Renato Canova is coaching one of Britain's top London hopes - Emile Cairess (27:34/60:32)

Definitely sub 3 hours

From the podcasts I've listened to, it seems like he's going in fairly tentatively - just trying to get one on the board and put himself in a good spot for Olympic selection.

I reckon he'll be in the 2:08-2:10 range. He definitely has the talent to eventually be a 2:05 guy though.

He'll be going for the Olympic standard and he should get it. I think he'll run 2:07. His track pedigree isn't much to write home about, but you can say that about a lot of marathoners these days (e.g. Koen Naert who ran 2:06 last week). Cairess is better on the roads and he's a good XC runner, winning silver at Euro XC this year. He also broke the European 10 mile record a few weeks ago. He's in shape.

Fun fact: earlier in his career, he decided to coach himself and he said he was using the LRC message board for guidance. He said this on the Sunday Plodcast. It's a good listen as he's very open about his training and he's a real student of the sport

audioboom.com

EP 105: Emile Cairess

The Sunday Plodcast

Happy New Year everyone! Massive guest to kick off 2023 with and one you’ve all been waiting for… We spoke to Emile Cairess about it all. With PB’s of 27:34 in the 10k and 60:32 in the half marathon, Emile is one of the UK’s...

Link:audioboom.com/posts/8222773-ep-105-emi...

Anybody wanna bet if Cairess is run into the ground 24 months from now, like Sondre Moen and Julien Wanders?

should certainly be top briton, he's one of the few pro level distance men we have. (atkin, scott, butchart, hicks, maybe jake smith and callum hawkins if they stop being injured?)

breeze seems to be coming in the wrong direction but i'll say a solid 2:09 low for cairess. decent number of solid athletes also entered, some will crash and burn but would love to see a couple more run 2:10s but might be too much.

I expect him to give Mo a wave as he sees him receed into the distance after a couple of miles, in his rear view mirror.

If he runs 2:05, do we start the conversation as to anglo-indians having 'special adaptations' (Coe Indian mother, Cairess a Pakistani mother I assume being from Bradford)?

I found out recently that he lives in the same area as me, but I've never seen him lol.

Very interested to see how he does this weekend. Just hope the Extinction rebellion nutcases don't ruin the London Marathon (they are threatening to).

He's a phenomenal talent. He's British record talent level. But his first marathon? Might be 2.08

It's going to be good to watch the changing of the guard - Mo with a swansong, Cairess walking onto the world stage

Back in the day Canova would have posted Cairess' build-up and it would have been awesome to read and learn... alas... the glory days of Letsrun are behind us.

Are you trying to make an obtuse point here? To channel old Ventolin: drivel

Well, doorbell Mo is used constantly here as 'evidence' that East Africans have special adaptations, maybe two anglo-indian great British runners ought to be used as evidence of the same?

Richard Nerurkar 2:08:36, and 5th in Atlanta.

I’m fairly sure his mother is English - it’s the father that is ‘foreign’. I think he is French / North African descent rather than Asian.

Who else is Canova coaching right now?

Dale Worton from Wakefield, I think.

I mean North Indians are basically half Aryan anyway.

His skin and facial features look very Pakistani. If his father was from Morocco and his mother English, he probably wouldn't even look any different to a 'native'. And given that Pakistanis are a majority in Bradford now...

Not that it matters, but it would be more interesting if he had Pakistani heritage as I can't recall any elite runner ever having such a background.

Mitochondria is passed down thru the maternal line, so i'd stake much of his genetic abilities on his English mum.

Better mito means better oxidation of glucose. But wait, there's more. It's true that for Vo2Max, oxygen utilization in the muscles (via mito) is *not* the limiting factor for elites, as it is in the untrained, because the elites have such a high mito density. However the mito of elites have other powerful abilities such as utilization of fats and lactic acid. Tadej Pogacar has freakishly low systemic lactic acid at very high outputs. This is due to fast conversion of lactate in the cytosol, the intermembrane of the mito within the outer cell wall, preventing the lactate from going systemic. Elites also have active fat molecules nearby ready to be utilized. So the elites mitochondria have optimized energy transport channels for glucose, fat and lactate (probably also amino acids and ketones) giving them high cruising speeds for submaximal races.

So if Jacob Nenow is a pretty fair runner would you say that most of this is due to his mother and not his former American record holding father? Or am I misunderstanding you?