Gwen Jorgensen Prickly Pear 3k - Um What

Watch out for Keira D’Amato in the 10k at the trials. She could make the team and def push out someone else who is dreaming of making the team.

That said, I think Jorgenson needs to focus on the 10k if she’s hoping to make the team.

Gwen, Pat, and Stanley need to move to the Arizona desert and start homesteading on a piece of empty desert land. Their YouTube channel can document their choice to become off-the grid preppers. Would be much more entertaining than the pointless attempt to make the Olympics in the 10K and the inevitable disappointment and failure this train is headed. She could continue to train for a 'Thon, to keep some of her fans. Maybe even try an Ultra, although she'd have to get some tattoos.

She's going to turn 35 in a few months. Her legs may not have been trashed yet, but age isn't her friend at this point. I admit I was completely wrong about her prospects as a pro runner. She was so dominant in tri - especially at the run. She looks so out of place in these track races. Her form is a mess. She looks like she's completely falling apart - probably trying to run at a pace that's just too much for her. Her career as a runner is futile. She will never be competitive at any distance. It's sad. I was rooting for her. But I guess it shows how tri athletes are not as good (at least in any 1 specific discipline) as I thought.

Of course it is selfish. Is she running on the team to make the other women better? I doubt that is her objective. If anything, she is a distraction which harms the others.

It's a shame it hasn't worked out for her, such a dominant athlete in the Tri, it took guts for her to switch to running. Better to try than die wondering i suppose she admitted she had nothing left to do in Tri and her switch wasn't a guarantee.

I want to know if Talbot is going to have kewl drone footage and a sleek Youtube video of her getting spit out the back?

What Earlyboy said. Eric Heiden became a good but not great cyclist after an unbelievable speedskating career. Let Gwen do what she wants.

She has tainted her athletic history.

bladerunner wrote:

She's going to turn 35 in a few months. Her legs may not have been trashed yet, but age isn't her friend at this point. I admit I was completely wrong about her prospects as a pro runner. She was so dominant in tri - especially at the run. She looks so out of place in these track races. Her form is a mess. She looks like she's completely falling apart - probably trying to run at a pace that's just too much for her. Her career as a runner is futile. She will never be competitive at any distance. It's sad. I was rooting for her. But I guess it shows how tri athletes are not as good (at least in any 1 specific discipline) as I thought.

She is incredibly tough mentally. Not just racing triathlons is hard, but also the training for it. You gotta put in 30-40 hours year after year after year. The hardest thing are the daily swim sessions, with massive volume. Imagine how many lengths she swam in the pool over her career.

In triathlon she was running vs other triathletes - none of them is a world-class runner, swimmer or runner. There is still a very noticeable gap to specialists and even Frodeno said he couldn't hang with real cyclists. Also people overestimate what triathletes can run in a road race based on what they ran in a tri. These guys are so well trained that they can run a 10k after a very fast swim and a very hard bike ride very close to their 10k ability. They are literally pure strength runners. So male triathletes closing a 10k in 29:30, means on the track or road in a running-only race would still only run 28:45 or so. That's how good they are.

I feel sorry for her, because she is working as hard as she can, racing as hard as she can and get zero out of it. No accomplishments or things to celebrate. Her mistake was setting an unrealistic bar so high that disappointment was inevitable. She should have just switched to running without announcing Olympic gold medal as goal.

Also similar example - Lance Armstrong tried marathon shortly after the peak of his career still full with drugs and barely broke 3 hours in his first marathon despite being based by El Guerrouj and others. Running uses completely different muscles in the legs, and the best engine (heart/cardiovascular system) doesn't help if the legs just don't contribute much.

I'm not sure about your example. Armstrong had no history as a runner. What made Jorgensen interesting was that she was completely dominant on the run in triathalon. She was always

behind after the bike and made up the gap like the other girls were standing still.

Plus, I think some of us were curious if all that aerobic base from cycling and swimming would translate to the marathon. It clearly didn't. I have no doubt about her mental strength. I'm guessing she knows that this isn't working. Yet, she plows ahead and keeps training like there will be some payoff for all this hard work down the road.

August Belmont wrote:

The most important thing to remember about Gwen is that her success in a small niche in life made her arrogant enough to believe she could enjoy the same level of success in anything she put her mind to. This is called hubris.

+1

Love this

Eh, I don't understand how LRC-ers can't seem to understand how marketable she is.

She ran 8:48 & 15:18 last summer. It's not like she's altogether taking a spot from somebody super deserving. I'd like to keep following along & see how she ends up doing at the Trials. If she sticks with running then I agree with what somebody else said & that she has had some decent results on the roads. There will be plenty of money there for her moving forward.

You seriously live in your own fantasy world. You need to stop pretending you understand everyone's inner lives based on nothing more than your own hunches.

Everyone seems to forget that she ran 53:13 for a hilly 10-miler BEFORE announcing her switch to running. That's a truly elite time, indicative of a 2:27 marathon. She beat Sara Hall and finished just behind Hasay and Aliphine.

If I had been neck and neck with the best distance runners in the country just a couple months after winning a gold medal IN A DIFFERENT SPORT, I'd probably think that I have a legit shot at making the switch too. If Gwen had improved as a runner just slightly from her triathlon starting point, she would have been among the 6 or 7 favorites in the trials. And if you make the team from the US, then you're good enough to medal (talking about women obviously, not our men).

The talent has always been there. The issue has just been staying healthy.

Nike won't drop her cause otherwise mom athletes that follow her would complain. but mr Pat needs to stop leeching off her and get a real job

It's fair to say that the last couple years with BTC has not gone the way she probably expected, but she has run competitive times before. I don't think it's hopeless quite yet, but she probably needs a different group and training.

No. She was not talented to medal in the marathon. She is 5'10" and inefficient. She wasn't talented enough to medal in any event on the track either.

Even some of the best runners have blowouts (Kenenisa Bekele anyone? I thought he was a had been and then nearly matched Eliud's record). I find it weird to put so much measurement in put into a race that it goes on accusing her of selfishness for her performance in such a race. She did get into BTC, had some surgery and is getting back into the grind. Based on her videos on her channels, she landed closed to where expected in the group based on training session. She has been concerned about her performance, she has been vocal about it, I'm sure if Jerry did not see potential in her, he would do what's right. I somehow think with the grind of triathlon training, she has some resistance or trauma on going back into the pain cave, and concerned about injuries. The transition is hard, but I think she did the right thing. Maybe it's not her best race-but she had shown she has the chops to be an elite, and is worthy of being on the team. (and yeah, I'm a bit of a fan).

Has her running form deteriorated since giving up tris? Does she still do a little biking and swimming? If no, maybe she needs that aerobic/strength stimulus to run better. She always looks gangly running at 5' 10". Maybe the upper body/core strength from swimming and quad/glute strength from biking kept it all together.

I probably only ran 4-5 days a week (really just 2 workouts and some hobby jogging) when I was running my fastest, but I was swimming about 18 hours a week. You think you'll get faster by just running because every fast runner... runs. Never could get into the same aerobic shape again when I dropped competitive swimming. I know of a few people this has happened to with running and swimming so I don't think it is uncommon, just uncommon for a pro.