Kilian about to break Hardrock course record

he didn't even try wrote:

Kilian may be the best but he really shouldn't be able to do this. This just makes the competition look bad.

Sort of like Rudisha today.

Kilian is a dumb@ss... it took him 10-12 minutes per aid station. Meaning he lost another hour by eating Kit-Kats and then taking pictures during his run with his iPhone, which was very disrespectful to all the competitors.

Thankfully, Luis Alberto will continue to hand him losses all season, if he chooses to race him... as Kilian ducked him at Chamonix.

not the same thing wrote:

the walking jedi wrote:

walking mechanics are mastered by very few runners, which is a shame, as it's practically a slow-motion run and as such makes it much easier to focus on form.

Racewalking mechanics don't work well on hills.

racewalking mechanics don't work well anywhere IMO, especially not for someone who takes running seriously. i was just referring to the mechanics of actual walking, say, no faster than about 4.5 mph.

most runners walk with essentially the same sort of posture/gait as when they run. then they work on their running mechanics instead of walking mechanics first, as if learning something at a rapid pace is easier to do than learning at a slower pace.

not a fan of race walking. it's not an efficient use of energy since running at the same speed is more economical. it's not a real footrace and it's not really healthy on the hips. so, it's just wrong in so many ways when it comes to competition. but, truly, to each his own. just wanted to make it clear this is not what i was suggesting in any way.

Vowl wrote:

Kilian is a dumb@ss... it took him 10-12 minutes per aid station. Meaning he lost another hour by eating Kit-Kats and then taking pictures during his run with his iPhone, which was very disrespectful to all the competitors.

Is that true? I didn't know that. I have to amend my statement about making the competition look bad. embarassing would be more like it.

Yes it is, but to average that pace, one has to do an incredible amount of hard running in between the 1-2/mph pace one averages climbing up the side of a mountain for hours at a time at altitude.

It's true, all documented here, http://www.irunfar.com/2014/07/2014-hardrock-100-results.html

Vowl wrote:

Kilian is a dumb@ss... it took him 10-12 minutes per aid station. Meaning he lost another hour by eating Kit-Kats and then taking pictures during his run with his iPhone, which was very disrespectful to all the competitors.

Thankfully, Luis Alberto will continue to hand him losses all season, if he chooses to race him... as Kilian ducked him at Chamonix.

Maybe he likes to use the extra time to recover. If I read it correctly, he waited at 70 and 2nd place caught up and went out ahead of him. Sometimes I think that if he were to go all out it would be a health risk. And maybe he likes taking pictures.

Can you imagine an African ever stopping to take pictures and eat Kit-Kats!!? That's why one day when they get interested, Hardrock will be run in under 22hrs easily by an African.

Vowl wrote:

Can you imagine an African ever stopping to take pictures and eat Kit-Kats!!? That's why one day when they get interested, Hardrock will be run in under 22hrs easily by an African.

Killian crushed the MATTERHORN in 2:52 and didn't eat any kit-kats. Marathons only take a couple hours to run. Your "African" runner is not going to be able to go 22 hours without eating anything.

Can you imagine if an African tried to go up the Matterhorn? Or tried to go for Jornet's Denali FKT (basecamp to summit in under 10 hours and ski down in 2). They would crush it.

To "Soft CR's" and other shat throwers.

How ludicrous is it that in a community as small and far out on the fringe as the segment of runners who can name both ultra courses AND their high-level competitors, which course records are "soft", and which are "legit" becomes a bone of contention.

It repetitively blows my small mind to see that the only contribution many have to a discourse on performance is both derogatory and confrontational, and serves to undermine the efforts of those extraordinary few people in the world who already don't see this sport as the domain of wing-nut fanatics.

What would it take to say that existing CR's (say, aforementioned Ice Age, or Angeles Crest, or the previous Hardrock) are exactly that - course records. The fastest time recorded on that given course. Are we to add an asterisk to each, saying "course has not yet been challenged by a pack of proven sub-2:10 marathoners with a dedicated 2-year build-up to the terrain, altitude, and distance", or "has not been run yet in ideal conditions"? How about simply revelling in the fact that Killian is an absolute machine, and so is Carpenter, King, Sharman, Lorblanchet, Krupicka, and Clark, and of course, if they all were "on" on any course with solid conditions, records will fall. And that does nothing to take away from the fact that every other race where that hasn't (or will never) occur still has some solid running behind the CR.

The petty and spiteful nature of a few do nothing but surprise.

piotr janowski wrote:

To "Soft CR's" and other shat throwers.

How ludicrous is it that in a community as small and far out on the fringe as the segment of runners who can name both ultra courses AND their high-level competitors, which course records are "soft", and which are "legit" becomes a bone of contention.

No the record's the hardest thing in the world because someone just skipped to my lou and crushed it

He may have whistled while he worked. Maybe he even ran half of it with his eyes closed. Does that make the previous 23:23 record any less legitimate? Hell no. Was Kilian substantially faster? Of course, but until Kilian ran this year's race, that wasn't the case. There have been quite a few amazing athletes at Hardrock who haven't broken 24 hours.

You have absolutely no idea how hard the Hardrock course is if you are making this statement. Absolutely no idea.

This is some of the gnarly terrain on the hardrock course.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQbEaiHPI9k

That video of Kilian, Chorier, Olson, and Jones going down the side of the mountain really highlights how Jornet really is in a league of his own. He goes down the pass so much faster and with so much more grace and skill than the other guys. He makes it look so easy when that is a very difficult decent.

...Killian has run faster in Sierre-Zinal, a Swiss mountain race of 20-miles in 2hrs. 30min.. In it, he's run much faster than GB Olympian's Geoff Norman and Ian Thompson! Respectively 2:09 and 2:10 for the later in Marathons...

Further more, South African Matthew Bstwadi himself was a 28:00 10k man on the track back in the late 80's...

All of the above mentioned were Norman, GB Olympian in '76 games is the 'closest' at 7 minutes arrears!

The South African never broke 3 hours!

P.S. Another South African, Kevin Shaw a 2:10 marathoner barely got under 3:00 in in S-Z!

Killian averaged 4.31 minutes per aid station...

yeah Sierre-Zinal does weird things to a track/marathon runners legs! Pretty sure Max King was chicked there last year and I was nearly brought to a walk (and crying). Something with the opening near vertical km (i remember splitting 12-15min miles trying to power hike) and then a combination of fast slightly downhill running that can really light you up (if not used to Euro-style running). Hamstring cramps like it was the last 10km of the marathon by mile 10!

nathan jessup wrote:

...Killian has run faster in Sierre-Zinal, a Swiss mountain race of 20-miles in 2hrs. 30min.. In it, he's run much faster than GB Olympian's Geoff Norman and Ian Thompson! Respectively 2:09 and 2:10 for the later in Marathons...

Further more, South African Matthew Bstwadi himself was a 28:00 10k man on the track back in the late 80's...

All of the above mentioned were Norman, GB Olympian in '76 games is the 'closest' at 7 minutes arrears!

The South African never broke 3 hours!

P.S. Another South African, Kevin Shaw a 2:10 marathoner barely got under 3:00 in in S-Z!