19 Year old Japanese Guy Runs 2:11:34 for the Marathon, What Do You Think a 19 Year Old American Could Do?

I think you mean a 19 year old Eritrean.I think we could get 19 year olds to 2:11 with the right selection and training.Most of the top kids that we see at HS level are built for middle distance.

Hi hum wrote:

Meanwhile a 19 yr old ethiopian wins world champ marathon, another runs Shanghai in 208, and a 19 yr old woman runs 223 in Toronto...and Tsegaye Mekonnen ran 2014 Dubai in 204 as a jr.

I heard Drew Hunter ran a 2:01:20 training run in Quakertown, PA while being paced by Mike Rossi.

Let me start a rumour here.

He is certainly not 19. He is probably 26.

There I go.

No one's really answering the question posed by the thread. Really there are 2 questions:

What could a 19yo American run?

And

What could a college freshman run if specifically training for the event?

Question 1 is easily answered by ARRS by asking: What DID a 19yo American run? I won't look it up so as to be able to make a guess. 2:38. And I'm going out on a limb here since teenagers are laughably slow these days and distance events (the recent mid-d HS stars notwithstanding). Unfortunately for those of us who ran distance (not mid-d) in HS decades ago this wasn't always the case as just breaking 3 hours didn't get you anywhere near the podium in your AG in a bush-league locals-only race but it would easily win it now. Results from the running boom prove that young runners actually CAN run distance events (see US HS 10,000 record, but note the date) but they do not do so now in the US.

Second question is a little different but I think wouldn't be any faster than the answer to question 1. Kids who are speccifically college freshman runners and not simply 19yo runners are exclusively, as far as I can see, sprinters or Mid Distance runners. Fisher and Hunter are not Long Distance runners and have never finished a Long Distance race. This is not derogatory; Coe and El G ran mid-d and were great. No one's saying Jim Ryun was a joke for not running 10k and up. However, no one's saying that Ryun could run a 2:10 marathon at the end of High School either. So to this questionn I'd still say like 2:38!

Who cares where he will be in five years? He wants to run the marathon NOW, not in five years. He may be running 2:07 or he may be a desk jockey. Life is for living.Why do Americans always worry about "What will I be doing in five/ten/twenty years?"Talk about paralyzing fear....

Kruppe wrote:

Let us see where Mr. Shimoda stands 5 years from now before we anoint him or have other youngsters follow in his footsteps.

wejo wrote:

We should have another thread, what happens if we get a fast course and get all the American to go out at 2:06 pace.

Exactly the same thing that happened in Tokyo - nobody breaks 2:10.

No one is answering the original question because no one really can. Given the size of our population relative to Japan's you have to think that we have 19 year old guys with the same physical abilities as this 19 year old Japanese guy has. If guys like Justyn McNight or Ryan Hall or Drew Hunter had started doing the sort of volume work at 14-15 that Japanese kids do with a goal towards running half marathons and then marathons rather than cross country and track races by the time they got to college I imagine someone, probably multiple someones, would pull out at least a 2:11.

But we don't have the same approach as the Japanese do so that's unlikely.Most of our guys with the ability to run, even say, sub 2:20, aren't training seriously for marathons.

^ This above is the most sensible answer to the original question. Clearly, since the U.S. beats Japan for top-end depth at 1500m, 3000m, Steeple, 5k and 10k, (i.e. we produce 3:30-31, 7:35-40, 8:00-15, 12:55-13:10, 26:45-27:30 runners way more often than Japan) we should be able to produce ONE 19-year-old 2:11 marathoner in our history if we had thousands focus on it.

But our HS kids don't even focus on distance running, just the 1600 / 3200m and sometimes the 5k and then the 5k XC for 4-5 years before they are 19.

For those of you saying that Hall could run 2:10 or 2:11 or even 2:13 as a HSer or 19-year-old ... if that is true then Ritz could have run 2:08 or 2:09 as he murdered Hall in XC and distance running in general as he ran 13:52 and 13:44 as a senior and 13:27 as a 19-year-old.

He also placed 4th as a freshman in NCAA XC ... and we know that he could not run 2:08 as he found it difficult to do so as a 27 year old.

newname wrote:

Kirk Pfeffer did run 2:17:XX for the AJR.

Since we have seen people with 13:27 ability (or slower) for 5k run 2:11:XX many people thought that Ritz could have done it as a 19 year-old when he ran 13:27 as a college freshman and placed 24th in the Long Race at WCCC in 2002. But we know now that that would have been unlikely.

Paul Gompers actually has the record at 2:15

Freedom 55 is a myth wrote:

Who cares where he will be in five years? He wants to run the marathon NOW, not in five years. He may be running 2:07 or he may be a desk jockey.

Life is for living.

Why do Americans always worry about "What will I be doing in five/ten/twenty years?"

Talk about paralyzing fear...

Kruppe wrote:

Let us see where Mr. Shimoda stands 5 years from now before we anoint him or have other youngsters follow in his footsteps.

I did not see this on my first couple passes through this thread but ABSOLUTELY. If I had a 2:11 marathon in my past I'd be in heaven for eternity no matter if I was 15 or 51 or anywhere in between when I ran it.

What is a 19 year old doing running a marathon?

and I thought Gompers was a stud with that 2:15 at age 19. That Japanese kid looked like he was finishing his local 5k. Not winded, not sweating and looked like he could have gone another 10 miles. I don't think he was juiced. I do think they do things differently there with their junior runners than we do here is the US with respect to college running etc.