How in the hell did Paula Radcliffe run 2:15:25 for the marathon?

So what is the proper WR in a race with only women.

George Webbs wrote:

I was a 28:30 runner that only ran 2:19. How could a woman do a 2:15 and be a 30:00 runner.

Women have less muscular strength than do men. So while you and Paula may have the same level of endurance, you get the benefit of having muscles at your disposal as the race distances get shorter. Think of it maybe like men having a turbo button, while women do not. So, really, minus your muscle, Paula is in better shape than you.

todays news wrote:

George Webbs wrote:

I was a 28:30 runner that only ran 2:19. How could a woman do a 2:15 and be a 30:00 runner.

Women have less muscular strength than do men. So while you and Paula may have the same level of endurance, you get the benefit of having muscles at your disposal as the race distances get shorter. Think of it maybe like men having a turbo button, while women do not. So, really, minus your muscle, Paula is in better shape than you.

I was a 4:02 miler who only ran a 223 marathon. I was always on 218 pace in the 3 marathons I ran but always got dead quads the last 5 miles or so and crawled across the finish. Not all strides can go from the track to the marathon with equal results. It was frustrating.

The idea that it was unfair on the other women in the race for their to be male pacemakers is complete nonsense.

There was absolutely nothing stopping them from taking advantage of the male pacemakers as well as Paula - O yeah, apart from that they weren't good enough!

All of the women had male's to run with . Kastor, Ndereba and the rest ..... If you look at some of the images from this race Radcliffe was alongside these guys or even pushing ahead .

Certainly the greatest by far woman marathoner of all time,and arguably in the top five marathoners of all time,given the male to female differentials.As for the dickheads who cite EPO,get stuffed you morons.

I would question whether she IS the best marathoner of all time. I think you could make the case for it. She's so much better than the next best female, there's really no way to compare. Amazing stuff.

By the way, I have no problem with it being the world record even though I pointed out the technicality.

Especially if they say the men that paced her were in a competition.

Roger Banister's 3:59 would not have counted at the time if his pacers dropped out of the race.

This rule has been changed.

Running fast is running fast even if someone jumps in from the stands to pace the last lap.

I agree...I could care less if she was paced by men. I wouldn't mind seeing men be allowed to have pacers who join the race fresh at various points along the course. F*** it. Women have had the advantage of being paced by men for a long time, so why not allow men to have a similar advantage?

Anyway, just pointing out that Paula's having been paced by a man doesn't take any shine off her WR as far as I'm concerned.

Why doesnt Haile getted paced to the end by staged pacers then.

X-Runner wrote:

Running fast is running fast even if someone jumps in from the stands to pace the last lap.

That is prohibited by IAAF rules.

George Webbs wrote:

However what I don't understand is an off day for her is like 10-12 minutes off her pr. This is suspicious. If Kannouchi back in the 1990's had a string of 2:13 marathons after his 2:06's nobody would believe he hadn't doped.

Well, she was pretty consistent for a few years, but as she's aged she's slowed. There were a couple of blowups. But if 2:23 is contending for the win in a major marathon, why not go for it? If Khannouchi had run 10-12 minutes slower than his PR, he would have lost. Badly. So there was no point. But Paula is so much better than the other women that she can still win if her form isn't great. So... why not try?

without all the deletions this thread would be fifteen pages so far instead of only three.

it's good to see i'm not the only one wise to the tricks.

common wrote:

But consider Tirunesh Dibaba, Meseret Defar, and Elvan Abeylegesse. All have phenomenal track credentials (all well under 14:30 for 5000m, all under 30 min for 10000m), and great range.

At this time, I see no reason to think Defar can make the leap to longer distances any more successfully than the Kenyan women, but Dibaba and Abeylegesse each have made shockingly strong debut efforts at 15K (Dibaba 46:28WR) and 21.1K (Abeylegesse 67:07).

