What are American marathoners getting wrong?

hhhlkkl · 2025-09-14T21:03:10-04:00

I just watched a German and an Italian go 1-2 in the marathon. A frenchmen wins the women's 10k, another Italian gets silver in the women's 10k.We've had some success on the track so I'm not as concerned with that, but how have we not done ANYTHING relatively on the world stage? It seems like we would have everything at our disposal. We even have kenyan-american athletes competing for us. Yet, we can't hold a candle to the top 5 of most marathons (outside of like Chicago which we obviously know those fields are curated).

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8 months ago 09/16/2025 11:53am EDT

re: PLEASE!

Man paying 300-600 euro yearly for health care. Not per paycheck? We also pay taxes for health care for the old and poor.

see in the US you need to pay that much monthly if you are a full time worker. Part time, go die.

then you must pay 5k out of pocket BEFORE you get coverage. Need an MRI? Well did you get an X Ray first? They won’t pay for the MRI without an X-ray and maybe Physical therapy.

MRI will be $3000 without insurance (so without working 40 hrs a week).

Half our pro runners don’t have insurance, I believe NAZ elite was the first group to hand out insurance.

In the US teeth and eyes are not a part of your body either. Need different insurance for those.

Again, we stink at the marathon because we only had a handful of people training for it. Scott Fauble was our most consistent guy for years, never even won a race in college

8 months ago 09/16/2025 1:59pm EDT

re: atarirunner

atarirunner wrote:
Coaches and their tactics are not aggressive enough. They treat their pro athletes like middle schoolers with asinine objectives of finishing top 10. Go back and watch interviews with Mantz, Young, and Ed Eyestone from their Paris 2024 prep and notice how they were told to be conservative and hope the leaders would get tired. That’s not how you win. You win by taking a risk. You win by breaking at the right time. With a phenom like Mantz, just let him run his balls off for 26 miles and see what happens. It’ll be way more exciting than a “top 10 finish” let me tell you that.

Trying to "break the field" when they have 1-2 minutes of fitness advantage over you is how you look like a middle schooler going out in 60 the first lap of a mile when his PR is 5:10.

8 months ago 09/16/2025 2:18pm EDT

re: Heat Runner

Heat Runner wrote:
Their “heat training” is a joke. I ran a threshold workout last week in the morning. 88F full Sun and heat index 103F. Soaked after the run like a jumped in a swimming pool. If I ran the same workout in 60F I am easily 30-40 faster per mile.
Getting in a sauna, bathtub or wearing sweats is NOT heat training.

If you ran 30-40 seconds slower than your true threshold pace that can no longer be considered a proper workout. All you did was sweat a ton but you didn't improve your running fitness.

Clayton Young ran in those conditions yesterday and was just 8 seconds of his PR pace. And he did it for a full marathon, not some 1 mile threshold repeats with breaks to cool off and rest.

8 months ago 09/16/2025 6:32pm EDT

re: 800 dude

800 dude wrote:
Heat Runner wrote:
Their “heat training” is a joke. I ran a threshold workout last week in the morning. 88F full Sun and heat index 103F. Soaked after the run like a jumped in a swimming pool. If I ran the same workout in 60F I am easily 30-40 faster per mile.
Getting in a sauna, bathtub or wearing sweats is NOT heat training.
You've got it backwards. It's very unlikely that you're getting your core temperature high enough for a significant heat training stimulus in 88 degree weather. The fact that you were doing something you considered to be a workout basically proves that you could not have had a sufficiently elevated core temperature. The research says that the ideal stimulus is to have your core elevated to 103. When your body is that hot, it is actually quite difficult to jog.
There is almost nowhere in the US where you can do true heat training without wearing extra clothing. I've used ingestible thermometers before, and 97F w/ a dew point of 76 didn't come close to getting my core over 101.
The other alternative is passive heat, which will reliably get your core temp over 103. It's not pleasant at all. Once you're up there, another 20-30 minutes feels like hours. And you have to do it multiple times per week.

Dude, you don't know anything about heat training; in fact, what you're saying is dangerous to yourself and others.

The studies show best heat adaptation takes place with repeated exposure at core body temp greater than 38.5C (101.3F). There are different protocols, but here's a quote from a 2024 metastudy (link is below): "For example, to achieve full HA adaptations ≥14 consecutive days of heat exposure for at least 60 min where Tc ≥ 38.5 °C, combined with high skin temperature and profuse sweating, are required."

Of course you can get to 101.3F training in 88F weather, especially if it's humid.

But, in the interest of maximizing heat adaptation while also maximizing training, most pros are separating the two activities. It's akin to living high/training low: they're doing hard workouts in cooler temps and then easy sessions for heat adaptation. Cole Hocker, among others, has posted videos about it.

It's dangerous and wrong to suggest that people need to get to 103F core temp to get the necessary adaptations. With heat, more is definitely not better!

link.springer.com

A Review of Elite Athlete Evidence-Based Knowledge and Preparation for Competing in the Heat - Journal of Science in Sport and Exercise

Elite athletes will compete in extreme heat more frequently as global land and sea temperatures increase, alongside more intense, frequent and longer duration heatwaves. Best practices to protect athlete health and performanc...

Open link

8 months ago 09/16/2025 7:31pm EDT

re: hhhlkkl

Being born in fat, suburbian, carfooted America, is what they did wrong.

8 months ago 09/16/2025 8:32pm EDT

re: nature and nuture

I think the main reason is most of them wait until their track career is waning before they move to the marathon. Obviously Conner and Clayton are the exception with going to the marathon right away, and they’re both on their way to being world class.

I think this is all about to change, though. This new crop of recent college grads moving to the marathon right away and having success- Matt Richtman, Alex Maier, etc. And then once Nico, Grant, and Graham move up..they’ll be on a whole different level. I know some people have trouble transitioning from the track to the marathon, but I don’t see that being an issue for any of them.

8 months ago 09/17/2025 2:51am EDT

re: slowdude

My guess is Mantz will run the same time as he ran in Boston.

8 months ago 09/17/2025 5:47am EDT

re: hhhlkkl

Too many look at their watch and think "I'm going too fast ". That's not racing. Racing is a feel. But do trust that training is important but racing to win becomes a feel not a timed run.

8 months ago 09/17/2025 9:42am EDT

re: Kea

Kea wrote:
I think the main reason is most of them wait until their track career is waning before they move to the marathon. Obviously Conner and Clayton are the exception with going to the marathon right away, and they’re both on their way to being world class.
I think this is all about to change, though. This new crop of recent college grads moving to the marathon right away and having success- Matt Richtman, Alex Maier, etc. And then once Nico, Grant, and Graham move up..they’ll be on a whole different level. I know some people have trouble transitioning from the track to the marathon, but I don’t see that being an issue for any of them.

On their way to being WC?

A 2:05 doesn't make someone WC?

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