OK, then why give the 2:31? She could have just said she is going to do a steady solid effort and try to break 2:40, but if she also gave a top end of 2:31, well then she is taking this more seriously than she's wanting to let on. Based on providing that wide range, it seems like she is wanting to give it a solid go, but giving herself a chance to comfortably slow down if it gets rough. I liked it better when Mark Allen raced Berlin and he was up front about trying to go 2:15 (he DNF'd but at least he said what he wanted to do). I realize that as a fan I can choose to be unreasonable, but I think it is a good thing if fans actually track endurance athletes. Gwen jogging in for a 2:39.xx is not that interesting (might be great for her to get the experience, but as a fan it seems like a performance failure). Heck, Rinny has run sub 2:50 off the bike in Kona.

Can you send the article/tweet where she gave this range? Thanks

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https://twitter.com/mungub

serious response?.....you are really being a dink.

She DID NOT give a goal time. She simply stated the paces she ran her workout at (3x7km). And wrote that she wasn't sure what marathon pace really is. Chaparral simply calculated a finish time based on those paces.
Everyone, cool it.

This is her post:



Also, Mark Allen set out to crush a marathon. Gwen is not doing that. She is really truly doing it for fun and experience. She is training seriously for it, will run as hard as she can, but her goal, as she has stated multiple times, is to just do it. Nothing more.

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Group Eleven – Websites for Athletes / mikael.racing / @mstaer

Have you considered that very often marathon pace differs from the first 10k to the last10k...as in, 10 second per km different. Fades are not at all unusual even for elites. Seems like a really odd thing for you to be so critical about.

Wait...Pubes is hammering me for being critical? I guess I have elevated myself around here in that case! I'll count that as a win.

OK OK if this was a board talking about NFL quarterbacks my tone/commentary would be relatively benign in terms of calling out a professional athlete. I am just not buying that Gwen is going to go to NYC to jog. At the end of the day she is a competitive athlete so if she has a shot of going fast, I am certain she will. It seems like she is just giving herself a lot of bail out excuses up front. Jackie Gallaghar, Erin Baker, Mark Allen, Christian Bustos, Ryan Bolton, Lisa Bentley....all elite triathletes who did marathons with the intention of drilling it on race day with no bail out clauses. I bet you if Gwen can she will also drill it, but she seems to be lightening up on the pressure to set low expectations (and I understand why she would after the real pressure of a 4 year run to the olympic gold). As a fan though, if top triathlon elite runners enter a marathon major in the pro field, I'd like to see the rip it up. Same reason why waaaay back in the day with Pigg+Riccitello+Zack+Monty etc as a team of triathletes beat the Canadian National Cycling team at the Redlands classic it was an awesome moment for our sport. Kirsten Armstrong going over from being a strong triathlete cyclist to top cyclist is awesome. Ritchie Porte growing up as a triathlete and ripping it up at pro cycling is awesome. Would be great as a fan and a participant in tri to see what Gwen can truly do. It's not really interesting to see her do the parade at NYC. If you are going to do that, go enter the Wineglass Marathon in Corning where there is no hype and no attention and job a 2:39.59

Funny, a five page thread about her alleged goal being to finish between X and Y, and nowhere did she state this was her goal.

You know the history of triathletes running marathons, so how many of them basically went into it with no "real marathon" training?

GJ and ASIC aren't doing this to drill it and see what she can do. This is a paid advertisement for the Olympic champion and one of her biggest sponsors. This is going to be a long and likely painfully fun event for her to be "with the people" so to speak. Hell, she isn't even done with triathlons and likely one of her biggest paycheck races. So you want to peg her for not going all in on this event, or letting herself have an "out". Jeez man, I would think you would be one of the few that would understand how and why someone could have a 7 min goal difference gap.

So did all those other great triathletes, did they do basically little marathon training before their big marathons?

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

OK, I do get that she's "our champion" and I should not be so critical of her wanting to do a parade at NYC marathon, but to some degree, as a fan, I don't want to see pro athletes doing parade workouts, I want to see them racing (even if they are going over to single sport events). To my best knowledge the only pro triathlete that hopped in a marathon to do sponsor obligations was Stadler in 2007. His Dresdener Kleinworth team was sponsored by the bank with that name who was the sponsor of the Frankfurt marathon. Originally it was supposed to be Kona 2007 (defending his win from 2006) and then rightfully a parade at Frankfurt. He DNF'd at Kona 2007. He definitely did not go all out at Frankfurt and ran 2:32 which is slow given his running pedigree (anyone thinking his 2:55 Kona run time was anywhere near his IM run speed if he chose to bike easier is fooling themselves). He said he was hoping for a 2:27ish. It seems like even though he went into a bit of a parade mode, he did give it a solid shot. The others, Erin Baker, Sonia Krolich, Jackie Gallaghar and Lisa Bentley, they went in as racers. I don't know their prep, but none had any tourism intentions.