While that doesn't guarantee success, it certainly puts them an order of magnitude ahead of any other woman on the planet, save for the one woman who has already run 2:15.

1) I'm not quite sure about Defar , I personally would like to see her become a 1.500/5.000m runner rather than a 5.000/10.000m runner , even though I'm quite sure she'll do fine in the 10.000m (29:59 PB on her second try!!!). I guess since she wants to "move up" to the marathon she thinks she has to.....

2) Hewan Abeye (not Elvan!) is already showing what she's

capable of in the half-marathon , interesting what she'll do against Keitany and Mergia next week(?)...

3) Tiru Dibaba will probably DESTROY all the records for ALL the road races! After her 15k World-record she said that if the pacer had gone out harder and had been more consistent (she was paced by younger brother Dejene!!!) she could've run under 46 minutes!

common wrote:I don't think the Kenyan women have the combination of infrastructure and self-belief it will require to discover and train the women who will run anywhere near 2:15.

you obviously never heard of mary keitany

Marathon 2:15:25 Paula Radcliffe (Great Britain) 0.916

100 10.49 Florence Griffith Joyner (US) 0.913

400 47.6 Marita Koch (East Germany) 0.907

200 21.34 Florence Griffith Joyner (US) 0.899

1500 03:50.5 Yunxia Qu (China) 0.894

800 01:53.3 Jarmila Kratochvílová (Czechoslovakia) 0.893

10,000 29:31.8 Junxia Wang (China) 0.890

5000 14:11.2 Tirunesh Dibaba (Ethiopia) 0.890

those comparisons woud be more accurate if you compared them to the standing men's wr at the time of setting

( when flo-jo ran 10.49, the wr was 9.93 or 0.946

the 200 when she ran 21.34, record was 19.72 or 0.924 )

I don't know if her form will hold up over the long distances. She runs with brute force! I agree with the 1500m comment. What is her PR, like 4:06?! She could be in the mix for medals at 3:55 if she trained for it.

haha...she's moved on, maybe you should, too! On an unrelated note, I see that she has gotten her teeth and upper jaw fixed, and she looks great. It was never talked about in the press, but I wonder how much it affected her. Ethiopian and Turkish culture are significantly different from USA culture in terms of, well, everything, but I wonder if she had difficulty growing up because of her appearance. Can you shed any light on this?

3) Tiru Dibaba will probably DESTROY all the records for ALL the road races! After her 15k World-record she said that if the pacer had gone out harder and had been more consistent (she was paced by younger brother Dejene!!!) she could've run under 46 minutes![/quote]

It will be very interesting to see what happens if she makes the move off the track. She could be the next Haile G, but, again, I don't know about her durability once she hits the roads. Should be exciting to watch.

No, I had not. Very impressive. She's clearly in the same class with the Ethiopians. Are there more like her, or is she the only one?

Hey Common what's up let me respond to post one piece at a time....

I think her form will hold...but I don't think she'll do as well as Dibaba. And your correct she does have a PR of 4:06 , which also happened to be AFAIK the ONLY time she ever ran an official 1500m. I would love to see her go for the 1500m/5000m double in the 2012 Olympics.

She has moved on it's just sad that's all , well let's hope that she takes female distance running to another level (along with Defar etc). I don't know much about Turkish culture , I do (ofcourse) know quite a few things about Ethiopian/African culture. And given the fact that braces etc are still virtually absent from Africa this kind of "condition" is relatively common , she'll probably have been teased about it though. Personally I never noticed her "grill" too much (I always had more "problems" with her bad posture).

She's hinted at going to "the roads" after 2012 Olympics , but she's also said that she wants to have children so I don't know what timeframe she's thinking about. Personally I think she'll do as well on the roads as she did on the track/cross , she's a very broad athlete not a specialist in any way. And I'll tell you the sight of her storming past a number of MALE runners when she broke the 15k world record was....Destructive (I couldn't find a better word)