Jim Walmsley gets big feature in New York Times Magazine (and a RW and SI feature on same day)

Cool. Is he practicing running 4:55/mile pace, while relaxed doing it?

Shots fired! Shots fired!

Fauble told me he has witnessed firsthand how hard Walmsley trains. “But let’s be clear about this: Jim squeaked into the Trials in the half-marathon. He ran 64:00 on the fastest course in the country,” Fauble told me.

Foible wrote:

Shots fired! Shots fired!

Fauble told me he has witnessed firsthand how hard Walmsley trains. “But let’s be clear about this: Jim squeaked into the Trials in the half-marathon. He ran 64:00 on the fastest course in the country,” Fauble told me.

No shots at all. Just cold, hard facts.

Cool take, bro. If you could just point us to any other trials contender that raced an ultra and post their time and place that would be great.

Walms is going to be a fantastic 'thonner. His half mary with without a taper and he has a good chance at top five, maybe makes the Oly team.

Underrated ask...as a hobbyjogger, I can at least imagine training to keep a 8:30 pace for 50-100 miles...but a 5:00 pace or better for 26.2 miles? That's absurd.

No you cannot. You most certainly cannot imagine running an 8:30 pace for 14 hours straight on technical trails at elevation with 18,000 feet of climbing and 23,000 feet of decent. You are comparing your 8:30 pace you may run for 2 hours on the road and thinking they are even remotely the same. It is far easier to run 5:00 for 26.2 miles on the road than 14 ish hours at western states. It's why only 2 people have done it states yet many thousands have run 2:11:x in a marathon.

AP5000 wrote:

No you cannot. You most certainly cannot imagine running an 8:30 pace for 14 hours straight on technical trails at elevation with 18,000 feet of climbing and 23,000 feet of decent. You are comparing your 8:30 pace you may run for 2 hours on the road and thinking they are even remotely the same. It is far easier to run 5:00 for 26.2 miles on the road than 14 ish hours at western states. It's why only 2 people have done it states yet many thousands have run 2:11:x in a marathon.

Western States only allows <400 runners per year; conversely, there are >1.5million marathon participants worldwide each year.

hardpass wrote:

Underrated ask...as a hobbyjogger, I can at least imagine training to keep a 8:30 pace for 50-100 miles...but a 5:00 pace or better for 26.2 miles? That's absurd.

Ha, ha deluded runners on both sides.

What is your 100 mile PR hardpass?

hardpass wrote:

Underrated ask...as a hobbyjogger, I can at least imagine training to keep a 8:30 pace for 50-100 miles...but a 5:00 pace or better for 26.2 miles? That's absurd.

I didn't realize they ran THAT slow. Of course I've no context for how hard it is to maintain it for that distance (and I've no intention of ever finding out) but I thought they'd be hitting 7 min miles. If the best in the world does 8:30 then the average Joe must be doing walking pace.

For me, the training Jim puts up on Strava is more impressive than his ultra races. And sub 5 pace for a marathon is on another level.

If you read this thread, don't let the banter discourage you, Mr. Walmsley. You have the engine, but it is the neuro-muscular specificity training that will be important to dial-in that sub-5min pace.

anon23 wrote:

hardpass wrote:

Underrated ask...as a hobbyjogger, I can at least imagine training to keep a 8:30 pace for 50-100 miles...but a 5:00 pace or better for 26.2 miles? That's absurd.

I didn't realize they ran THAT slow. Of course I've no context for how hard it is to maintain it for that distance (and I've no intention of ever finding out) but I thought they'd be hitting 7 min miles. If the best in the world does 8:30 then the average Joe must be doing walking pace.

For me, the training Jim puts up on Strava is more impressive than his ultra races. And sub 5 pace for a marathon is on another level.

You get that there is like 20,000 feet of elevation gain on that course right?

Not claiming that if you took a 2:05 guy and trained him for ultras he wouldn't be able to crush all the ultra records, because I think he would, but 8:30 pace along trails with a ton of climbing is a different beast than whatever you're imagining.

Refresh the page and click the "X" (which takes the place of the refresh button in your browser bar while refreshing is in progress) before the refresh completes. That preempts the pay pop up. Works for every article at NYT.

Raggedman wrote:

Article is paywalled. Doesn't NY Times do a couple of freebies per month anymore?

In response to this ^

Refresh the page and click the "X" (which takes the place of the refresh button in your browser bar while refreshing is in progress) before the refresh completes. That preempts the pay pop up. Works for every article at NYT.

AP5000 wrote:

Cool take, bro. If you could just point us to any other trials contender that raced an ultra and post their time and place that would be great.

What part of my "cool take" are you questioning? He did squeak into the trials, he did run 64 flat and it was a very fast course (maybe "the fastest" is overblown, I can't really judge). I'm not attacking Walmsley - I can't wait to see him run. I was responding to another poster who called Fauble's quote "shots." It wasn't, it was a list of 3 (or 2.5) things that are objectively true. FWIW I think Walmsley's going to run 2:10:25 for 5th.

My bad abdou...

"Moments before he headed out for his run, Walmsley pulled up the results from a 2012 college-invitational 10,000-meter race on his laptop. As I tried to decipher what I was looking at, Walmsley was already undercutting the significance, explaining that it was just one race and that Fauble and another Atlanta favorite, Jared Ward, had yet to hit their peaks. But, still, he clearly wanted to show me this for a reason: Ward finished ninth, Fauble finished seventh and Walmsley finished fourth. It was almost a decade ago, sure, but Walmsley will arrive in Atlanta knowing that he has already beaten two of America’s best marathoners in a race."

hockeyrunner3 wrote:

I live up in Flagstaff and have seen Walmsley around and talked to him several times. Last time I talked to him a couple of weeks ago he said he's never ran an official road marathon because he'd been saving that first road marathon for a race that was extraordinary and he came to decide the trials was that race.

marathon lolo

They DON'T run that slow. To average 8:30 pace, you have to run significantly faster on the truly runnable parts of the course. You want to refill your water bottles and get a bite to eat at an aid station? Even if you do it quickly, several times, you're down to 8:15 pace. Need to go to the bathroom during your 14 hours on the trail? More than once? Down to 8:00 pace. Need to go slower than 8:00 pace on some of the several thousands of feet of climbing? Get into the 7:xx.

When I averaged 8:00 pace for a trail 50-miler, I had to run significantly faster to account for that crap, and I wasn't even on a very hard course. And god forbid you fall victim to stomach issues sometime during a full day of running your ass off. I think people here who denigrate ultramarathoners for their "slowness" just vastly underestimate the problems that can accrue during a double-work-day on the trail and screw with your average pace.