Trans woman & OTQer Megan Youngren's amazing marathon progression.

SuperWoman wrote:

At this rate maybe with three more months of training she can run a 2:35 or maybe even 2:30... Then what?

Then she will still be a mile behind the winners.

2:29 would have made the team in 2016.

Not going to be in the top 50 finishers

SuperWoman wrote:

2:29 would have made the team in 2016.

That doesn't mean a 2:29 marathoner would have made the team. The 3rd place finisher in 2016, Shalane Flanagan, was obviously not a 2:29 marathoner.

This thread, which adds nothing but false information, should perhaps just be deleted. But here are some quick points:

-Youngren did not qualify for the trials with "basically no running background." She has said that she began running in 2013 and was running regularly by 2014.

-Going from 3:06:42, to 2:52:53, to 2:43:52 in nine months, on three very different marathon courses, isn't shockingly unusual, especially for someone who, as you claim, didn't have much of a background in running before she ran the 3:06:42, and thereafter "obviously trained hard."

-If you're going to extrapolate from this history to 2:35 or 2:30 in another three months, then I assume that the answer to your question "Then what?" is a sub-1:55 marathon in another year or so. Don't hold your breath.

So are you saying they have an advantage or not?

I fully support LGTBQ community, I will never understand what it is like to deal with something this challenging.

I will say there is a clear advantage to being male for decades then taking hormone suppressants. On our current trajectory, we will have "mens" sports and "co-ed" sports.

Also Avocado, its not completely false. Doing a 3:06 and 2:43 even on different courses is huge. There should only be about a 5 minute difference depending on weather.

I dont think superwoman is implying that we are going to see a 1:55 marathon at all.

Alright, I think everyone is fixating on the wrong part of the post. I'm sorry for adding some hyperbole and rhetoric to it. I'm not trying to argue that she is going to make the olympic team. I'm just trying to highlight that the rate of improvement is pretty extreme. It wouldn't be if we were just looking at those times in terms of mens marathoning but the equivalent (based on a 14% improvement) in mens running would be going from a 2:36:30 to about a 2:18; in what is closer to 8 months. LA is in late March, CIM is early December. Sure CIM is fast, but LA isn't exactly slow. All that I meant by stating "basically no running background" was that she isn't a former D1 miler, xc runner or something where you would expect a more rapid speed increase when returning to running or deciding to start doing the marathon.

I would anticipate that someone who wasn’t fully dedicated to running to be able to make much bigger jumps in time once they start to focus on running. Lots more room for improvement in training and nutrition compared to someone who has been dedicated longer

ak_united wrote:

So are you saying they have an advantage or not?

Obviously, I'm not saying whether "they" have an advantage in anything.

Also Avocado, its not completely false. Doing a 3:06 and 2:43 even on different courses is huge. There should only be about a 5 minute difference depending on weather.

I didn't say that the original post was "completely false." I said that it added nothing but false information. And I didn't say that going from 3:06 to 2:43 isn't huge. I said it's not "shockingly unusual." Losing 50 pounds is huge for many people, but it's done all the time; it's not "shockingly unusual." In my first four marathons, I went pretty quickly from about 2:40, to 2:33, to 2:30, to 2:23, and I suppose that the improvement was pretty huge to me and might be to others as well, but it wouldn't have merited even a footnote in a medical journal.[/quote]

I dont think superwoman is implying that we are going to see a 1:55 marathon at all.[/quote]

Neither do I. Which was my point. It's silly to extrapolate further improvement "at this rate," as was stated in the original post.

.....! wrote:

I would anticipate that someone who wasn’t fully dedicated to running to be able to make much bigger jumps in time once they start to focus on running. Lots more room for improvement in training and nutrition compared to someone who has been dedicated longer

Yes, initially. It's a lot easier to go from 10% off the OTQ standard to 5% off, but it's going to be way harder to go from 5% off to 0%.

Avocado's Number wrote:

I went pretty quickly from about 2:40, to 2:33, to 2:30, to 2:23, and I suppose that the improvement was pretty huge to me and might be to others as well, but it wouldn't have merited even a footnote in a medical journal.

[/quote]

Well just go ahead and drop another 5 minutes off that 2:23 and do it 9 months or less after that initial 2:40. Because that's basically Youngren has done. (Solid work on those times BTW.)

I have it from a close source that "she" is actually in a much better shape than 2:43 at the moment. That was basically a glorified tempo run, just doing what was necessary to OTQ.

Her documented improvement is already incredible, unreal, something no biological woman has ever done before. But in reality she is even faster, probably in about 2:30 shape. She is an outsider to grab one of the tree spots.

She won’t be top 50

.....! wrote:

She won’t be top 50

You're right! So this totally doesn't matter. How could it ever possibly someday in the future matter?

It might matter someday but I was responding the the post saying she is has a chance for top 3

I don't care what someone chooses to call themselves or identify as. I just think it's ridiculous that USATF and school districts around the country are pretending that transitioning from a post pubescent man to a woman doesn't have distinct athletic advantages.

SuperWoman wrote:

Avocado's Number wrote:

I went pretty quickly from about 2:40, to 2:33, to 2:30, to 2:23, and I suppose that the improvement was pretty huge to me and might be to others as well, but it wouldn't have merited even a footnote in a medical journal.

Well just go ahead and drop another 5 minutes off that 2:23 and do it 9 months or less after that initial 2:40. Because that's basically Youngren has done. (Solid work on those times BTW.)[/quote]

I already did drop five minutes off that 2:23.

I don't know what your background is in the sport, but I think you're greatly underestimating how much people can, and do, improve within a short period. One of the first women who came to my mind was Patti Catalano Dillon, who started running as an overweight, two-pack-a-day smoker in late March 1976, shortly before her twenty-third birthday, ran her first marathon seven months later in 2:53, set course records in almost every marathon she ran over the next several years, and had become the second-fastest female marathoner in the world (behind Grete Waitz) by the time she was twenty-eight. And I would guess that you can find a number of qualifiers in this year's Olympic trials who dropped from three-plus hours to sub-2:45 within a year or so. That kind of improvement, by itself, shouldn't cause anyone to suspect anything inappropriate or unfair, nor does it suggest that 2:30 is just around the corner.

It's because she is non-op and shouldn't be competing against other women until fully transitioned. The new rules are ridiculous but not even being enforced, USATF has never tested her.

Her body is still cranking out male levels of testosterone and other hormones, maybe even ten times some other women.

She simply takes a (banned) diuretic which then washes out some of the testosterone but only has a half-life of 1.5 hours so a few hours later all that testosterone is building right back up to male levels.

The medication also has the bonus (banned) effects of dropping all water weight and helpfully lowering blood pressure.

There's good reason why the drug is banned both in and out of competition for athletes.

And why she might seem to pass testosterone levels if she simple takes it a couple hours before any test.

She might honestly believe it's only her hard training. She should know better that most other women do NOT respond that incredibly to training and at least suspect something. But USATF most certainly has no excuses, it's their responsibility to make sure all competitors play fair.