've never done high mileage, you're simply an idiot.

In addition, what does insulting a hard-working runner accomplish? I mean, Sabrina's already posted on her once thanking you for your "vote of confidence." If your goal is to try and demoralize a young runner, you seem to be doing a great job.

Excuse me, it wasn't your comment she was replying to, but a similar one.

At WM wrote:

Avacado, I'm a 2:33 marathoner. If you're saying I've never done high mileage, you're simply an idiot.

I'm not sure what the connection is between a 2:33 marathon and high mileage. As I recall, you said something about how difficult it was for you to run a 100-mile week, and you couldn't imagine adding 75 miles to that. To me, that suggested that you didn't have a high-mileage background.

Regarding Ms. Moran, go back and read the thread. I didn't insult her. I was just wondering why the original poster was suggesting that she might be the "savior" of U.S. ultramarathoning, since there was nothing in her background to indicate such a thing. You responded by asking (rhetorically, and idiotically) if I were a "girl" who could run 31 miles at sub-8 pace. That led to an immensely unproductive debate about how many women can run sub-6 pace for 31 miles. It also led to Mr. Stone's metaphysical assertion that no one CAN do something until he or she has already done it.

Nikki Kimball used to run on my team and she doesn't lack raw speed. Her marathon pr is 2:57 and her 5K pr is either the 17's or low 18's. Of course she gets better as the distance gets longer.

I think that amount of mileage for anyone that age is too much and can lead to burnout. Most of the Ultra people I know started when they were much older.

Of course there are many world class female runners that could run a fast 50K if they chose to but it is a distance that is not often contested and most people just don't care about the distance.

Avacado, quit being an idiot. You have contributed nothing to this thread and im pretty sure most of us dont agree with you. So far your argument seems to be that because all elite female marathoners could potentially be nasty at the 50k(or more), Moran could never be a competitive runner at that distance.

TYD wrote:

You have contributed nothing to this thread and im pretty sure most of us dont agree with you. So far your argument seems to be that because all elite female marathoners could potentially be nasty at the 50k(or more), Moran could never be a competitive runner at that distance.

Actually, I've contributed too much to this thread, and it's precisely because some of you dispute what I've said.

Don't trouble yourself with what my argument "seems to be." Just look at what I've actually written. If there's something you disagree with, just try to state why you disagree.

Obviously, Ms. Moran can be a competitive runner at any distance she chooses.

Compare this girl's high school PR to Kimball's. Both are about the same. She is running high quality mileage when Kimball was barely running and just training for biathlon. Her PR now is faster than Cherniak's ever was and she is running about the same mileage Cherniak was in college. I say she could be better than both at the 100K - 100 mile range.

here's the killer about sabrina,

she could completely burn out and still graduate with a degree from a great institution and probably go on to cure cancer or something, living a rich and full life. she's a great athlete, an excellent student, and an even better person.