Some pretty impressive running in March by Michael Wardian of Arlington, VA. He won the March 4th B& A Trail Marathon in 2:25 (2nd place 2:55). Then two weeks later finished 3rd with an Olympic Trails qualifying marathon time of 2:21 at the Shamrock Marathon in VA Beach March 18th. To complete the hat trick he came back to win the National Marathon in Wash DC on March 24th in 2:26. Not a bad month at all!
He told me he's running Knoxville next week.
Amazing. How does he recover so quickly?
Well, some people are just really good at running 2:20's. He got 2nd place at Steamtown in 2:22:29 on October 8.
http://www.runhigh.com/2006%20Results/2006%20Results%20B/R100806AB.html
More than likely these are not full efforts for him.
He is probably a 2:18 marathoner fully tapered and he is just using these races as long tempo runs slightly slower than full race effort.
Similar to Boston Billy Rodgers running multiple marathons in the 1977-1979 time frame but some of them were just 2:15-2:18 (90-95%) efforts for him.
But to my knowledge he's never done better than 2:21. Not sure if he's ever gone for the "all eggs in one basket" approach to focus on a single marathon for a season and bust a really good one (not that low 2:20s isn't good...you know what I mean).
From the article in the Washington Post this past Sunday it appears he is putting his eggs in the Olympic Trial Basket. Would be great to see him under (or way under) 2:20!
"Wardian did not better the 2:22 Olympic qualifying standard, but the 32-year-old already qualified last weekend at the Shamrock Marathon in Virginia Beach. Wardian has set his sights on making the 2008 Olympic team and breaking the world record for running a marathon while pushing Pierce in a stroller.
'Believe it or not, I'm really going to try to make the Olympic team,' Wardian said. 'I'm really going to throw down a bunch of miles and see what I can do. I'm not kidding myself, it's going to be a lot of work, but this is the beginning of that effort.'"
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