Anyone else have a friend who ran a 2:40 full and they think they are gods gift to running?

Wow, that’s gotta be fast enough to try out for the Olympics!

I know a guy wrote:

Before I even thought of training for a marathon, I used to do interval sessions with this pretty gifted guy. He was always fat. Then he decided to get in shape and start running.

He still had some jiggle in his mid section, but his legs were lean and strong. Didn’t take him long. Ran 2:40 in his first Mary at Traverse City (I think). He had a great motor. Pumping out many reps of 400m repeats. Not terribly quick. His 5k-10k were modest.

When he hit 2:40 his first time out, I admired him. He busted his ass to get there. Very soft spoken. Never bragged. I don’t think he runs anymore. Went to med school and prob has a hot wife now. 2:40 is very fast and nothing to sneeze at.

He was "fat" and it '"didn't take him long" to debut at 2:40.

Ha, BS!

This is fake, unless you can give us his name and the date of this race.

If you can, it will probably turn out that he trained for three or four years and went from 180 to 160 pounds.

I guess that would be annoying. What about guys who just flat out make up times that they ran and then just never answer or address the issue when you ask them for proof that they actually ran? I knew a guy who claimed he ran 2-4x marathon and could never show a result or even date of the race and also claimed to have a run a sub 3-40 1500m. It was such a joke, it was as if he was just picking times out that he thought were a little bit slower than top international runners so that would make him look impressive but not so fast so that people would immediately check up on what he was saying ….

'full'? WTF is that? How bout you talk like a normal person?

broken arrow wrote:

texas boii wrote:

This guy always claims he’s “not training” and running marathons on low mileage but probably runs more than a home I know. He thinks 2:40 is elite apparently, it’s old and tiring being around him smh.

Unless someone is extremely talented, there is no way a person runs 6:06/mile for a marathon on little or no training. With that said a 2:40 Marathon is a very good time but it gets exponential below that and the effort and talent to drop to 2:30 in huge, and then it doubles to get to 2:20. I really think anything below 5:30/mile takes some God given talent along with the hard work.

I'm not convinced. Personally, I went from 2:40 to 2:30 with a couple of month's dedicated marathon training. I think below 2:30 is when it gets really tough to improve.

"Everyone slower than me is a hobby jogger. Everyone faster than me is elite."

-Most runners

info wrote:

John Wesley Harding wrote:

What an odd thing to say.

I agree, quite odd. I can understand saying “Nice to meet you,” but why would he say “Nice to meet you and walked away and started talking to someone else.” I wonder what the 2:40 guy said in response.

UTBKIA is grammatically challenged, I mean differently abled. He used apostrophes to pluralize in a previous post on this thread.

Not Necessarily wrote:

broken arrow wrote:

Unless someone is extremely talented, there is no way a person runs 6:06/mile for a marathon on little or no training. With that said a 2:40 Marathon is a very good time but it gets exponential below that and the effort and talent to drop to 2:30 in huge, and then it doubles to get to 2:20. I really think anything below 5:30/mile takes some God given talent along with the hard work.

I'm not convinced. Personally, I went from 2:40 to 2:30 with a couple of month's dedicated marathon training. I think below 2:30 is when it gets really tough to improve.

Let’s see that Strava

You could tactfully point out that at 2:40 he would have been about 5 miles behind Brigid Kosgei at Chicago last year.

One of my coworkers said their friend was trying to make the Olympic Trials, and when I pressed more they said they had run 2:45 and were thinking of giving it a shot. I had to tell them their friend was deceiving them by even implying they had a chance at making it given the 2:45 wasn't even their first marathon.

Alexi Santana wrote:

One of my coworkers said their friend was trying to make the Olympic Trials, and when I pressed more they said they had run 2:45 and were thinking of giving it a shot. I had to tell them their friend was deceiving them by even implying they had a chance at making it given the 2:45 wasn't even their first marathon.

2:45 is the B standard. She has to improve by less than a minute.....

Not Necessarily wrote:

broken arrow wrote:

Unless someone is extremely talented, there is no way a person runs 6:06/mile for a marathon on little or no training. With that said a 2:40 Marathon is a very good time but it gets exponential below that and the effort and talent to drop to 2:30 in huge, and then it doubles to get to 2:20. I really think anything below 5:30/mile takes some God given talent along with the hard work.

I'm not convinced. Personally, I went from 2:40 to 2:30 with a couple of month's dedicated marathon training. I think below 2:30 is when it gets really tough to improve.

"Everyone slower than me is a hobby jogger. Everyone faster than me is elite."

-Most runners

that is a very good time for his circumstances, but far far far from elite :(

Anything slower than 2:30 (for a man) means you should move up to 24hr running, where you'll have a chance at being competitive.

I've found that most people who have run 2 or more marathons like to pretend like they are experts. I've had marathoners come up to me during workouts on a track and try giving me tips. 4 hours marathoners lecturing an elite college athlete distance runner.

I think these people just hate their wives and their children so they are looking for any excuse to get out of the house for long periods of time. Because they are so miserable they try harder to appear successful to other people.

anyone running a 2:40 without a lot of training has i believe tremendous potential. one writer said going from 2:40 to 2:30 is expodental . i could not agree more. i never quite made it.

texas boii wrote:

This guy always claims he’s “not training” and running marathons on low mileage but probably runs more than a home I know. He thinks 2:40 is elite apparently, it’s old and tiring being around him smh.

Hey, back off!

Alexi Santana wrote:

One of my coworkers said their friend was trying to make the Olympic Trials, and when I pressed more they said they had run 2:45 and were thinking of giving it a shot. I had to tell them their friend was deceiving them by even implying they had a chance at making it given the 2:45 wasn't even their first marathon.

I knew a guy who broke 2:40, ran a 72 half and then set the trials as a goal. It was not pretty. He got injured, tried to train through it for a target race and then was done with running entirely. I saw him about 2 years later and he put on about 30 lbs. He was as close to the 2:40 guy who thinks they are elite that I have ever met. Everyone else was very aware of their place in the running world and just enjoyed being out their, mixing it up for fun.

I was more amazed by the mid pack runners who thought that because they ran lots of marathons or qualified for Boston after turning 50 when the standard is super easy that they were experts and would try to coach people or had a voluminous social media account with all the trials and travails of their latest 3:55 marathon.