Stop smoking dude wrote:
Oh please Collin, he has as much a chance of going 2:20 as you do of running 2:40 on a non-downhill course.
He lost to Matt Flaherty at US 50 mile road champs by 4 minutes less than 2 months ago. Flaherty has more of a background in the shorter distances and has significantly more marathon-specific training and has only run 1:08:17 / 2:22:53. I would say Bitter would be lucky to go under 2:25 if he dedicates a year or so to marathon training.
Thanks for reading my facebook page today! When I run Phoenix, with its 850' of net downhill, I'll make sure to point out that the downhill sped me up by 1:51 while ignoring the facts that the altitude slowed me down by 30 seconds more than that, and that the coning of the course into one lane while certifying the distance using the tightest tangents of the roads cost another minute. Despite the fact that a 2:40 at Phoenix is actually worth about a 2:38:30 at Chicago or Berlin, I'll make sure to point out that I'm only really in the ballpark of 3:20-3:25 shape. YOLO!
Another point I wanted to make related to why I don't think anyone currently running can go faster than 11:00... If a Kenyan could show up to the starting line of a 100 miler properly peaked for a 100 mile run and simultaneously in 2:03 fitness, he absolutely could run in the ballpark of 10:30. The catch is that training properly for a 100 miler is going to make it physiologically impossible to show up in 2:03 shape. I think the best that anyone could show up in, if actually ready for the full 100, would be ~2:10. This drops the capability to ~11:00.
Oh, and I just noticed that Zach actually ran another 2:31 in January. The only catch was that it was intended as, in his words, a "speed session" with "little need to spend lots of time recovering from the race" (ie, a workout), run off of a couple weeks of training after taking time off after JFK, and was completed on a non-banked indoor track with tight corners, with no relevant competition, and while having to nearly continuously lap the 99 other competitors in the race over and over.