monty wrote:
Yea Mark was a great runner, but he was nowhere near ever going that fast. The 2:24 threshold for qualifying was attempted in Germany I think? Europe someone around 93-94. He blew up way early don't even think he made the half. I think I did hear about him doing something sub 2:30 at one point, but not 'around' 2:20. The dif b/t a 2:20 and 2:30 is light years. // You guys have to stop using Mark's on attempt at the olympic standard as some indication of his running prowess. As i remember it, he was sick that day and had to pull the plug. How many of you run PR's when you wake up sick in the morning? What you can do is take his legit sub 30 10k run, about 1;05 or better 1/2 marathon speed, or his countless runs against super fast guys in triathlon, who usually ended up on the bottom end of the race and run split. He ran a legit 2;38 in Hawaii, and in all these years, no one has come within minutes of that, except for Dave of course. 2;42 seems to be the high gold standard that really fast guys shoot for these days at hawaii, and that is from some very talented and fast runners. People forget that Mark went " 4 minutes faster" than that. He certainly was at the very least a 2;20 marathon guy, i believe with his other run times he had a 2;18 in him, just never got to hit it on his day. He had a lot of other things going on that made him his living, running races were just a lark, like bike racing and OW swim races were for me.
Back then we all enjoyed racing out of triathlon in the 3 individual sports, but it was not super serious most the time. I did focus on the marathon for 6 weeks once running 40 to 45 miles a week. Went pretty well averaging under 6 min pace, but Mark would have beaten me by at least 15 minutes, probably more like 20. A couple guys he would beat running in tris did run 1;04 1/2 marathons during the off season. It was not the different course( although some argue that course was harder, not easier than todays), it was not drugs( keep in mind that his times are pre EPO and since then, many modern pros have been popped for that exact sport changing drug), it was just a hell of a talented, hard working guy, who was smart about racing and how to plan a season around a peak in hawaii in oct...
Take it easy I never said Mark wasn't a fantastic runner, nor did I say he couldn't pull that type of run off. I was merely pointing out he didn't do it as someone was alluding to the fact he went 'around 2:20' as in actually ran 26.2 miles in 'around 2:20', not could have run 2:20ish. Everyone has a coulda, woulda and shoulda sports story. I'm have no doubts had Mark tried a few more times and was healthy he could have pulled off a time like that, doesn't change the fact he didn't. If we are going to give people the benefit of the doubt that 'oh well they would have done this' then why run the race to see if they can? We just do hypothetical races then?