Put all the best runners 5000+ on a track. Off they go! Anyone lapped is eliminated. Last man standing wins. Who is it?

Do you honestly think that tedese can run a 5k so fast (after many miles of alternating surges even) that he can beat top marathoners by more than 400m?

Why would the marathoners even go with the surges? Why not just pick a steady pace and close the gap a bit whenever the surger slows? They can always pick it up if anyone closes to within 150 meters.

This is basically a very long distance race. Of course the long distance runners will prevail unless they are so slow over 5k that they can't cope with some crazy sprint tactic.

Would a 1500m or 5k runner even try such a tactic? They almost certainly could not get everyone and it would be a suicide mission. The long distance runners would have plenty of time to see it coming and react. If a 1500 or 5k specialist takes off and gets a 50 meter gap, they will know what is up.

Maybe if it was a 200m track the speed guys could consider such a thing.

` wrote:

My favorite part of this thread is how half the responders think the OP meant five thousand runners on a track and the other half think he meant the best runners at distances 5000m and up.

haha yes i thought over 5000 runners was overkill :)

I thought that what he meat though.

Would have to be a marathon / half marathon runner

` wrote:

My favorite part of this thread is how half the responders think the OP meant five thousand runners on a track and the other half think he meant the best runners at distances 5000m and up.

He meant 5000 meters plus. It wouldn'lt matter. Line every single runner up in the world. (assuming there was space). Last person not to get lapped in teh winner. THe winner would be a marathoner.

Under no scenario would they lose.

Bolt runs 9.5 for 100 and doesn't lap anyone. Rudisha takes it out and runs 1:40.91. No marathoner gets lapped. The marathon world record pace is 2:19.8 for 800.

El Guerrouj runs 3:43 in the mile and doens't lap anyone either.

At 5k, Bekele in his prime runs 12:37. Now the marathoners do need to pick it up to avoid getting lapped here. Marathon WR pace is 14:34 for 5000. But to avoid getting lapped, they only need to run 13:42 5k pace for the first 4600.

And if they basically keep that pace for 10k, they don't get lapped by10,000 either in case Gebrsleassie is running 10,000 WR pace behind the Bekele.

So they run 27:24 for 10,000. An ultra guy like Max King probably gets lapped just before 10,000 even if he's in prime 10,000 shape. Certainly before 13.1.

Then it's just a battle of the marthoners.

Good thread though.

madmandoc wrote:

This is basically a very long distance race. Of course the long distance runners will prevail unless they are so slow over 5k that they can't cope with some crazy sprint tactic.

Yup. The shorter distance guys have no real weapons at their disposal, and they will just fall off naturally after some reasonably fast marathon pace running. After that, the marathoners will individually have to decide whether they can 'drop the hammer' and lap the entire field, or, alternatively, outlast the field as others run themselves into the ground or give up. Dropping the hammer is a super risky approach. Maybe you can pick off a few weaker marathoners this way. But the better runners are going to cruelly stay just a bit ahead of you and let you die off. And so the smartest strategy is just to outlast. Kind of boring.

The race would be great if it were run in teams: the top 7 5000m runners, top 7 different 10000m runners, half, marathon, and ultra. As it is, there's no incentive for anyone to lead or go for broke; the best runner is the one who goes with the surges to break the marathoners and ultrarunners but doesn't take the brunt of leading, so that he can make a late surge to win by 30k. Therefore, the race would go out incredibly slow--5:00 pace or so, and no one would be out of it for at least 15 miles or so. Because surging over an undefined distance to try to get 400 meters on the rest of the field is so hard to do and so dangerous, it would become a massive war of attrition and the ultrarunners would actually have an advantage, despite being nowhere near as good as the other runners.

But with teams, everything is different. If anyone from a discipline wins, that whole team wins. So the 6 weakest 5000 meter runners would surge hard and often and break the ultra guys and the marathoners, the 10k guys would do long sustained surges after the 5k guys were mostly burnt out, and the half marathoners and marathoners would form a pack around their best guy to make it easy for them and hold a hard sustained effort, without going with any surges for a while. In this scenario the ultra-runners wouldn't have a chance, despite one of them probably having an advantage in an individual race. The race would get interesting, and would be fun to watch: would a 5k guy hold it together long enough to have lapped the field with a hard pace and often surging? Would the 10k guys be able to pick up the pieces and gap the field? Or would the sustained paces of the half marathoners and marathoners be enough to not get lapped for the first 15k, and enough to break the ultrarunners over the last couple hours?

This race would actually be awesome.

we only need one each of the best at each distance.

Do it indoors. A 200m gap to elimination would result in a lot more action, and give the right 5k runner a shot. The interesting part is this:

5k runner does 12 minutes and decides it's time. He goes balls out and tries to start lapping people. Marathoner A waits for him to come around, then has to run a 24-25 to avoid getting lapped. Then maybe another. Meanwhile, Marathoner B picked it up gradually, and is staying ahead running 35s.

