Memo to all who say lack of sponsors is stopping u from being great: A Fullbright scholar and lawyer just won US champs

I have never worked an honest day in my life and never cracked 2:45 in the mary. Kudos to her.

I prefer the half-mary distance myself. Full-mary is too much like an ultra-mary.

To all professional athletes that are out there complaining about not receiving funding, or sponsorship-this shows how truly misguided you are.

Plenty of athletes our there still find time to train twice a day, recovery properly, and hold down a full time job.

This makes any athlete from now on who complains about not being sponsored/funded sound incredibly silly.

Great interview with a very inspiring young woman. It mentions that she is coached by Knut Kvalheim who himself was at University of Oregon in the 1970s. He has had a decent amount of success as a coach; he also coached Susanne Wigane to a 30 min 32 secs 10k a few years ago.

Does anyone have any further insights into his training methods? From the little I have read he appears to be fairly "old school" and highly influenced by Arthur Lydiard.

I had the privilege of being Anne's teammate on New Balance Silicon Valley for a couple of years. She is one of the nicest and hardest working people I have ever met. It is really inspiring to see her success. Hopefully there are more fast times to come!

I do think the title of this thread is a little misguided though. Yes, her performance proves that is is possible to be successful while working full time and receiving relatively little in terms of sponsorship. However, that's not to day that she couldn't be more successful with additional assistance. It will always be easier to be a successful runner if you can devote all of your time and energy to it, and we should continue to push for as much assistance to aspiring elites as possible. Anne's performance is just proof that you can still be pretty darn good without it.

Fair assessment, runner dunker. It should be noted, she is 16 minutes slower than the WR. A good athlete should be able to run that fast holding down two jobs in Obama's economy.

runner dunker wrote:

I do think the title of this thread is a little misguided though. Yes, her performance proves that is is possible to be successful while working full time and receiving relatively little in terms of sponsorship. However, that's not to day that she couldn't be more successful with additional assistance. It will always be easier to be a successful runner if you can devote all of your time and energy to it, and we should continue to push for as much assistance to aspiring elites as possible. Anne's performance is just proof that you can still be pretty darn good without it.

Great post.

Kvalheim and Barker at Team USA MN are very similar. She won the U.S. 1/2 marathon title while with Barker and now the U.S. marathon title.

Injurypronerunner wrote:

To all professional athletes that are out there complaining about not receiving funding, or sponsorship-this shows how truly misguided you are.

Plenty of athletes our there still find time to train twice a day, recovery properly, and hold down a full time job.

This makes any athlete from now on who complains about not being sponsored/funded sound incredibly silly.

Until she does something on the world level, I'm not buying it. Read Mo's Quote of the Day and tell me why the Kenyans don't have fulltime jobs. Because they are busy recovering for their workouts.

Being top runner at US Champs is being like the smartest kid in the dumb class. No disrepect, but our best runners do not participate.

joho wrote:

Until she does something on the world level, I'm not buying it. Read Mo's Quote of the Day and tell me why the Kenyans don't have fulltime jobs. Because they are busy recovering for their workouts.

Being top runner at US Champs is being like the smartest kid in the dumb class. No disrepect, but our best runners do not participate.

Plenty of good Kenyans have had jobs. Your own Mary Cain is a full time student and she made it to the world champs final. Having other time commitments is not an excuse for running well.

First she isn't a practicing ligitation lawyer, which can eat up the hours. She works a a policy person at a think tank. And she just became a lawyer.

Also, she ran in law school...big whoopie. To a bright person law school should be very easy. It's not med school.

then she ran while studying for the bar..again Not hard. No work, just studying.

So I think it is misleading in the. Not to metion that she had some kind of support from her husband.

Kudos to her, but lets not make her out to be something she's not.

kdidi wrote:

joho wrote:

Until she does something on the world level, I'm not buying it. Read Mo's Quote of the Day and tell me why the Kenyans don't have fulltime jobs. Because they are busy recovering for their workouts.

