Why no American men under 2:10 in marathon?

I don't think there is much wrong with their mindset, they all seem to be training hard and race hard. That is their life, I doubt they could go any harder.

But the marathon is different physiologically than the shorter distance events, and not everyone can transition to it well.

They need EPO.

2:10 is really fast.

Puskedra has a couple of 1:01 halfs in his resume...so he could be run 2:10 as soon as next year.

Ever heard of Meb?

Boston?

Sub 2:10?

Winner?

doo doo wrote:

I don't think there is much wrong with their mindset, they all seem to be training hard and race hard. That is their life, I doubt they could go any harder.

But the marathon is different physiologically than the shorter distance events, and not everyone can transition to it well.

They need EPO.

EPO benefits the marathon a lot less than the 5k/10k/half. Perhaps not at all. Mo Trafeh and his 60:39 / 2:11 is your classic example.

Why no American men under 3:32 or 13:00?

P0T0 wrote:

2:10 is really fast.

Agreed

I'm just tired of it being the same 3 or 4 American's that can go sub 2:10: Ritz, Meb, Hall, Abdi. And I don't know if Hall and Abdi have anymore sub 2:10 performances in them. These guys all went sub 2:10 at the Houston trials and there has not been even one new guy making a breakthough and going sub 2:10 since then. Certainly there has to be someone coming along for the next olympic trials capable of this??

Hall is lucky to go sub-DNF these days.

webby wrote:

Why no American men under 3:32 or 13:00?

What do you mean no American men under 3:32? There were two this year.

Also, if you look at it, there were only 9 men better than the Americans in the 1500.

There were only 4 men in the world than ran faster than 13:00...two of them just barely in 12:59. And guess what? There are three Americans in the top 10 in the 5,000!!

Meanwhile, in the marathon, 127 (more to come soon) men ran faster than 2:10, so clearly, while a great time, it isn't that fast. US still has no one under that time (besides Boston, which is not considered in records).

Whatever, dude, and you know this how? Let me guess: (the guess) some trainer/coach/doctor (one person could be all three) has been preaching this over-and-over again and it has somehow sunk-in to your brain that it's the truth.

No doing the volume?

+20 milers?

who knows.

Also there is only one record quality marathon course in North America - Chicago. So if you want to prepare for a marathon, you have to skip the summer track season. Europe is much better over all for marathons - flat uncambered roads on narrow streets w/ lots of crowd support. There are at least a dozen in this category.

know-it-all joe wrote:

doo doo wrote:

I don't think there is much wrong with their mindset, they all seem to be training hard and race hard. That is their life, I doubt they could go any harder.

But the marathon is different physiologically than the shorter distance events, and not everyone can transition to it well.

They need EPO.

EPO benefits the marathon a lot less than the 5k/10k/half. Perhaps not at all. Mo Trafeh and his 60:39 / 2:11 is your classic example.

Great study of 1

The Tour de France is hardly a sprint and it worked ok there

Basic Foot Speed of sub 8:00 for 3000 is needed to break 2:10 for the marathon. 13:25 and 28:00 are corresponding track times. Very few runners have the ability to run sub 2:10 without sub 8:00 ability.

Brent Bowers wrote:

Basic Foot Speed of sub 8:00 for 3000 is needed to break 2:10 for the marathon. 13:25 and 28:00 are corresponding track times. Very few runners have the ability to run sub 2:10 without sub 8:00 ability.

Yes, but more importantly what type of leg speed velocity is needed to break 2:10?

SPEED IS SPEED, MORON!

Why no American under 2:10?

Simple!

All of the people who can do it decided that instead of actually doing it, they would dedicate their lives to posting on the letsrun message board and telling others how to do it.....or more accurately, why they will fail. Or if they do run fast, accuse them of taking drugs......or if they get hurt, they tell us why they are soft and what they did wrong.

They are so good at what they do, they've even branched out to helping people run their lives and run the country!

So the question also would be: ¿Why only the East Africans run sub 2:08?

Here's the "no east African" 2014 Marathon Rank:

62-Kohei Matsumura (JPN): 2:08:09

70-Mohamed Farah (GBR): 2:08:21 (if you don't consider him an East African)

81-Koshi Kobayashi (JPN): 2:08:51

83-José Uribe (MEX): 2:08:55

83-Henryk Szost (POL): 2:08:55

91-Hiro Kurosaki (JPN): 2:09:07

94-Masanori Sakai (JPN): 2:09:10

105-Sue Ishikawa (JPN): 2:09:29

107-Masato Imai (JPN): 2:09:30

113-Yuki Kawauchi (JPN): 2:09:36

117-Satoru Sasaki (JPN): 2:09:47

122-Vitaliy Shafar (UKR): 2:09:53

So, 127 athletes lowered 2:10 this year, and 115 of them are East African (116 if you count Farah)

I know, years ago there was some Japanese sub 2:08 runners (like Fujiwara), Szost also ran 2:07, in recent years you also had Rothlin in the mix, plus Ryan Hall. But it's the exception.

"There are 17 American men in history who have run under 2:10 in the marathon," Epstein says. "There were 32 Kalenjin who did it in October of 2011."

Quote from Sports Gene guy. I don't know why that's true, but it is interesting.

Canuckistan wrote:

No doing the volume?

+20 milers?

who knows.

Also there is only one record quality marathon course in North America - Chicago. So if you want to prepare for a marathon, you have to skip the summer track season. Europe is much better over all for marathons - flat uncambered roads on narrow streets w/ lots of crowd support. There are at least a dozen in this category.

+20 milers. Wow, why has no one thought of that yet?! All this time we've been doing negative mileage and now you come along and totally change the game! Positive mileage is what we've been missing!

Thanks for your contribution.