Yuki Kawauchi wins Hofu Marathon 2:08:23

Yuki's aging well. And speaking of aging well Ser-Od BAT-OCHIR's time is pretty spectacular for a forty plus year old.

Yuki's powers of recovery are phenomenal.

Wondering what Yuki would have achieved in Valencia, today, 3 December 2023. I'm thinking at least 2:07:00, possibly faster.

Valencia is an anomalous fast track course. Probably legal, but advantageous to the extreme. You just see that with some of the ridiculous PB's by many athletes, including proven elites, many beating their bests by 3-5 minutes.

hes 36...aging well? hes in the marathon prime

Splendid! Yuki is really great and with his one session per day training he has shown it's more than possible one can reach individual optimal endurance that way. The only thing that stop him from running 2:01-2:03 is more talent as Kipchoge and Kiptum and Bekele.Yuki has not even broken 29 min at the 10 k! 🇸🇪🧙🏼‍♂️🇸🇪🖐

Marathon prime is as much about how long you've been running marathons for and how many of them you've run as how old you are. He's been running marathons since 2009. He's run well over 100 marathons, something like 80 of them under 2:20. If he's still in his marathon prime he's aging very well.

He's run way more (mas) than 80 sub-2:20s - 119 to date.

120 after this win. This is his fifth fastest result

Hofu Yomiuri is not even reputed to be a fast course (unless mistaken).

Strange Yuki didn't run Fukuoka same day. Hofu must have dug deeper with appearance money for Yuki? He's a pro, nothing wrong with that.

Hofu results were not very deep after top 10, it went straight to 2:20:00+-

One of the more likely dopers out there but still what a solid career.

Honestly, he ran the Japan Olympic trial just how many weeks ago? This guy is the greatest marathon runner of all time bar none.

It's fantastic how fast he recovers after his marathons. I remember when I ran in my prime there was an USA runner Doug Curtis also ran very frequent marathons. Not many elites try this so maybe most could do it if try ......I myself once ran two marathons with just one month between and equal times in both....

This guy is not human

People act like it’s a talent or a miracle that he recovers as he does. But he runs his easy days at 8-minute pace, 4-5 days a week. That’s the equivalent of a 3-hour marathon runner doing their easy days at 10-minute pace. I don’t know of any other elite runner that runners as easy on their easy days. I suspect we’d all be able to recover as he does if we ran as much slow mileage as he does.

Yuki Kawauchi is an absolute chad - I defy anyone to name a more chadly performance than when my dude dropped like a 3:59 mile to open Boston and then obliterated the field while the commentators made fun of him. Then this chad of a man left the afterparty to call off work for the next day. This guy raced like 4 marathons by the time Kipchoge was done with his GQ photo shoot. Guy pops up and drops 2:08s when he's feeling good, then goes home to hammer down a burger and some ramen and goes out for a 14 minute mile easy run. Then shaves his head in shame and drops another sub 2:10 next morning on a whim. What a freaking chad.

What is a "chad" - most of us have no idea? I suspect this is a quaint British term/appellation.

Yuki's first mile at Boston 2018 was around 4:40, not 3:59.

Your language is bizarre.

His language is bizarre? This coming from the guy who says "the Spanish meso monster", or "the epicurious Swedish coach".

The guys whose careers seem most like his are Doug Curtis and Kjell Erik Stahl, both known for running huge numbers of sub 2:20 marathons. I recall Stahl once saying that he thought maybe the reason he could recover so quickly was that he wasn't able to run marathons really fast (2:10 was about three minutes off the world record at the time) and because of that he thought he might do less damage to his muscles than faster people did to theirs. You could make the same observation about Kawauchi. As fast as he's run he's a ways behind the guys running record and near record times and maybe, like Stahl, this allows him to recover faster.

Another thing that comes to mind when I think about this is an old Frank Shorter quote that went "You have to forget your last marathon before you can run your next one." I certainly found that to be true. I didn't really like running marathons but ran them anyway because of the feeling of accomplishment I got afterward especially if I liked the result. Recovering physically for me was always fast but I seemed to need at least four months until I was mentally ready to try another one. I'd bet that something along these lines holds true for many world class marathoners, i.e., they need more time to recover mentally from marathons than they do physically.

That's does not seem to be the case for Kawauchi. He genuinely seems to enjoy racing marathons and probably is recovered mentally from his last one almost as soon as he's finished and is ready to do the next one much sooner than most other people are ready for their next.

It along with Berlin is probably the fastest course in the world. That being said if you're PBing by 3-5 minutes it is likely you have had some sort of breakthrough or have not competed on a flat, fast course.

For Yuki, if he could run 2:05:50 he could sneak onto the Olympic team. Unfortunately that doesn't seem likely as his maximal level is right around 2:07.