British Guy wrote:
Sorry if it sounds blunt or rude, but I'm 15-20 seconds faster per mile, so if he's wearing VF's his 6:00 pace is like me doing 5:50. The fastest I've ever gone outside of a session is averaging 6:25 and that was a tempo run for the last few miles, would've seriously struggled to do that 2 days in a row. So you're telling me this guy runs the equivalent of 35 seconds per mile faster on EVERY run AND he's averaged at least 86 MPW... assuming he has at least the ocassional easier week he's doing 90+ most weeks, so 13 miles a day at that pace, so he's pretty much running a half marathon at all-out race effort every day for a year... no chance!
He does not have an "easier week" really. He basically runs between 82-95 miles per week depending on his long run. Almost robotic. Same two or three courses, one has a decent amount of elevation. I think his typical runs are between 11-12 miles per day, and then the occasional long run (usually around 18). He does not double. His 95 mile week, his highest week of the year, he had a 20x400 repeat session where he averaged 72s with with a 400 jog rest. It looked like the on intervals were slightly downhill(-21 ft) and the jog back was slightly up hill (+21 ft).
I want to clarify too, he has averaged UNDER 6 minute pace, not 6 minute pace. I'd bet it's about 5:57 pace based on the runs I usually see (between 5:51 and 6:08 on a given day). His HM PR is around 73 minutes, which means he's not running all out technically, since his half PR is probably around 5:35 pace or something. For those of you who don't believe this guy exists, it's pretty clear he's much faster than his marathon suggests. Why does he routinely underperform over the distance? It's a mystery. I will say that he does not have a coach and his PRs aren't very impressive across the board. He's pretty young which might explain how he's able to handle the workload the way he does.