Crocs kid runs 64:59 half marathon in Utah

Benjamin's time was actually 65:19, and he took 6th. 64:59 belongs to Adam Richardson, who was 5th. Yes, Benjamin did wear Crocs as usual.

Conner Mantz came to the race with the goal of taking 3rd as he was told by his adviser that he could take $250 and not lose eligibility but not $500 for second. He paced the winner Jordan Cross, and later Ryan Raff who started a bit slower, but then made his way through the field and caught up to Conner and Jordan with a couple of miles left.

Do not get too excited about the times because this was a 1600 feet elevation drop. In fairness, from 6000 to 4400, which makes this an altitude race. With this much drop you also run into the challenge of keeping your quads and calves from blowing up - especially if we go into the 1:05 and faster range. The course I am guessing is roughly 1:20 faster than the Phoenix half, I would let those who have experience with both Phoenix and Houston comment on how Phoenix compares to Houston.

They started out at a more or less 4:40 pace early on on the steeper downhill sections of the Emigration canyon and were together including Benjamin at 6 in 28:11. Benjamin dropped back at 6.5, then got passed by Ryan Raff, and in turn passed Jake Hesslington.

In case you missed it, Benjamin did run 1:06:33 earlier this year at the Utah Valley Half, which has 700 feet of elevation drop from 5200 to 4500. I find that performance or or less comparable to what he ran today, and also roughly equivalent to what is he is currently capable on a flat sea-level course. We do have a video of the entire race at

https://youtu.be/8c5i9ObGH_8

His 14:47 5000 earlier at Portland Twilight(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysI179Gp5N0

) created some traction in Russia. A Russian sports commentator invited Nikolay Chavkin, a 2:14 marathoner for a test, and had him run 3x1000 first two in two different Adidas carbon fiber models, and the last one in Crocs targeting Benjamin's 5000 pace of 2:57 per km or a bit faster. The result was 2:52, 2:52, 2:50 with the Crocs interval being the fastest. 2:50 for Chavkin right now is around his current 5000 race pace. You can watch this at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6FE9vtgPYE

At the end Chavkin says if the video gets 42K likes, he would race a marathon in Crocs. 42 K YouTube likes is not easy to get for a running video, Kipchoge's sub-2:00 has something in that range. But perhaps doable if we combine the efforts - every like counts.

Crocs kid runs 64:59 half marathon in Utah

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