Bill Rogers....was he good enought to finish in the 5 or 10 in todays marathons?

You must have thought Pfitz was nicknamed Beardsley because of his beard.

no

Check out the interview I did a while back with Bill at http://www.garycohenrunning.com/Interviews/Rodgers.aspx He discusses every one of his Boston and NYC Marathon wins and all kinds of thoughts on his running and racing. In almost every big race he would put the hammer down between 13 and 18 miles, run away from the field and then just run to win. There weren't pacemakers and his wins were on tough courses, not time trial courses. I'm sure that in today's TT races with his talent, training and will to win he would have run 2:06 or faster.

so, in your revisionist history, how do you explain all of the races that he didn't drop the field and coast in and wound up losing?

I'm guessing Ockerse is Ryan's dad, and Flagpole is just an idiot.

Neither of them obviously knows anything about running, they can't comprehend the schedule Rodgers kept, they can't understand the races with pacesetters Hall has run.

That's OK dad, my son is great at everything too.

Ockerse wrote:

so, in your revisionist history, how do you explain all of the races that he didn't drop the field and coast in and wound up losing?

Good god, no one is trying to "revise" history. Just trying to put it in proper perspective, and give credit where credit is due. Poor outings are what they are. It's the same way you can explain away the fact that Hall got smoked earlier this year in the Rock 'n' Roll half-marathon in Phoenix, it wasn't his day. End of story. Though quite durable, no one is saying that Rodgers was superman. Geez!

A couple of telling quotes from Bill in the above mentioned interview:

a) "But while you are ‘riding the wave’ you have a lot of psychological strength because other competitors ‘think’ you are going to win. The psychological part of racing is huge."

b) "Today the training for a marathon is different as the top runners have to train for the last 10k. The fast 10k runners have moved up and speed is necessary especially with the focus on time where we concentrated on winning major races and medals."

Interpret these quotes anyway you like.

I thought this thread was done.

On the same course, someone has run 4 mins faster. Pace makers (and competition) are worth something but 4 mins is a lot of time. And (especially on boston) weather is a huge factor. You had all the guys in 93 running 2min faster than normal due to wind.

Trailrunnergary wrote:

Check out the interview I did a while back with Bill at

http://www.garycohenrunning.com/Interviews/Rodgers.aspx

He discusses every one of his Boston and NYC Marathon wins and all kinds of thoughts on his running and racing. In almost every big race he would put the hammer down between 13 and 18 miles, run away from the field and then just run to win. There weren't pacemakers and his wins were on tough courses, not time trial courses. I'm sure that in today's TT races with his talent, training and will to win he would have run 2:06 or faster.

Ockerse wrote:

i think the race that hall has run in that had a field most comparable to what rogers competed against was the oly trials marathon. ritz, sell and meb were the best guys there and they are as faster (maybe a little faster) than the best guys rogers ran against.

2008 1 2:09:02 Ryan Hall

1980 1 2:10:19 Tony Sandoval

1980 2 2:10:41 Benji Durden

1980 3 2:10:55 Kyle Heffner

2008 2 2:11:07 Dathan Ritzenhein

2008 3 2:11:40 Brian Sell

1984 1 2:11:43 Pete Pfitzinger

1984 2 2:11:44 Alberto Salazar

1984 3 2:11:50 John Tuttle

1976 1 2:11:51 Frank Shorter

1976 2 2:11:58 Bill Rodgers

1984 4 2:11:59 Dave Gordon

1984 5 2:12:25 Dean Matthews

2008 4 2:12:34 Khalid Khannouchi

1980 4 2:12:39 Ron Tabb

1984 6 2:12:41 Tony Sandoval

2008 5 2:12:54 Jason Lehmkuhle

1980 5 2:13:16 Jeff Wells

1980 6 2:13:17 Kevin McCarey

2008 6 2:13:23 Daniel Browne

1984 7 2:13:29 Greg Meyer

1984 8 2:13:30 Bill Rodgers

1980 7 2:13:40 Randy Thomas

1980 8 2:13:53 Gordon Minty

1976 3 2:13:54 Don Kardong

1980 9 2:14:17 Frank Richardson

1984 9 2:14:18 Sal Vega

1980 10 2:14:22 Dennis Rinde

1980 11 2:14:38 Walt Saeger

1980 12 2:14:48 Dave Smith

2008 7 2:14:56 Nathaniel Jenkins

1976 4 2:14:58 Tony Sandoval

1980 13 2:15:09 David Patterson

2008 8 2:15:09 Meb Keflezighi

2008 9 2:15:22 Josh Rohatinsky

2008 10 2:15:27 Jason Hartmann

1980 14 2:15:30 Chuck Hattersley

1976 5 2:15:48 Tom Fleming

1976 6 2:15:50 Bob Varsha

1980 15 2:15:56 Jeff Foster

1984 10 2:16:02 Tom Raunig

2008 11 2:16:14 Matthew Gonzales

2008 12 2:16:28 Mike Morgan

2008 13 2:16:47 Fasil Bizuneh

2008 14 2:16:54 James Carney

2008 15 2:16:54 Steve Sundell

1984 11 2:16:56 Duncan MacDonald

1976 7 2:17:16 John Bramley

1984 12 2:17:18 David Hinz

1984 13 2:17:45 Doug Avrit

1976 8 2:17:58 Kirk Pfeffer

1976 9 2:18:29 Jeff Galloway

1976 10 2:18:56 Amby Burfoot

1976 11 2:19:05 Bob Busby

1976 12 2:19:18 Carl Hatfield

1976 13 2:19:55 Marty Sudzina

Over the last 25 years it seems all the marathon world records have had rabbits and were set at Rotterdam, Chicago, London, or Berlin. Rodgers never ran in these types of settings so you can assume he would have gone under 2:09 and maybe 2:08.

His one hour run American record equates to around 1:01:30 for half-marathon, condsiderably slower than Halls best time which he ran solo in Houston.

Those are the facts. There's nothing he accomplished that indicates he could have run 2:06 on a fast course with rabbits like Hall did.

George Webbs wrote:

Over the last 25 years it seems all the marathon world records have had rabbits and were set at Rotterdam, Chicago, London, or Berlin. Rodgers never ran in these types of settings so you can assume he would have gone under 2:09 and maybe 2:08.

His one hour run American record equates to around 1:01:30 for half-marathon, condsiderably slower than Halls best time which he ran solo in Houston.

Those are the facts. There's nothing he accomplished that indicates he could have run 2:06 on a fast course with rabbits like Hall did.

How do you come up with that number? What if he trained specifically for a record attempt and went to one of these so called races and had rabbits out there for him, there is no way to know what he would have run. Like you said, he never lowered himself to that type of garbage, he raced his races.

You only give him 30 to 90 sec. under these type of conditions? Let it go, you have no idea, Bill's hour run record was a good hard training run, like most of his races, no rabbits there either. So, don't use that as an indication of anything. He raced often because that was the only way to make money back then. If he lived under a rock like Hall for 6 months of the year and ran one special race he would have left no doubt.

Bill Rodgers himself said he could not run 59:43/2:06...

battle wrote:

Bill Rodgers himself said he could not run 59:43/2:06...

That's because Bill is a classy guy, no point creating a controversy by saying anything else to the contrary, no way to go back and change it anyways.

The rest of us can take up the fight for him.