How many miles have you run in your life

Greg - I don't know anything about you, although I get that you are one of those quasi-celebrity posters on this forum. There's you, jamin, and a few other people. So you were semi-decent at age 19 and are trying to credit yourself with pretty much having demonstrated 2:45-2:48 ability in the marathon without having actually run one?

No way, my friend. Maybe you could have, and maybe you couldn't have. I'm not trying to claim any mystical knowledge of the marathon (my PB is 2:32 - somewhere in the not-terrible to unremarkable range, and right in line with my other PBs), but some people can be pretty good at the mile, 5k, 10k, etc, etc, but it just doesn't translate to the marathon. Even some elite distance runners never could get it right for a marathon (Ritzenheim, Tadesse, others). Simply put, until you find out whether you are someone who tends to fall apart sometime after 16 miles or so, you can't claim anything. Anybody can look at a conversion chart and see that a 15:00 5K equates to a 2:28 marathon, or something like that, but that doesn't mean much - if you take 100 15:00 5k runners and have them run a marathon, some will fail miserably and end up a DNF or over 3 hours.

So while it is your right to not want to run a marathon, I'd recommend giving up speculating on what you "could have run" for one. A large part of the appeal of a marathon - and why it's good that it ended up being 26.2 miles instead of, say, 20 miles - is that it taps into a whole different aspect of endurance running. Actually committing to a marathon - well, I don't want to say it takes guts, because that would mean patting myself on the back, and I'm certainly nothing remarkable - but it does seem to show a certain seriousness of purpose, let's say - because you expose yourself and run the risk of failing. By contrast, that doesn't happen in a 10K. In a 10k, at worst you have a sub-par race, and you can just try again next weekend.

I was a pro musician for 10 years. I learned 100s of pages of highly technical and challenging classical music from memory.

I have no doubt the work and mental toughness it took for me to achieve that goes above and beyond anything you've ever achieved.

You contribute absolutely nothing to this thread.

Greg, this thread is about lifetime running mileage. Don't let these fools hijack it. Keep it on track.

You aren't telling me anything I don't know. I am not speculating. Other posters keep trying to spin a story on the marathon and something I said a long long time ago (over a year ago)

So at one point I said I felt I had 2:45 ability and there is nothing wrong with that.

What the problem is is that people live in the past on this board and make personal attacks and won't shut up about something one poster said ages ago.

This thread is a prime example where post after post dives into personal attacks towards me that have nothing to do wth the threads original intention.

The reason for this is posters cannot help themselves to make the personal attacks and the site allows this behaviour.

What a wonderful thought.

Good night everybody.

What Greg doesn't understand is, that running mileage and Marathon success is highly related.

Yes but much more related to talent.

No, there is no likely about it. The marathon is a completely different animal than 10 miles or whatever your longest race was. You look like a fool when you argue this point. Most runners do not agree with you. You didn't run a marathon when you were your most fit and younger. You will never know what you could have run, and any speculation on your part is worthless. You should not speak of this again.

Why do all of your threads devolve into your piano playing? You do know this is a site for runners, not piano players, right? Why do you believe that your piano playing goes above and beyond what others have achieved? That's what narcissists believe; that no one else can ever match up to what they've done. Do you even know what all of us do for a living? Do you you know our education level, or if we've fought in wars, or anything about any of us? We've seen your piano playing. You're not that good. You are full of sh!t, man.

No it isn't completely different. The pole vault or shot put are completely different from 10 miles but the marathon is related. You sound silly to say they aren't. I doubt that a good 10 milere all if a sudden loses a marathon to a 300 pound shot putter.

Unfortunately Greg will never know. Instead of spending endless hours of defending his baseless claims, he could have gone out and train. For a 10 miler or Marathon, it doesn't really matter. This is a running forum and we know running here.

So keep training people and report back from your successes and failures on track, on the road and on the trails.

Happy Thursday everybody.