2:47 marathon=serious runner or rec runner?

wellnow wrote:

Maybe 20 years ago... Now it's:

very respectable.....Sub 4.00

impressive...........Sub 3.30

enviable.............Sub 3.00

letsrunly admirable..Sub 2.30

borderline elite.....Sub 2.10

elite................Sub 2.07

When only a few hundred runners in the entire nation can run a time (sub 2:20), that is necessarily elite.

To call sub 2:10 merely "borderline elite" is to be disconnected from reality.

Actually that should be a few DOZEN, not few "hundred"

Um, it's pretty common knowledge that as a rule you slow down as you reach your 40s, relative to what you could run 10 or even 5 years earlier. How could you NOT know that? That's presuming you start running well before age 38 or 39.

gadsgasdghdsh wrote:

What do you guys think is the cross over point for male runners to consider themselves serious marathoners oriented towards performance versus recreational runners?

It does not matter at all. don't worry about your time. I am as proud of my slowest time (3:09 in Paris) as I am of my fastest time (2:18 in Berlin). The effort at both was the same.

Jason

Averaging about fifty miles per week training for a marathon will require an average of about an hour of running per day.

I would say that an adult, not cloistered and coached in a college, who practices a musical instrument an hour per day is a very serious musician. That he does not make it to a symphony chair is irrelevant.

An adult who hits balls at the driving range an hour per day is an insanely serious golfer. No one in the golf community would say otherwise because he isn't close to a tour card.

Being within the top 1 or 2 % of any recreational endeavor is very serious business in a country of 300 million

Possibly the most common sense reply to this topic.

I love all these i ran sub 2.40 or whatever times but i was not serious.Who are these posters trying to kid?

We all know a One hour run takes nearer 1 1/2 - 2 hrs out of your day if you include stretching showering etc.

I have played for English football teams where anything over one training night and a game a week and you were an obsesive.

All these things are relative and to take 1 hour plus per day out of your life to train irrespective of the the time you run is a serieous commitment and therfore you are a serious runner

Invalid analogy. Becoming your best at running the marathon takes more than 50 mpw or an hour per day. Show me 100 runners putting in 50 mpw to train for a marathon and I'll show you 80-100 underachievers. I'd also say that becoming your best at playing an instrument takes more than 7 hour/week, too. Hitting balls at a driving range doesn't make you a golfer, it means you're practicing driving which isn't even the most important facet of the game.

You played in a rec. English football league, that perspective is pedestrian.

Maybee i did not explain myself ,50 mpw was the figure quoted in the post i was responding to ,it seems like good figure on which to base this discusion. however anyone training more than this is as far as i am concerned even more serious with reference to his/her running.

No where in my reply did i write that 50 mpw would come any where near reaching your best performance.

If your comments regarding golfing and musical instruments are in reply to my post ,then you confuse me .

Anyhow my definition of a serious runner is not by pbs etc but dedication ,i am willing to bet that some posters on here who say they run good times but are not serious runners ,wild horses would not drag them from there daily runs to me thats serious.

70 is about the baseline for training for a marathon seriously, though it might be closer to 80. If you want to skew it to accomodate slower runners who are just as serious, translate it to time and call it 10 hours/week.

If you're serious then you want nothing less than your own very best.

Your last sentence would also describe streakers, and I don't consider them to be serious, either.

Far worse wrote:

Runningart2004 wrote:

In 2005 2:45 was 986th best performance by a US man:

http://personal.bgsu.edu/~jsquire/2005menmarathonlists.pdf

Alan

I don't know who compiled that list but there is no way it is complete. 2:45 was not the 986th best performance of that year.

I'm pretty sure the guy who did that list just went on marathonguide.com and started putting together a list of names from US cities. Is it 100% accurate? Nope...but I'd say pretty darn close once you weed out a few in the top 100.

Alan

gadsgasdghdsh wrote:

What do you guys think is the cross over point for male runners to consider themselves serious marathoners oriented towards performance versus recreational runners?