We could debate that ITU run training is more in line with open marathon run training/speeds than IM run training too. Stadler training for an IM would not be doing enough miles at his open marathon speed, whereas Gwen would be doing a ton of miles faster than her open marathon speed. Stadler however said at the time he was running 110-120K per week for his Kona defence, so this obviously helps on the durability front.

In any case, I think it being a free world athletes are entitled to be doing whatever they want and it being a free world, sponsors can do with athletes what they want and of course fans can choose to think and support what they want. Your interest and mine might be totally different and that's fine!

Well she said that the repeats were at marathon pace and the repeats were between those paces, so I think her goal is somewhere between those paces.

Awesome thing is Pubes is 100% correct, you're just digging yourself a deeper hole by not conceding.

I agree that on a tri board I am digging a hole by typing this shit about wanting to see how fast a tri gold medalist can run a marathon. On Letsrun, they'll have a field day if she goes into tourist mode (and I'll be on their side).

Dev, I think my question was simply to get a parameter on the situation.

This isn't an "go out and drill it" race for GJ. She's not prepared for that, and she's certainly likely not "mentally" ready for that. This is a race that you'll see her go out and run the fastest she can run within her abilities at the current time. so if that means holding back, so be it. I don't think she "parades" it, as I think she'll run very respectable effort. You seem outright upset and wronged if she doesn't go out there and try and kill herself for a fast time. And you are free to feel that way, but in my opinion misguided line of thinking when you understand the limitations of marathon training, the reason she's even running this event, her schedule right now, etc. She's not in it to "crush" this. Much more realistic to show up and put in a very hard effort, suffer some but likely maintain a sensible effort the whole time.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

You're digging a hole because she mentioned a goal pace and you're ranting on about fall back paces.

She posted paces from one workout and faded as you would expect a 5-10k tri specialist to fade.

I think we are generally aligned. My main point is that with the prep for ITU WCS and Rio, it's not that far off from being optimally prepared for a fast marathon for a triathlete (we're not talking 2:22 women, we're talking a full 10 min+ slower). She should be able to run a fairly fast time close to her theoretical McMillan calculator potential without too much (Monty kind of pointed that up early in the thread).

If she goes and parades/jogs as a triathlon fan I'd be disappointed to see that. Of course we'll once again get the endless banter from single sport athletes (in this case runners) that triathletes are sucky and can't do a sport well so they do 3 sports badly, whereas some triathletes have endurance capacities that are truly world class they just are not physically built to be fast at single sport (ex, size of top male marathoners vs top ITU vs top Ironman, or top protour climber vs top IM pro, or top pro triathletes vs Phelps....just different body types). So it's nice when top tri pros go in single sport events that they do a fast performance. When Bjorn Andersson went in the Swedish TT championships and did OK, that was cool.

Have you read about her run prep in ITU? No 10 mile runs, limited "long" run mileage etc., So now she should be able to handle a run calculator that calculates paces on premise that the athlete does the approx volume to finish the marathon properly???? So why you are using McMillan estimate calculator, doesn't make sense.

Again which is my whole point that seems to be lost by you. GJ by way of just winning Olympics and not even completed her tri season isn't in shape to "run fast" in a marathon. So if/when she throttles it back to make sure she can run a "good and fair" race that's what will happen.

She certainly will give it a good/honest effort. She's not going to wave to the crowd for 26 miles but don't look to this event as some event she needs to carry the triathlon flag to see where she stands.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

I think you are underestimating how much all that fast running and reasonable volume albeit at shorter single instance distances can carry a very light elite level athlete. The magic of marathon training is not long runs. It's lot of mileage at or above marathon pace. All that ITU racing at way above marathon pace is going to carry her (or for that matter anyone who is that light) a long way on the day of a marathon. I bet you she surprises herself at to how easy it feels for how long when she does it. Until she gets to the last 5-6 miles in Central park, but I think most here are discounting her potential on race day due to lack of long running. All that fast running in training and over the ITU distance is going to be really helpful. She had plenty of time to cram in a few 1:45 to 2 hour runs at close to marathon pace. That should feel fairly easy for her. For elite men's marathoning the first 90 min is the warmup. For elite women it's like 1:45-1:50. For both it's the final 30 minutes that's the hard part. At sub elite marathon levels, Gwen gets to 1:50- 2 hours without any major calamities quite easily.

