Alistair Brownlee's 28:32 track time for 10,000m was 22 seconds shy of England's "B" standard for the 10K. Their "A" standard is 27:50, and today you aren't even a medal contender without sub 27 speed (the WR is currently 26:17).

The reality today is that 28 mins 10K is no longer world class; it is only national class. More than two dozen different men have run under 26:50.

Agree that her doing an Ironman is delusional.

What were your odds for her when she switched from ITU to running?
Now what are your odds for her after this setback and staying with running?
What would her odds be to re-established herself as a top 10 ITU talent again?

What would you do if your were in her position?

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Indoor Triathlete - I thought I was right, until I realized I was wrong.

What would you do if your were in her position? //

I would take this time to reevaluate my goals. Not going back to triathlon, unless some burning desire to race there again bubbles up. I would have her keep running, but take a very hard look at the distance she has chosen, the marathon. She has shown great promise in the 5k to about 1/2 marathon distance, way more than her marathons thus far. But I'm of the mind that she has not even come close to a good race as of yet at that distance, probably grinding hard on her psyche too. I would take a hard look at what the coaches have been dealing up to me, 120 mile a week is just too much for this lady in my opinion. She has the unique ability to cross train, why give that up?


Anyway if she were to run a sub 15 5k, or sub 31 10k, she could keep making a good living at running. They are not the sexy distances, and there is not much glory there. Have to get the ego in check, and maybe just say the marathon is not for you, but running is. I still think she "should" have run a sub 2;30 marathon, but she keeps getting sabotaged for some reason. At some point you have to throw in the towel, because you dont get to run one of these every few weeks, like you can the other races. Something has to change, I just hope she doesnt think it is running more...

Of course there isn't a smoking gun or she would have served a ban, though it is closer than you give it credit for. Look at those figures though (especially the graph comparing PR to her fellow GB competitors), look at the performances, look at the women she has absolutely pasted in the record books by minutes and how many of them have tested positive recently as WADA has finally gotten around to testing properly in Africa. I can't be 100% certain she did but you can't be even close to sure she didn't, like the first guy said I don't believe in miracles. Anyways we are way off topic so Ill put a cork in this one.

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Professional Athlete: http://jordancheyne.wordpress.com/ http://www.strava.com/athletes/145340

Coaching Services:http://www.peakformcoaching.com/

I said this some time ago. Its like being 5'10 130 lbs woman and hoping to compete in gymnastics. its just the wrong body type to be competitive in women's elite marathoning. There is a reason why Joan Benoit could run 2:25 at the LA Olympics 6 weeks after having her knee scoped. Most has to do with the engine on top of that tiny body. Gwen's engine is not large enough to withstand running as fast as Joan could run for as long as Joan could keep up the pace, given Gwen's "massive" size (and one uses the world loosely....its just massive compared to pro women marathoners)

I'll agree with your assessment that she is a good middle distance runner. Given that the IAAF is phasing out the middle distances that's going to hurt her ability to shine and make money. Her income is probably going to be dropping off and less than it was with triathlon.

There are good male/female middle distance runners that just don't make the money that milers or marathoners do. I agree with your assessment that she seems to break down when it comes to the marathon.

To answer the questions that I put out there.

IMO

Her odds of success at running about 50% when she started.
Her odds of success at running post injury about 25% now.
Her odds of success at returning to ITU about 50%.

And by success, I mean commercial success and not necessarily top of the world success. I think she has been the primary earner in their family. If she doesn't produce results, then they might have 3-5 years or one Olympic cycle of sponsorship money before they need to find income elsewhere.

I'm a fan and wish her the best. I miss her being in the news and less on line since she has run into a bad patch.

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Indoor Triathlete - I thought I was right, until I realized I was wrong.

I’m with you Monty - race your best distances and take advantage of the ability to cross train well.

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Aaron Bales
Lansing Triathlon Team

One of the other runners I follow a little bit is Steph Bruce. She races a heckuva lot more than the Bowerman Marathon runners. Different coach and training styles, but it makes you wonder. She's a marathoner but has raced Cross Country throughout the year, Half-Marathon, and Marathon. I've read on here is that marathoners don't peak that often. Well maybe Gwen just isn't racing enough to get to her potential.

What does this have to do with her injury? Nada. But it's kind of in the Wurf mode of thinking, the only way to get better at racing is by racing.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

How long has that athlete been in the marathon game? That's probaly your answer. What GJ was trying to do with her supposed timeline really made no sense, and it creates an scenario where EVERYTHING had to go right. No niggles, no set backs, nothing. And then of course you still have to perform on the day of trials and actually make the team. But I'm guessing her transition time to marathon running had more to do with lack of "adaption" period and thus the lack of racing.

