BUMP...
Read the thread... whew!
Anyway, regarding the Lindgren Loop (his 10 miler); there are a few facts that should be brought to light. First, don't confuse being near wheat fields with actually being IN wheat fields. The course was on packed dirt/clay thereby a hard fast surface. Not soft and slow (unless it rained of course). The first two miles are downhill and very fast. After that, the next 6 miles are filled with moderate rollers - any attentive distance runner knows that rollers can be quite fast when holding a steady tempo. These particular rollers when run in the direction that Gerry ran them were typically short steep climbs (<60-75m) followed with long very gradual 400+ meter downhill. During the last two miles or so there is one steep (~400m) uphill grade, but again that's followed with a nice gradual downhill to the finish.
On more than one occasion, I and others have averaged under 4:45 for those first two miles before settling into a "tempo" pace over the remainder of the 10 mile loop resulting in some solid times. As reference to just how fast those first two miles are, we "tested" the first two miles just to see how fast we could cover it, and I averaged 4:19's (8:38!) while in 4:19y shape. It's fast... so Gerry's nasty sub-50's are likely accurate.