Being top runner at US Champs is being like the smartest kid in the dumb class. No disrepect, but our best runners do not participate.

Plenty of good Kenyans have had jobs. Your own Mary Cain is a full time student and she made it to the world champs final. Having other time commitments is not an excuse for running well.

Sure. But, when Mary Cain goes pro and doesn't have to work or go to school maybe she can medal at the world level.

Mo seemed to learn that lesson from the Kenyans. I'm not sure why everyone else can't.

That isn't to say that some can't run good times while holding down fulltime jobs/school but the best in the world are not doing that.

As a sort of parenthetical note -- getting a Fulbright (one L) is very nice but it's not some kind of genius certificate. It's competitiveness really depends on where you go; they accept almost no one to England and almost everyone to Latvia.

Having said that, she has to be pretty high-functioning to have gotten into stanford law.

The US marathon champs is so weak. Congratulations to her, she ran a great race, but let's try and put this into perspective.

I'm not getting very specific, but Paula's WR = 2:15. Her 2:31 means there is 16 minutes of difference. Putting that into minutes: Paula's is 135 minutes and Bersagel's is 151 minutes.

135/151 = 89.4%

Now, let's look at the men's 5k record, for example. The WR is 12:37. 12:37 in seconds is 757 seconds. Divide 757/.894 and that gives you 847 seconds, or a 14:07 5k.

Lets be real now. 14:07 is just slightly better than the average LetsRun poster (lol). No reason to get impressed.

Isn't your quote of the day a bit of a contradiction?

Good post.I had the same thought, myself.In college I had 4 roommates that ran that fast or faster in the 5k, and they were all extremely busy full time students with internships and segueing into full time positions in big companies.

Not that impressive wrote:

The US marathon champs is so weak. Congratulations to her, she ran a great race, but let's try and put this into perspective.

I'm not getting very specific, but Paula's WR = 2:15. Her 2:31 means there is 16 minutes of difference. Putting that into minutes: Paula's is 135 minutes and Bersagel's is 151 minutes.

135/151 = 89.4%

Now, let's look at the men's 5k record, for example. The WR is 12:37. 12:37 in seconds is 757 seconds. Divide 757/.894 and that gives you 847 seconds, or a 14:07 5k.

Lets be real now. 14:07 is just slightly better than the average LetsRun poster (lol). No reason to get impressed.

The whole premise of this thread really sits in contrast to the Mo Farah Kenya article posted on the front page.

You can't have it both ways: claim success results from training like the kenyans which involves practically no activities outside of running AND also claim success can still be had while working and without sponsorship.

On the other hand you could make a point that sponsorship should only be made available to those like Mo and Hobbie Call, who if given the chance and opportunity to dedicate themselves 100% can literally be the best. For everyone else who by the time college has ended hasn't showed promise of being a Olympic medal contender, go get a job.

Not that impressive wrote:

The US marathon champs is so weak. Congratulations to her, she ran a great race, but let's try and put this into perspective.

I'm not getting very specific, but Paula's WR = 2:15. Her 2:31 means there is 16 minutes of difference. Putting that into minutes: Paula's is 135 minutes and Bersagel's is 151 minutes.

135/151 = 89.4%

Now, let's look at the men's 5k record, for example. The WR is 12:37. 12:37 in seconds is 757 seconds. Divide 757/.894 and that gives you 847 seconds, or a 14:07 5k.

Lets be real now. 14:07 is just slightly better than the average LetsRun poster (lol). No reason to get impressed.

Lets be real. You know very little about how to apply statistics correctly. You're dealing with two completely different populations, so you can't make a linear comparison like this. The Mercier calculator says her marathon time equates to a 13:20 5K and 2:10:27 marathon for a man. She had the best performance of the day.

Maybe you don't know anything about law school because there's a law school and there are top tier law school. Stanford is one of the freaking best law schools in the world, competitive with Harvard, and law school is just as hard as med school when you're at a top tier school. I have several family members who have done both.