history lesson wrote:
3. If a marathoner runs more than 4 marathons in a 2 year period, they will increase their chance of injury 10 fold. This is why Deena and Meb and even Hall to a lesser degree has pulled out of Marathons over the last few years.
You can not talk about time between Chicago and Houston without including what was done in the 12 monts prior to Chicago as well as the 12 months following Houston.
I don't have any idea whether your arbitrary 4 marathons per 2 year span has any application to Ryan Hall in particular, but you should probably not use two athletes born in 1973 and 1975 as your comparison. Deena and Meb both put up awesome results for many years, and Meb still killed at NY in 09, but they are getting on in age and it shows in the form of being more injury prone. Of course.
As to your next paragraph, looking at the 12 months prior to Chicago, I see exactly 1 marathon: Boston 2011. So from May 2010 to October of 2011, Ryan Hall raced one marathon. In a span of 21 months, stretching from May 2010 to Jan 2012, he will race 3 marathons. Assuming he decides to skip the spring season and only do the Olympics, that puts you up to 4 marathons in 28 months (May 2010 to Aug 2012), again an average of 1 marathon per 7 months.