So I guess we agree to disagree. She has 80-90% of the prep to run a reasonably fast marathon already done by Rio. It's just the last bit of specificity. Off memory, Monty was saying earlier in this thread that she had enough time to get enough specificity in to get close to full prep. I agree with that.

She had plenty of time to cram in a few 1:45 to 2 hour runs at close to marathon pace.

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She has? When was she suppose to almost double her reported longest runs over her tri training career?

ETA: she's suppose to go from reportedly what zero 10 mile runs to a few 17-20 mile runs since Rio? 77 days if my math is correct to go from longest run of 1 hour to running fast for 2:32.
There isn't a coach I know that would recommend a few 17-20 mile runs within the time period you are talking about for an athlete that hasn't run longer than what 9 miles in 4-5 years?

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

You are kidding me? Anyone who is that fast and that light and can run pretty hard for 30-60 min can just dial it down a few notches roll out of bed tomorrow and run 2 hours with no injuries. Seriously, it's not rocket science. Sure, she will be a bit sore, but barely for a few days no worse than a hard track workout, but if you're going to be doing a full marathon 2 months later there is plenty of time to easily ramp from 60 min to 120 minutes given the caliber of athlete at hand. You just go slower to ease into it, but she could easily have larger 15-30 min jumps just to feel out the longer distances. It's not like she has to add 5 min - 10 min per week to her long run and gradually build like a newbie

One of my buddies who I went to biz school with ran in the 10,000m at Barelona and Seoul Olympics. His 10K time was high 27.xx. His theoretical best time should have been 2:12 or so, maybe 2:14 on the NYC course. Shortly after Barca, he went to run NYC since his sponsor had a bunch of their runners doing it. He targeted 2:15 and blew up in the last 6 miles and ended in 2:17. His long run leading in was ~90 minutes. He just did not get around to building up and knew the last 40 minutes would be tough, but at 125-130 lbs, and with a large engine, you get a lot of free pass compared to mere mortals. I see Gwen in the same camp. Big engine speedster with great body composition with fabulous form and lightening fast over 10k (at least lightening fast for a triathlete). Plus she has a ton of experience racing for 2 hours already. My 5000m-10000m specialist friend did not have that advantage.

So what is your predicted time for her?

What's the "slowest" she can run without you calling out her professsionalism?

My guess: 2:40-2:42


Mcmillians predicted time based on 10 mile result: sub 2:30


ETA: I also don't give 2 shits what she runs and don't expect her to carry the tri flag against runners. I think she will run a very respectable time and effort. Will it be enough to satisify dev Paul, I guess we'll see.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Don't you ever get tired of having an opinion on everything?

Most world class 10,000 meter runners are already running 90-120 miles a week.

Not really, I just post more than a lot of people so it sounds like that.

I'm just particularly interested when pro triathletes run open marathons. You can see from the postings that I've followed most of the attempts fairly closely going back to Mark Allen and Christian Bustos. We could add Ben Paredes from the duathlon side who went full steam into open running....2:10 open marathon, 2:11 at NYC, Pan Ams gold medal. Monty knows him. Slowman mentions him in this article about Zofingen:

http://www.slowtwitch.com/...pinion/duathlon.html

That's fair but this guy (he is the race director of the Ottawa marathon, you can read his bio online) did not run that much. But you certainly need to run way more volume to run low 2:1x then low 2:3x. Low 2:1x is a completely different world of pounding and muscle trauma (regardless of being a man or woman). You can run a low 2:3x with way less mileage for sure.

Hey, I don't recall anywhere calling out her professionalism. I just said as a fan I'd expect to see much more than a jog/fast training run (if not go to a low key marathon with no pro field, to just get an experience). I think she can and should go faster than Erin Baker. Here is some nice reading about Erin and what she did juggling tri and open running:

http://www.si.com/...s-a-woman-on-the-run

If you can understand a bit of German the wikipedia german entry also touches on her marathoning:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erin_Baker

I would think that Gwen can blow away Erin's 2:36 and 2:39. Erin was confident she could go sub 2:30 but to my best knowledge never did. Her husband Skid posts on ST from time to time (you guys may recognize him as the winner of Kona 1988), and maybe if he gets wind of this thread, he could share if she ever really did a pure marathoner build or if she just did them off tri training.

Dev