With Better Pacing Could Walmsley Have Gone Sub 6? (sponsored)

He wouldn’t have broken 6:10 even with perfect pacing

LetsRun.com wrote:

We try and bring more analysis to Walmsley's run thanks to his Strava data. Question is if he hadn't run some 5:2X miles (sub 6 was 5:48 pace) could he have held on to a sub 6 run?

https://www.letsrun.com/news/2019/05/if-jim-walmsley-had-paced-himself-better-would-he-have-broken-6-hours-at-hoka-one-one-project-carbon-x-100k/

I think these ultra articles are great, and I hope LetsRun branches out a bit more to cover this interesting but less talked out part of running. But I'm concerned about how much these sponsored posts are changing the direction of the website. All of a sudden, WeJo is a huge ultra fan, posting articles about Walmsley like he might post about Kipchoge. How real is this? Have you caught the bug, and are now going to cover/comment about big ultras in the future? Or when the money runs out, does the interest run out? And then is the next event that wants eyeballs going to have to pay the journalists too?

And then on top of that, WeJo is advocating for Walmsley's record to be ratified, when it seems to be ambiguous whether it should. I actually AGREE--I want it to be ratified. But I'm a little apprehensive about the conflict of interest. Not saying that WeJo isn't being honest--he seems like a really honest guy. But of course he has good feelings about the event having just been there, and his site is making money off it, so I don't think he's a disinterested party.

The Brojos have sold out. They are forcing Gault to write these articles while they’re laughing in the Bahamas sipping margaritas on the beach with their Hoka money. They could care less about ultra marathons. They just want free vacations and $$$$$$.

2 records at once not possible

I posted some of the info below on another thread, but when looking at this it's very helpful to be aware of what the various performance calculators give as equivalent 100K marks for Walmsley's 4:50:08 (or so) 50-mile result, depending on the method:

• Riegel method equates 4:50:08 for 50 miles to 6:05:18 for 100K.

• Jack Daniels' VO2max method says it's worth 6:02:35.

Those are the two most optimistic assessments, and both are mathematically generated curves not derived (or at least not directly) from crunching WR statistics. The Purdy and Cameron methods, which are world-record-based, utilize WR performances to a certain depth (Cameron is based on top 10 all-time) to generate a statistical fit, if I understand things correctly.

• Purdy method gives an equivalent 100K of 6:11:35.

• Cameron method gives 6:21:25. (I erred in the other post saying Purdy/Cameron equivalents for 4:50:08 at 50 miles were *both* within about 2-3 minutes of the current 6:09:14 100K WR.)

Participation in ultra events has a shorter history and less depth of performances than in track and field, so WR-based methods of computing performance equivalence do not give the same confidence they do in shorter events like track and marathon, where many, many more athletes have been hammering away for longer with a larger athlete pool. My feeling is the Riegel and Daniel methods are therefore probably more realistic here.

For the sake of argument, say we start by using the range of 6:02 to 6:05 that those two methods give as equivalent 100K performances for Walmsley's 4:50:08. Based on that, it seems doubtful to me given the continually warming temperatures during the race that Jim could have broken 6 hours, even with better pacing. Because even then, he would have had an extra hour and 9 minutes to go to hit sub-6:00 with temperatures still rising. Carrie Tollefson mentioned on the live stream that temps were increasing about 4 degrees Fahrenheit every hour during the race. (A 24-degree increase from the start to a 6-hour finish.)

Considering what the conditions were, of course, Walmsley should be capable of running faster with cooler weather, which might well translate to a sub-6-hour 100k. But on the day, it doesn't look like that would have been possible.

P.S. Here's a link to the calculator I used for the different 50-mile to 100K performance equivalents:

https://tools.runnerspace.com/gprofile.php?do=title&title_id=801&mgroup_id=45577

I agree that 6:03-6:06 would be the likely result had Jim been aiming purely at the 100k distance. Even with the heat I think he could have run that fast.

He may never get another chance at a 5:59 attempt with good enough weather. Gonna be like Jager's near miss at 7:56.

Walmsley might have run a sub 6:30 over 100k.

No way he would have gotten close to the existing World Record.

Weather is always a factor in a 100k race, racers almost always slow down a bit as well. Loosing 10 minutes in the second half of a 100k is considered a very well paced race.

Look what the World Champion did:

Hideaki Yamauchi started out a wee to fast too with 3:00:05 at 50k (But that was not too crazy for his existing 6:18 PR) He was still on course for a new PR when he started his last lap. But unfortunately he faded than because of the heat, I assume.

So Hideaki lost20 minutes on the second 50k. That is not too bad.

Walmsley lost almost an hour on the second half. Which is pretty bad for a top athlete.

2:57:28 over 50k 6:55:25 over 100k

big fan of letsrun overall wrote:

I think these ultra articles are great, and I hope LetsRun branches out a bit more to cover this interesting but less talked out part of running. But I'm concerned about how much these sponsored posts are changing the direction of the website. All of a sudden, WeJo is a huge ultra fan, posting articles about Walmsley like he might post about Kipchoge. How real is this? Have you caught the bug, and are now going to cover/comment about big ultras in the future? Or when the money runs out, does the interest run out? And then is the next event that wants eyeballs going to have to pay the journalists too?

