How Many NCAA Men Can Break 2:12 for MARATHON?

What's your point? An indicator is an indicator and NOT the same thing. What would be a better indicators of marathon potential than distance races approaching the marathon distance? How long you can hold your breath? A VO2max test? Sprints? Ultra's? There are no indicators? (Ha!) Go ahead and tell me.

^ this. Obviously.

I think nico young could

Even if there are better track guys, dude was made to run 2:10

That is correct. Kind of analogous to to the person here who claims he can run a 3:07 'Thon, but refuses to run one.

Stay on the sidelines ole' man, you aren't good enough to lick the dirt off my racing shoes. I've broken 2:15. When you've done that, you get 10 seconds of my attention, until then good luck with the weekend 5k fun run and a top 5 in your age category.

You believe that a person can only do a thing IF they have already proven it by doing that thing? Is that right?

You really are not very bright. I said maybe 1/8 of sub 28:30 runners could run sub 2:12 in the new shoes. As JWH was smart enough to recognize, if you throw enough of these guys who train high volume into a marathon, a few will last the distance in a manner which is somewhat correlated to their 10000m performances. Most will not. To say that a substantial minority of 28:00 runners who have not run the marathon have the potential to run sub 2:12 is NOT “making up facts.” It is a fact and your ignorance is palpable.

If if if. The fact is the actual answer is zero until it’s proven. Did you even graduate kindergarten?

You really are cognitively challenged. I don’t have to take an IQ test against you to know I am smarter than you. I can read your posts. So unless you are just playing dumb as a troll, I already know who is smarter. Just as I could take every sub 4 minute miler in the NCAA and in the next week or two at least 1/8 will break 14 minutes for 5000m if I have them race.

Let guess…you could have developed Tesla because you were good with Lego’s when you were a kid? The George Forman grill was really your idea because you know how to make toast?

Your resume must be extensive.

Here’s your next goal. There’s a 2:01 marathoner named Kipchoge. Get a hold of him and I’m sure within just a few weeks he’ll be running 1:57 under your tutelage.

You just have a very poor analytical ability. IF I say Kenenisa Bekele could have been a sub 4 minute miler in his prime, you believe that is not a true statement. So there is no point in dealing with such a simpleton as you.

Not a single one. Not a single one. Talent isnt enough for the marathon, in order to run that fast you need really specific training. There are real tangible physiological adaptations that need to happen in training in order to succeed in the marathon. These guys arent training the right systems, they areent hitting those hard long runs.

Now if you gave them 6 months and a solid training plan, I would bet that most all american XC athletes would run sub 2:12. Heck, i wouldnt be surprised if most top 100 type guys could run that fast on a fast course in fast shoes.

By this logic, we'll just never know if Kipchoke was capable of a sub 3 hour 50K.

If you don't like speculative threads, then don't click on them.

You're such a whiny crybaby.

You lament the fact that America's best American-born marathoner barely beat a women to the finish line. But you're ignoring the fact that this woman probably cheated with the help PEDs and a new generation lightweight super-shoes. So your complaints come across as pointless bellyaching. Sorry to be so blunt, but the truth is the truth.

You just aren’t very bright. Most 28:00 type runners are already running at least 80 miles per week. Let us take someone like Conner Mantz. He has run 2:08:16 for the marathon. Now it is true that although he would not have run that fast in college, he would have had a decent shot at 2:11:59 at the time he was winning NCAA cross country. Many of these guys already do a run of somewhere between 90 and 120 minutes anyway. Again nobody is saying they would run their absolute best potential marathon. But a certain percentage of 28:00 guys have sub 2:10 potential in the new shoes. So some could run 2:11:59 while doing training for 10000m.

I don’t know if Hot Takes just happened to hit reply to my post or if he was triggered by my post specifically, but I said If you took everyone in the NCAA with sub-14 or sub-29 (plus mileage-based criteria), etc., at least a couple would break 2:12 — but you notice I didn’t try to name names. That’s because to a certain extent you can’t predict marathon times based on track times, and there would be some 13:40 guys who are surprisingly good, naturally well suited marathoners, and other 13:40 guys finishing 15+ minutes back. That’s why you need to throw them all at the wall and see what sticks. But to act like there’s no correlation between track times and marathon ability/potential is absurd. There is of course no better predictor of marathon potential in NCAA sports than 5k/10k/XC times, and of course you’re gonna look to the guys with the prerequisite speed.

"marathon ability/potential"

The only meaningful takeaway from this tedious debate is ability and potential are not the same thing. If you can run a 14-minute 5K you obviously have the potential to run a very fast marathon -- but you don't have that ability until you train for and complete the marathon distance.

A newborn also has the potential to run a fast marathon. Not the ability.

You are really not understanding this at all. Training for the 5000/10000m is what Frank Shorter says he did when he won Olympic Gold. Probably 90% of the training for a 10000m overlaps with the training for a marathon. Just as many 1:47 800m runners can ran a good 1500m whether they think they are training for the 1500m or not, they are to some extent, just as everyone who is training for a 10000m is training for a marathon to some degree, even if they never run one. This should be elementary but it is apparently beyond the understanding of many of you.

If that's all you're trying to say -- essentially just that there's some overlap between training for different distance -- the thread is poorly titled and most of the posts are unrelated to what you just wrote.