How would Keninisa Bekele do in ultra marathons?

Invite some sub 2:05 guy whos road career seems to be possibly over and pay them to target a big 100 for a year. Maybe Patrick Makou. Maybe Geoffrey Mutai.

Best examples are Magdalena Boulet (2008 oly trials 2nd place, 2:30 pr) on the Women's side and Max King (2:13 pr and 12th 2016 oly trials) on the men's side. Both are successful but not dominant road marathoners. Both also struggled initially in transitioning to trail/ultra races, but found success fairly quickly. Now, they are both definitely very competitive in ultras, both don't just dominate everything. Again, the depth of competition is not quite where roads/track depth is, but at the top, there are some really talented trail/ultra runners (depth is better on the men's side). Also, some people are just better suited for the long rugged stuff. Sage Canaday is a guy who did OK in road marathons (Oly trials 2012), but was naturally far better at trails.I think the best track analogy for this kind of transition is if you take a great 100/200 runner and have that person try the 400 hurdles, s/he will probably be good, and get better with practice, but success is not a given. The events are very different. Another analogy would be 800/1500 runner trying the steeple... same transition period. So, anyway, Bekele COULD be great at trails/ultras, but it might be beyond his talent. It took him a little while to get the marathon down, so ultras might just stretch him too far, even if he really wanted it.

ultrasultrasultras wrote:

Anyone on here been serious about road marathons/track races and then switched to Ultras? What was the transition like?

someotherunner wrote:

You guys are confusing ultra running with mountain running.

K.B. is the greatest cross country runner in history, so obviously he can run trails. But that is not the same as mountains.

This is correct. East Africa is a huge network of flat paved roads at sea level. Bekele et. al. would have a hard time dealing with a mountain, which is not indigenous to East Africa.

ooper wrote:

Ultra running is for failed or crappy marathoners and bucket listers.

Ultra running is no different than any other race, except it's longer. Goggle Hawks vs Miller and watch them running flat out 43 miles into a 50 miler trying to win.

Agreed. Mountains take far more strength and a bigger aerobic engine (i.e:vo2max)than roads. KB certainly has the running economy to run a great ultra on a flat road/trial, but I doubt he can replicate it on the hill.

Trail, damn typo.

In fairness to Bekele, It took him a while because he had already been plagued with injuries when he debuted.

I'm guessing everyone forgot about his 11 World XC championships. The guy would totally destroy all these white ultra runners.

Massanutten 100 .

Give KB 6 months to train and Karl Meltzer will still beat him. Bet on it.

cfff wrote:

Ultra running is no different than any other race, except it's longer.

-- Yogi Berra

You know nothing about running.

George213 wrote:

Agreed. Mountains take far more strength and a bigger aerobic engine (i.e:vo2max)than roads. KB certainly has the running economy to run a great ultra on a flat road/trial, but I doubt he can replicate it on the hill.

Bingo.

Sage Canaday will DESTROY BEKELE at any Ultra-race with some rocks and hills on the trail.

Bekele is also not used to running at altitude.

Sage Canaday told me all of this on YOUTUBE.

For sure.

MAGA

800ftw. wrote:

3hr-marathoner wrote:

I think he'd win--there is no mechanism pushing runners that talented into ultras--but I don't think he'd be the best possible ultramarathoner. Someone like Kipsang who doesn't have the speed to run a 3:32 1500m would probably to more suited to ultras than Bekele.

I think he would be the best ever ultramarathoner ever seen. Whether kipsang would be better is irrelevant.

For the record I think Bekele's XC career, stocky stature and powerful thighs would make him better than Kipsang anyway.

Why say it's irrelevant if you are going to bother refuting it?

HMArunner wrote:

I'm guessing everyone forgot about his 11 World XC championships. The guy would totally destroy all these white ultra runners.

It would also be nice if the poster who started this thread could spell the name of Kenenisa Bekele.

Unfortunately, the poster spelled the name WRONG AGAIN.

This is not a big surprise because this is the LetsRun.com forum and the poster has a brain which is full of sh*t.

MAGA

George213 wrote:

Agreed. Mountains take far more strength and a bigger aerobic engine (i.e:vo2max)than roads. KB certainly has the running economy to run a great ultra on a flat road/trial, but I doubt he can replicate it on the hill.

Are you really saying Kennenisa Berkele doesn't have a big enough engine?

He may have a vo2max in the mid-80, but I doubt anything higher, whilst the elite mountain runners like Kilian, Matt Carpenter reportedly have 90+.

Wrong Again rekrunner. Stupid. wrote:

George213 wrote:

Agreed. Mountains take far more strength and a bigger aerobic engine (i.e:vo2max)than roads. KB certainly has the running economy to run a great ultra on a flat road/trial, but I doubt he can replicate it on the hill.

Bingo.

Sage Canaday will DESTROY BEKELE at any Ultra-race with some rocks and hills on the trail.

Bekele is also not used to running at altitude.

Sage Canaday told me all of this on YOUTUBE.

For sure.

MAGA

Assuming without proper training on Bekele's part, I do believe Sage CAN destroy bekele in a mountain race and btw they aren't just "some rocks and hills", they are big,steep hills.

Peter Andersson wrote:

Invite some sub 2:05 guy whos road career seems to be possibly over and pay them to target a big 100 for a year. Maybe Patrick Makou. Maybe Geoffrey Mutai.

This is often mentioned, but it seems to have never gone further than just saying it's a possibility.

What kind of money would need to be put up to get some sub 2:06 (say) guys to come out to one of these races? It must be less than what's currently being offered, or they would have done it (I guess this assumes that they're even aware of the mountain/ultra/trail scene, but they must be right?). Looks like TNFSF has 10k for first, and Comrades has ~33k USD for first (tho this isn't trails, it's a major ultra that it seems East Africans don't show up to, although someone correct me if I'm wrong).

Is it a crowd-sourcable level? I would certainly pitch in to a prize pool to try and get some serious talent out, and it seems like others would be too based on how often this topic is discussed. I think you'd just need a race director that was into it and wanted to make his race the place.

That is a really good idea to offer LESS than what is currently being given out as prize money.

You should ask the rich boy rojo to put up HIS MONEY to see if Bekele can beat Sage Canaday and the other REALLY SLOW WHITE ultra-runners.

Lets rojo.com will make your dreams into reality.

You need to take a really close look at how fantastic rojo's running career really was until he developed ideaphoria.

All of the running dreams of rojo are made into reality.

(rojo made the Olympic team with his twin wee-jo)

ha ha ha