WTF: American Matt Richtman 2:07:56 to WIN LA Marathon

Is Richtman a natural for the marathon or what? Athanas Kioko was three minutes behind him in 2:10:55, despite having far better pr's of 3:36/7:49/13:09. We should have hundreds of guys with 10k pr's equal to or superior to those of Richtman running the marathon. Make the marathon or at least the half a D1 event and it might actually start to happen.

Seems to get overlooked often on this site, but the marathon is truly a different beast. Some fast 10k runners can convert but many can’t. Even fast a HM is no guarantee, as we’ve seen many times. A “good enough” 10k is necessary but not sufficient, and good enough is probably a lot slower than people here think.

Congrats Matt! Inspirational!

The criticism here should be just as loud as Josh Hoey. This guy is very clearly doping. What's the Wojo test? Lack of celebration, something something? Come on man. If we have Mantz or others running 2:04 low, I could buy this. But nah. Something off here.

Thank you.

I don’t think he is doping. I think he is just suited for the marathon and has a good head on his shoulders. Remember if he were in 1980 footwear maybe he runs just under 2:11 or so. I don’t mean to sell him short, but he doesn’t raise any red flags for me. He is a hero to many and he can do this clean.

Dont get me wrong incredible run but just shows you how far Americans are from world class marathon times

I will say from my 40 plus years of running experience some are just suited for the marathon. There were guys I knew who could slow down 10 seconds per mile from 10 mile race pace and average that for a marathon. They have that aerobic capacity to run at a certain pace all day

A 2:07 guy should also be suited to run faster than 28:21 and 13:47. Sorry, but these things don't add up. Look at the damn list of people he's now next to. Most of them ran those times in super shoes. Stop just saying things.

LRC: The home of high school has beens and aging hobby joggers that cannot accept that anyone is faster than they were.

Why are you guys so obsessed with and locked into your calculations and your suppositions that all athletes have exactly the same progression? That lactate threshold is always at __% of MHR? Everyone gets the same precise benefit from super shoes? That 100 miles per week nets you this time, but 120 miles per week is automatically 2-4 minutes faster? Humans don’t always fall into the neat little box formed by your analytics.

If anything, I thought many of you would be excited that we might have a blue collar hero on our hands and not some programmed robot built by a Power 4 powerhouse and further refined at some shoe company laboratory? I guess you must prefer spreadsheets and science over the romance of grit and a bit of luck?

With such sad cynics as fans, no wonder the sport keeps losing ground in the USA.

Agree. If for instance someone on this board said "I ran "xx:xx" for 10k, a calculator says I should be able to run "x:xx:xx" for a 100k, why I am struggling?" they'd be laughed at. And rightly so! But for some reason it's too often viewed as a much more linear and GUARANTEED connection between shorter distances and the marathon. It's more often than not, just not the case. And trust me, I wish it was.

SloMo is #51 in 5000m and #37 in 10000m, with performances before the era of supershoes. On 1/1/2018 (arbitrary date before widespread supershoe impacts) he was #31 and #16 respectively.

I agree with you about Richtman. I think his performance was great!

. Great win, it was a great surprise. Almost as good as that rabbit that stole the show many years ago

To be honest when I first saw the footage, I thought it was a Rosie Ruiz situation where he jumped into the race halfway through. He just doesn't look very fast.

But kudos to him for an incredible breakthrough and wish him continued success

He probably could, if he put his focus on those distances for a pro season or two. Maybe he wants to run USAs at either of those distances and maybe he doesn't. It might be best if he kept a full focus on the marathon. Noah Droddy ran faster than that and also ran 2:09 in fairly mid supershoes. Richtman is probably the better athlete.

That is almost like a "trick question" kind of thing.

How much faster is US superstar and 1/2 marathon record holder Connor Mantz's PR from Chicago compared to Montana State's Matt Richtman's PR from the LA Marathon.

No normal human would guess 9 seconds.

Also, there have been some comments like "wow, his training is really basic and he isn't that talented! Amazing!"

But if your training is basic and yet you are still super fast, then you are, by definition, talented.

e.g. The kid who didn't run XC until senior year and whose dad forced him to do a sport, so he joined cross and ran 16:09, that kid is, by definition talented.

If you run only 90 miles a week, with not many workouts, and bust a 2:07, you are a super talent. Sorry, that is the definition of the word.

Yes, but it’s fair to say Mantz and Young faced tougher competition at the Olympic, New York, Chicago, and Boston (Mantz) marathons than Richtman faced in LA. That said, I agree with you that Richtman is now in the same league as Mantz and Young in the marathon. He proved it yesterday.

It unfortunately is a natural reflection of the current context. There is a relative vacuum of talent in the marathon here, compared with Japan and compared with distance track events in the USA. That has allowed a multitude who are a significant and growing gap from the WR to be our representative best. We finally get a guy who decides he doesn't want to perpetually finish 4-12th in the 10K at USAs. The hope would be this inspires more high-endurance, highly efficient guys to leave the track behind after college.