I think this is a good thread. Let me make a few points.
1) People who compare Lance and Paula on the anti-doping front are simply uninformed.
Yes, Lance has always said he's clean but he's always gotten angry when people accused him of being a cheat (much like a lot of cheats like say Regina Jacobs). Also he's never been a leader of the anti-doping movement like Radcliffe.
Ten years ago when EPO cheating was rampant, she was one of the few athletes in the world who wasn't happy to just turn a blind eye. The only people who seemingly wanted to publicly put the pressure on the obvious cheats like Szabo or Jacobs were Radcliffe and LetsRun.com.
I mean she went as far to ask for her samples to be frozen. One can't be more transparent than that.
2) 2:15:25 is definitely an outlier as compared to other women's marathon times but should it be such an outlier?
I went back 25+ years and took a look at the marathon world record in 1985 as the new men's and women's records that were set that year really didn't budge much at all for 10 plus years.
In 1985, Carlos Lopes ran 2:07:12 and the world record barely budged (didn't go below 2:06:50) until 1998. Since that 2:07:12, the world record has come down by 3:13 or 2.529%. If you count the 2:03:02, it's 3.276%.
In 1985, Ingrid Kristiansen ran 2:21:06. Like the men's record, nothing much (actually nothing at all) changed until 1998. If one takes 2.529% off of 2:21:06, then they get 2:17:32 which is basically the 2nd time ever recorded. If you took off 3.276%, then you'd be looking at 2:16:29.
As it stands, the women's world record is faster than both those figures. It's 2:15:25 or 4.028% faster than the 1985 record. 4.0% is more than 2.5% or 3.2%, but logically shouldn't the women's record have come down more than the men's?
Think about world-wide how many fewer women competed relative to the men back in 1985. Women's sport participation is up a lot since then so shouldn't their records fall faster?
Regardless, this unscientific math project reveals that the record probably should be in the 2:17 range at a minimum. The fact that more women don't do it mainly comes from the fact that world-wide women's competition is nowhere near as deep as the men's.
Once in history, Radcliffe ran faster than 2:17. Here is someone who has a full-time phsyio devoted to her. Someone who does altitude training. Someone who was/is 100% committed to being the best. Could that result in 1 minute in the marathon? I believe it could.
3) Weldon talks about how hard Radcliffe worked in practice but that's not what I focus on in believing her 2:15:25 came from being clean. For me, I like to think of her as just being 100% committed. When we were at Gerard Hartmann's, I was just struck about how she was TOTALLY all in.
She didn't sleep in the bedroom with her husband as it was on the street. She moved her bed into the living room for better sleep.
She would take a nap every single day. She would ice bath. Hartmann, a man who was used to working on elites, raved about her pain tolerance in a way that he didn't for other athletes.
She also did high/low training.
Ultimately she ended up hiring Hartmann full-time to help her try to stay healthy. I remember thinking at the time, well that in some ways is her legal drug. Doing everything humanly possible to recover allows one to achieve more in training and therefore run faster.
If she was on drugs, why would she need a physio full-time if she could just take steroids? Skeptics will say it's all a clever cover I guess but I think I've made my point.
I don't want to rip current elites but I think a lot talk about being 100% committed and yet many of them have never even gone to altitude. In terms of Mo Farah and this year, I think he deserves a lot of credit for moving his entire family half-way around the globe to be the best. A lot of Americans want to live in a certain state or near mom and dad, etc. Radcliffe simply wants to be the best.
Additioanlly, in terms of her training, it was clear to me she naturally could run long distances at a very fast pace.
Conclusion
2:15:25 seems suspicious mainly because it's such an outlier as no other woman has run under 2:18:47. In my opinion, lots of women should be running in the 2:17 range and will start doing so soon again if someone with say the talent of Dibaba ever moves up.
A woman should be able to run that fast. Let me pick on one/praise of the runner's I coached at Cornell. Sage Canaday. The kid constantly about how he had no talent and his 5k pr of 14:34 is slower than Radcliffe's. Yet he's run 2:16:52 in the marathon. So seeing Paula run a bit faster isn't shocking to me at all as I was certainly more impressed by her daily training than his.
Sage is very into running and as a result, he has a 2:16 to his credit. Radcliffe is more talented, is even more committed and has way more resources at her disposal.
Sorry Sage, for picking on you. Everyone should buy his book here:
http://www.amazon.com/Running-Hansons-Insiders-Brooks-Sponsored-Marathon/dp/0983294119/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1311884518&sr=8-1
One last thing. If Radcliffe was doped, wouldn't her husband also be doped. Gary Lough was a world championship finalist back in 1995 and yet stopped competing soon thereafter. If there was an easy way to bet the best, wouldn't he have taken it like his wife?
Radcliffe is special. Her desire to keep going after her dream of Olympic gold proves it to me. She's not afraid to lose (even Haile G seemingly is). She's simply special.