BUT, what if the 5k runner faded after 1 lap? Suddenly Marathoner B is the one who blew their load early (although to a lesser degree), and A is still running a nice even pace.

Still Max King, though.

What about a prize purse of $105K for the win, but $5K for each runner each individual is responsible for lapping off the track? That would come to a total prize purse of $600K (assuming 100 runners). I think the race would be over in a much more reasonable time, although, it would probably turn into an absolute death march the last few miles. Spectators won't want to watch a 3 hour race. The drama of this scenario might entice some viewership. You have to encourage someone to make a move -- the earlier the better.

I've thought about something similar that involves teams. You'd have each team of 7 start 200m apart on a track. Anyone who gets passed by someone on the other team is eliminated. You go until one team is eliminated. Or for something less intense a team losses when they only have 3 or 5 people remaining.

It would be really fun to see the teams looking across the track from each other and responding to surges. Composition of teams could be interesting. Maybe you put a sprinter on to try to go for blood early and then sacrifice himself.

In fact this could be a fun workout for a cross country team.

Circles456 wrote:

I've thought about something similar that involves teams. You'd have each team of 7 start 200m apart on a track. Anyone who gets passed by someone on the other team is eliminated. You go until one team is eliminated. Or for something less intense a team losses when they only have 3 or 5 people remaining.

In fact this could be a fun workout for a cross country team.

This is like a continuous 4x200 I did in college XC. I recall something similar in Running with the Buffaloes. Pair up strong and weak runners. This would be a little different with teams trying to lap them. I like the idea.

rojo wrote:

So they run 27:24 for 10,000.

Then 26:16 Bekele wins.

Of course a few marathoners could start faster than 27:24, but that doesn't mean they could handle it any better than Bekele handles a faster pace. Even marathon-trained Kipchoge would find it mighty difficult to hang on after 27 low. Everyone would drop quickly after 10k, but KB maybe the least. He'd have a chance.

Marathon Bekele would just have to hope every Kenyan marathoner had a bad day.

26:17 Bekele, even.

No one specified this was a 400m track

I was thinking similarly about a crazy race the other day and came up with this.

You have a continuous medley of distances that are all raced simultaneously with a shared start line and the finish lines along the way. Ex: 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m, 1600/mile, 3k, 5k, 10k, ... ? What determines the winner is a normalized time score that places equal emphasis on splits for each distance. You could use the current world record times to determine this. For example a 9.58 100m is equivalent to a 19.19 200m ... is equivalent to a 26:17 10k. So lets say the final finish line was the 10k, then the first 100m split time is multiplied by (26*60+17) / 9.58 to produce the normalized time for the first 100m. The rest of the normalized split times are then added up to produce a total normalized time: t_tot_norm = [(100m split) * (26*60+17) / 9.58] + [(200m split) * (26*60+17) / 19.19] + [(400m split) * (26*60+17) / 43.18] + ... + [(5k split) * (26*60+17) / (12*60+37)] + [(10k split) * 1].

The result would be a race that starts off as a full on sprint and you just have to hang on to as hot a pace as you can handle for each split while still considering that you have to run 10k total. Of course you need to finish the final distance in order to have a valid normalized time score so that someone who's sprinting/mid-distance game is way better than everybody else's doesn't get to run extra hard at what they are better at and then puss out of the long distance splits.

Duane Solomon would be the favorite of course. The nature of the race basically forces you to be in the "Twilight Zone" for the whole race.

Rupp and Farah make a move at between 3k and 4k to build up a 200m advantage. Then somewhere between 7-10k they sprint all out and lap everyone. Now it's just Galen and Mo. At 30k they each take a few puffs of albuterol. By As they're closing in on the marathon, Rossi, who started walking across the field after the first 150m steps on with 50m to go, and passes them for the win.

no worries about doping contaminating the race either because if a doper does race the event they will likely end up dead from overexertion on top of their artificial fitness.

Yep. wrote:

Tyrone ReXXXing wrote:

C'mon dude, of course not.

The top marathon runner on that day wins. No one can gap a full lap on him in any early surging/hard pace, but eventually he can open a lap on 2nd place. Probably won't happen to 20 miles or so, or even the marathon distance.

This guy should be right. You should end up with something resembling a marathon on the track. Think about it-the situation described is basically how a lot of marathons play out, with one guy eventually pulling irretrievably away. Though in this scenario, there wouldn't be any incentive to keep going once the 2nd to last guy is dropped.

Difference is that you have to cover the moves. Someone wants to run a 26:50, you need to be running a 28 min 10k. Someone runs a 59 min half, and you need to go through in an hour or so.

Do it indoor on the old, short, banked, board tracks,

Those were 110 to 150 yards.

Then it would not take long at all.

The obvious wrote:

Mike Rossi will come out of nowhere to win

Nice ^

Made me laugh