Is there a magic number? No....but if there is it is definitely shorter than 3 and a half hours for a premaster

oriented to performance = enters a race to compete against other runners, established conparison norms like a time Q for Boston or an advantagious seed time for future races.

recreational runner= enjoys their personal fitness and may enter a race to establish a personal benchmark relative to their prior performances.

no magic number it is mindset---- but saying my goal is a BAA Q and then running a 5:37:26 does make you competive.

Quantifying elite,subelite or other competitive classes is another question.

The author was probably awfully lazy, then. You put Chicago, New York, Boston, and Philadelphia in there alone and you would probably be over 986th or close to it. That's leaving out every single other US marathon as well as US performances in foreign marathons.

Gappy Hilmore wrote:

JOHN PIGGOT IS THE CONCRETE RUNNER!!!!

He's also a bit of a Jesus freak

Isn't it something like the top one percent of marathoners break three hours?

Being in the top one percent of anything is elite to me.

In 2004....

Boston: 90 men under 2:45...30 not American....60 US men total....

Chicago: 194 men under 2:45...25 not American(accurate?)...169 US men total...

I'd like to see you get up to 986 under 2:45 from Chicago, NYC, Boston, and Phila. I bet you don't get half of that.

Philly had 56 total RUNNERs (not just American) under 2:45...

NYC....152 runners under 2:45...59 not AMericna...93 American.

You're not even half way and have been through the largest marathons in the US...have fun looking up the rest. I bet the majority of US marathons don't have 1 finisher under 2:45.

That's all I'm doing. He did the work simply by doing what I just did. Go through marathonguide.com at all 300+ marathons in the US in 2004 (I just saw that he did 2005, my bad). Compile a list (probably copy paste into excel). Take out the Kenyans at the top then go through and take out names with hometowns that are not in the US (problem is some will have US hometowns listed but are not American and vice versa).

I'm sure he's still lurking around here maybe he'll chime in.

Anyone care to do a 2008 list?....have fun!

Alan

Is marathon running really serious athletics?

LI Runner wrote:

The best term I have heard is 'A serious recreational runner'. I think that sums it up best.

And as someone else mentioned, it is not defined by time, but by the particular's person mindset.

I like this one. It's all semantics, as one person's serious runner is another's recreational hack. I'm 90 seconds off that time so when I grow up I might be a "serious runner".

reality speaking here wrote:

Show me 100 runners putting in 50 mpw to train for a marathon and I'll show you 80-100 underachievers.

Wow....you have some issues.

There is a lot more to life than running.

Show me 100 runners putting in +120mpw, and I will show you 97 deadbeats contributing NOTHING to society or the local economy, relative to what they could contribute w/ a solid 50-60hr work week.

Off the Grid wrote:

Show me 100 runners putting in +120mpw, and I will show you 97 deadbeats contributing NOTHING to society or the local economy, relative to what they could contribute w/ a solid 50-60hr work week.

haha. agreed. although if you're single and without children, 90-100mpw is very possible while still working hard and having some social life.

I also like the "serious recreational runner" title. that fits most of us.

This thread is funny.

A runner is only serious if you ask them the question "Are you a serious runner" and they reply "Yes, I am".

Then it's up to you to prove them wrong in a race.

secondly - every individual has a certain baseline of fitness. If they haven't done anything for 10 years other than eat cookies and watch football all year round they are going to be out of shape. So to run a 3:00 or hell even 4:00 might take some SERIOUS training to get back to a "normal" level of fitness. Does that make them a serious runner? I have no idea, but there is definitely going to be some commitment and hard work to get there and that's serious enough for me.

So in short, it's not the times people are running that make them serious, it's the improvement of their times that shows seriousness.

and the Devils advocate says:

what if a 2:04 guy runs 2:04 every year, year after year, for 8 years? Is he serious? How much effort is he really putting in to improve, or is he simply maintaining his already earned time...