As we said HOKA is sponsoring, ie paying for our exploration of Ultras for the next month. We're going to have ultra stuff on the homepage every single day. We are committed to exploring the Ultra marathon scene. So once I started examining the ultras obviously I'm more interested.

I think it was a smart move by HOKA if they feel more ultra coverage benefits them. I'm not sure they think that way, but once you start examining ultra marathoning and all the different facets, it's pretty interesting. I understand now why it gets so much publicity relatively to the small number of people who actually participate.

At the same time HOKA had this event last weekend and invited me out. If I'm exploring the ultra scene I figured it would be good to go. If they weren't sponsoring our exploration of the ultra would I have gone? I doubt it. There was no requirment to go and in fact the embargo on the event was so tight the marketing people never mentioned it until I mentioned it to them a week out. Since I'm looking into what are the best ultras, HOKA was putting on a big one, and showing they believe in the power of LetsRun, it made a lot of sense to go to one. Plus Walmsley is very popular on LetsRun. I was sort of surprised when Mike McManus said Walsmley was 'polarizing on LetsRun'. I feel like he's the one ultra guy people look up to the most, most likely because I think a lot of people feel he could also have success at shorter stuff but is choosing to run ultras.

Since we're committed to writing about ultras, I'd much rather cover a race than just about anything else. So I gave the race the coverage I would if I was at a marathon. Now we're going to go back to examining ultras in general.

And the race recap was surprisingly popular on LetsRun. Prior to seeing those numbers, I had even said to someone "I think I need to go Western States" and see what's it's like. I won't be going this year, but we might devote mover coverage to Western States, Comrades, and UTMB. Those seem to be the big 3. I don't think they are nearly as competitive as a WMM and don't want to cover just what is popular, but to some extent we do cover what is popular. NY gets a lot more coverage than say a Rotterdam and some of that isn't just competitiveness of the events but how popular and compelling they are.

I have no idea how much I'll keep the bug, but I'm trying to make clear it is sponsored content and my trip was paid for, etc. I'm shocked how many in the running industry don't do that. And Jon Gault is not involved in writing these articles. He wanted to maintain his independence which we respect. The NY Times has a sponsored content division and a regular news division and that separation isn't really feasible at LetsRun so that was the compromise we settled on.

I figured it was best to put my name on the article since I wrote it. Maybe I should have done the same on the race recap but most articles on Letsrun we put under the LetsRun name.

I'm sure some like Tim Layden of SI wouldn't do what we're doing (Tim one time said we shouldn't take an IAAF trip to Kenya even if we disclosed they paid for it). I understand that sentiment, but LetsRun.com is a business and we need advertisers. Sport Illustrated has it's "GATORADE High School Athletes of the Year" every year on the cover, and after that SI seems to have much less interest in high school sports.

We were really glad HOKA came on board and said essentially "do whatever you want with ultras." We committed to putting the content on the homepage through May and to have a 5 minute HOKA segment on the podcast. They're fine with people criticizing them, saying Walmsley sucks, etc. They seem to understand LetsRun and that is what we've been hoping for with a company for a while.

If you have more feedback on how we should handle this (or that we shouldn't do something like this in the future) feel free to email me

The Ultra coverage has been pretty cool, please keep up the good work

The Truthh wrote:

The Brojos have sold out. They are forcing Gault to write these articles while they’re laughing in the Bahamas sipping margaritas on the beach with their Hoka money. They could care less about ultra marathons. They just want free vacations and $$$$$$.

Who wants to go to Sacramento, CA for vacation?

I had to stop there once and had probably my worst breakfast ever.

If he could have started the race at 4:00 LDT and run during a cooler portion of the day, maybe.

I don't think he would have done it either. Not in that weather.

I still think he got way carried away with the pace. I wonder if it would have been smarter to run faster at the beginning, the 1st 20 miles when it was cool. But everything I know about pacing says that doesn't work.

But once the sun came out it I felt really hot even though officially the temps were only in 60s then. Is there any temperature reading that accounts for the sun?

Kawauchi did PR in that weather but 20 minutes is a huge difference. 20 seconds a mile.

I don't think anyone would have done it in that weather. Been sort of cool if you through Kipchoge out there and said "go." Problem is with 6 hours of running, he wouldn't be used to the pounding, and then 5 hours after the start it's probably 30-40 degrees different in temps in sun. Just a completely different thing to deal with. Kipchoge was born to run but that's a completely different beast. And 5:40 running is not an optimal pace for him.

If you took a bunch of 2:05 guys with no training and threw them out there I don't think they do it in that sun. Good weather if you had enough of them yes someone does it. But I hated running in the heat so maybe i'm letting that affect me.

It's hard to jog slow enough for the record.