rojo wrote:
` wrote:At mile 78, Krar leads Kins by 5 minutes.
How brutal is that. You've run 78 miles and realize you've still got 22 to go.
-Rojo
PS. Ultra guys,
I was thinking of starting another thread. "How would Galen Rupp do in the Western States 100."
Is that just stupid (like you guys think there is no chance he could win it) or is it debatable?
Here's my opinion, from personal experience. I don't do a lot of ultras anymore, but what I've found in longer trail races is that I gain a lot more benefit in performance by just doing hard marathon-type workouts than by training specifically on trails. I have yet to test this theory on trails, but I've found that even with ridiculous mileage and ultra-specific long runs (as much as 164 miles in 6 days), my 100 mile times don't improve much. The last couple trail races I've done have been by far my best, and have come after ditching the trails in training and just focusing on grinding tempo and marathon pace workouts. I get a lot of fitness and toughness out of these workouts and I think it translates well.
Looking at people faster than me, let's think about a couple elites that have excelled in both the regular running world and the ultra world.
1. Sage Canaday jumped into ultras and immediately started destroyed one of the most highly regarded records in trail racing (White River 50). With a lot of ultra experience, Sage is arguably not racing any better in ultras (he's only had 1 or 2 races on par with that WR50 win), so I'm not sure that Galen would really need time to "get used to" ultras. Nothing against Sage, who is a great runner, but Galen is out of the stratosphere compared to Sage in every measurable quantity.
2. Matt Carpenter. When he raced Leadville for the first time, he did more typical ultra stuff in his build-up and just exploded in the race. Second time around, he followed his instincts and never went more than 2 hours in training. What was the result? Arguably the single greatest 100 mile trail performance of all time. Really tough guys can perform extraordinarily well without doing Krupicka-esque 10 hour training runs.
There are some really tough and fit guys out in the ultra world, but Galen is at another level. You don't get to 26:44 without being the type of person that absolutely does not crack. This mentality is what it takes to win WS100. My ultimate opinion? He's running as much mileage as the guys winning, doing workouts so grueling that very few people in the world could even fathom the pain he puts himself through, and spending an incredible amount of time getting his mechanics to the point of perfection, so he's going to have just as good of endurance, far better speed, and a body that won't break down with a lot of mileage. I think with a couple months to train, he will win by a very comfortable margin. Maybe something will go wrong the first time out, causing a DNF, but by try two, at the very latest, nobody could touch him. Rupp is in a different universe.