Armstronglivs wrote:
The differential between the men's best hm time and full marathon is only about 3 mins per split (less, if you take Kipchoge's sub-2). A similar differential for the women would give a marathon time of between 2.10-12. But either time is doped to the gills. Abebe Bikila won the '64 Olympic marathon in 2.12 by a record margin. Women now running the same sort of time is achievable only one way. But all of the sport is now infected by it - men and women.
So you are using the same method I did. Nice to see you agree with me. You did a few mistakes, but we easily can fix them:
Your so called "differential" of "about 3 mins" is 3:19 minutes.
And to use the same "differential" for women as for men for sure is not very wise, when the womens times are around 9.3% slower. So if we add this to the 3:19 "differential" we get 3:38 minutes.
And it seems you use 1:02 for Gidey's world record when it is 1:02:51.
With the correct numbers your method gives 2:12:58. That's what I have given also.
So the real equivalent to Gidey's 1:02:51 probably is somewhere in between 2:12:30 to 2:13:30, so an absolutely phenomenal time (the first sub 2 hours womens marathon was only 20 years ago).
Gidey's record is extraordinary and it's worth to be examined more closely (shoes, weather, wind, course). And for sure she could have been doped, and you have any right to speculate about this (but I think this thread is not the correct place for this when the OP started this thread to give this performance more credit) - but not to put it as a fact.
Why do you use Abebe Bikila as your male benchmark? Hannes Kolehmainen was a great runner. He set the marathon world record of 2:32:35 in 1920, also at the Olympics, like Bikila (worth maybe 2:31, because the distance was 42.75km). And now? Is it allowed for women to run faster?