McMillan on FIRE! Fagan 1:01, Lemon 1:01:50

He's a genius now, but if one of his athletes has the misfortune to trip and twist an ankle, then he's an idiot again. Then when the athlete runs well, he's a genius. And so on and so on. . . such is the cyclical approval of letsrun.

live free or die state

downhill

In all honesty, is this course downhill??

Fagan went through 10km in 28.49. That not far off his road 10km personal best.

If anyone who has run this (or did run it last weekend can shed some light i'm sure we'd all appreciate it. Point to Point races always make me suspicious, especially when these runners untterly smash there previous bests.

In the Fagan interview on flotrack he says that the course is fast and even mentions it being downhill... would it have counted for an Irish record??

6:00miler wrote:

In the Fagan interview on flotrack he says that the course is fast and even mentions it being downhill... would it have counted for an Irish record??

These are very good performances by Fagan, Rizki and Lemoncello. However, the course is severely downhill: 5.4m/km. That's more than five times what is allowable for record-setting where the limit is 1m/km.

Nonetheless, Lemoncello ran 1:03:13 on the same course last year, so he achieved a big year-over-year improvement.

David Monti, Race Results Weekly

In the Great South 10miler when Fagan ran 46mins, he went thru 10k in 2840. So Yes! he is capable of running that fast in a road race.

I ran it. It's definitely fast with lots of downhills, it's approximately a 300 foot drop but with plenty of uphills and rolling sections as well. I think that the returns are diminishing the better trained you are. i.e. a 2:00 half marathon might run 10-15 minutes faster a 1:30 runner might be 3-5 minutes faster while an elite runner might only gain 30 seconds.

That said I think Fagan's run was legit. McMillans group is running well lately. Hopefully we see some fast marathons from them this year as I think that is the ultimate goal of his program.

You gain much more then 30 seconds on a course that drops that much.

Using Googleearth and the course sheet (http://www.usatf.org/events/courses/maps/showMap.asp?courseID=TX06017JF) the 3M course starts at 247 meters elevation and ends at 151 meters for a drop of 96 meters, or 314 feet.

By comparison the Boston marathon drops 480 feet.

I'm just repeating what I've heard/seen. If the elites really benefited from the drop then all of the 1:02-1:04 guys would be running alot faster than 1:01.

Or else they're not in the kind of shape they'd need to be to run 1:02-1:04 on a legit course.

I don't think you can just look at the starting and ending elevation to determine how fast a course is. What about everything between.

I'm not famaliar with this course so maybe it is faster than some give credit for.

The course is fast, the hills on north loop were the only tough part (around mile 9). I particularly liked the last 5K. Check it out:

http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3M/en_US/HalfMarathon/Home/RaceInformation/Maps/

Fagan a beast,he si keeping the flag flying for Irish distance running at the moment.

Whats with this facination about his coach and group?

let them keep training and the races will do the talking.

The course is very fast, however, if you don't race smart, it will tear you apart. Going out too fast will make the climb right before the 10 mile mark a nightmare.

Didn't Sell run around a 64 several years back? So 61 flat is impressive to me.