Put all the best runners 5000+ on a track. Off they go! Anyone lapped is eliminated. Last man standing wins. Who is it?

Throw Duane Solomon into the mix, and anything can happen

Kipchoge.

Reverse starting order so 5000th starts at the front makes this race hella interesting,

Rich Fronning, dude.

assuming a person takes up ~2 meters while running and 3 people can fit in the first 2 lanes for every one of those 2 meters, then there would be 600 people just in the first 2 lanes, #1 could touch #600ths back.

Max King wins if he's in the race.

Have at least 100 top runners.

Have a single person chute at each lap

Push someone in front of you is instant elimination.

That will eliminate sit and kickers

last runner through the chute falls far behind

Bad Wigins wrote:

Can any ultra runners hang with the early pace until everyone else drops?

C'mon dude, of course not.

The top marathon runner on that day wins. No one can gap a full lap on him in any early surging/hard pace, but eventually he can open a lap on 2nd place. Probably won't happen to 20 miles or so, or even the marathon distance.

My favorite part of this thread is how half the responders think the OP meant five thousand runners on a track and the other half think he meant the best runners at distances 5000m and up.

Dean Karnazes

Tyrone ReXXXing wrote:

Bad Wigins wrote:

Can any ultra runners hang with the early pace until everyone else drops?

C'mon dude, of course not.

The top marathon runner on that day wins. No one can gap a full lap on him in any early surging/hard pace, but eventually he can open a lap on 2nd place. Probably won't happen to 20 miles or so, or even the marathon distance.

This guy should be right. You should end up with something resembling a marathon on the track. Think about it-the situation described is basically how a lot of marathons play out, with one guy eventually pulling irretrievably away. Though in this scenario, there wouldn't be any incentive to keep going once the 2nd to last guy is dropped.

` wrote:

My favorite part of this thread is how half the responders think the OP meant five thousand runners on a track and the other half think he meant the best runners at distances 5000m and up.

At least half of them are right

Fam.

eot

if a top marathoner goes out in roughly 13:30 for the first 5k, 27:20 for the first 10k, and 59:30 for the first half, there's no way the 5k/10k/half guys can win. The ultra guys would be eliminated early because they wouldn't be able to go that fast. So the winner is the marathoner who dies the least after speed guys are lapped

There is no incentive to lead or to pace yourself for X distance unless you believe you can be ahead of everybody by 400m. This is not realistic for 5K or 10K runners, so assuming no team tactics, no one would run a hard 5K or 10K as you would only hurt yourself. However, it is realistic for a marathoner to believe he can beat a world class field by 400m, so the pace would likely start at marathon pace and if someone is really dominating they might try to "shoot the moon" earlier than the marathon distance. The race would likely go beyond 42 km, but it would still start out at marathon pace and slow down. Because of this horrible pacing they would suffer really bad glycogen depletion so the race wouldn't extend too much further.

Brev wrote:

if a top marathoner goes out in roughly 13:30 for the first 5k, 27:20 for the first 10k, and 59:30 for the first half, there's no way the 5k/10k/half guys can win. The ultra guys would be eliminated early because they wouldn't be able to go that fast. So the winner is the marathoner who dies the least after speed guys are lapped

I'm not sure a marathoner could start that fast without blowing up. Peak Tadese maybe.

In track cycling that is called a miss and out. Pretty fun to watch.

Sammy wanjiru wins at 43k

Tirunesh Dibaba!

Not even Sileshi Sihine can stay on her ass indefinitelly...