There’s a guy (21 years old) in my run club that has improved significantly in the last 9 months to the point that multiple people in the club have become suspicious of his recent training.
While at first inspired by his recent dedication and improvement, his fitness has grown so rapidly I, and several others have began to question the legitimacy of his recent success.
I don’t believe he is just a hidden gem that is more talented than the average hobby jogger as his high school PR was 20:30 off of 30 mpw before retiring from training after graduation due to injury issues.
About 9 months ago, he began to take interest in ultra marathons (he read David Goggins) after very little running over the last couple years (maybe a 30 minute run once every week or so week) he increased his mileage to 70 mpw in about 5 weeks from 0. Since then he has improved at a pretty standard rate and never had any injuries despite the huge increase of mileage. In the beginning of august he ran a 1:32 half marathon which he said was the greatest race he ever had. The whole club was really impressed with this performance and he had undoubtedly worked incredibly hard to have gotten to that point from where he had started.
Fast forward to now, his last three long runs have been between 15-18 miles at 6:40-6:55 pace. Is there anyway he could have improved that much in such a short span? I know it’s still hobby jogging time but these LRs are far more impressive than anything he had done in a race setting or training just weeks before and he had run 4 years in high school so it’s not like he was new to the sport and had untapped talent.
Is this progress really possible? Am I just a someone that has plateaued and is bitter? Is David Goggins the key to distance running? Are people really juicing at this level?