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

But look at Shalane and how many marathons she peaks for. I'm saying that Gwen probably should have had a different strategy, and that strategy should have been more racing.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

But my point is that I'm guessing the reason why they did a lack of racing is specifically due to the time line of when she made the move. Hell, this was all inside of a 3 year window from when she decided to make the move to Tokyo. That's unheard of to just "change" olympic sports and expect to do well. So my guess is with the transition to marathon running, the demands of training more than likely led to her not being able to race more.

So again your comparing her racing/training schedule to seasoned veteran runners?

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

I'm not going to say she should have done this or that. I don't have her training knowledge of what she actually is doing and what it's doing to her. So I dont think you can say she should have done X instead of Y, and most certainly if your comparing them to schedules of veteran runners. That doesn't make a ton of sense to me.

To start, I'd have scrapped the whole timeline if this truly was what she wanted to do. Now again read my comments from the start in that I thought this was more of a process to stay at home, see her hubby and kid every single day and "milk" one last olympic cycle of sponsorships. So that's why I thought her whole "winning gold" was simply PR fluff. No way in hell was she going to come into marathon running and win. Her run volume in ITU was very manageable, and I just dont think you can do that with marathon training. I think at some point you just have to put on the miles. It can be lower than the biggest volume of some runners, but at the end of the day you need to run, and you need to run a lot to be successful. So I think for an athlete like her you have to be very careful and build that up carefully. Which means you don't actually have a lot of time to race in that scenario. Every "race" week is pretty much a lost opportunity to train more. So if you race too often, you actually aren't necessarily getting better, your racing on whatever fitness you are. You don't necessarily "race" your way into fitness from the position she's in. You can certainly do that if your a more seasoned athlete, but I wouldn't call her that, even though running was her strong point. I think running well on low volume and cross training was her strong point- not running as her main sport.

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

she races a heckuva lot more than the BTC women because she's a B level runner who has to race to make money while the BTC women are training for olympic and WC medals. she's been racing as a pro for over a decade and has a 2:29 marathon and a 1:10 HM to show for it. those are good times but hardly times that are going to make an olympic team or medal at worlds.

You are wrong.

https://www.triathlon.org/...s/carol_montgomery_c

I actually thought the opposite- it always sounded to me like this was a 2020 timeline or bust project. ETA: Which meant there was never going to be any reconsideration going on. This was the path she chose for better or worse.

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

I dont disagree with you at all. But she did have some minor success at the 5 and 10k in season while training, but has had a couple clunker marathons thus far. Like I said, you probably have 2 marathons a year in her position, so at what point do you throw in the towel if you dont do what you think you should be??

I think she has been unlucky in her long race attempts, and maybe she gives it one more go. But the nice thing with 5./10k's, you can run a couple/few a month, and you get to throw out all your clunkers, as long as you have a few gems in there too. I would think other than her stated goals, one would be to keep making a good living at running as long as possible. I doubt they have enough money to retire on, so to have 4 or 5+ years of high income still to come, that would be nice for their family. And as long as it stays fun for her, ride this baby out as long as you can. You get to work a regular job the rest of your life, this is a rare instance in our world where you get to make good money for playing something you really love..

I actually appreciate Gwen’s decisiveness. Always seems to be moving relentlessly in a direction of her own choosing, and without looking back.

I would think other than her stated goals, one would be to keep making a good living at running as long as possible.

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I'm not as familiar with running salaries etc or race bonuses/appearance fees. But just from a money making endevour to me that's lost when she left triathlon. Again, maybe I'm misjudging her and her ability against other run competition, but to me the money maker was ITU. The "love" move was running as that afforded her a likely better quality of life. So maybe I'm just ignorant of all things run salaries and race results etc., but I just thought the move to running was more out of "If I'm going out, I'm going out my way".

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

It's a cool goal and all. She did run fast enough for a spot at trials. However, with this injury it probably punts that idea and she'll have to run again just so she's confident.

I have no idea why people keep saying she should come back to ITU. She's 33. So she can probably run competitively for a few more years before moving on.

Overall I'm just spitballing on what she could have done. Part of racing is execution, not racing enough may have been a part of that, idk.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Part of racing is execution, not racing enough may have been a part of that, idk.

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Part of marathon racing is being able to properly marathon train. She's gotta figure out that first before she dials in race strategies. I guess the marathon is the "sexy" running event (IE- $$$) for endurance athletes, so that's why she chose marathon. But she pretty much left herself no room for error with how this all went down. From the weird timeline of changing sports, to the distance chosen, she pretty much picked the hardest pathway for success for herself. And no I am not saying she should have picked shorter distances, cus I doubt she'd have been any better, but with her run training the prior 6 years, she imo wasn't "ready" for that type of move. But again I get why she did it. She wanted zero parts of ITU, she wanted to see her hubs and kid every day and not live out of a suitcase 10 months out of the year. So it's working out pretty well for her well except.....the actual racing part.

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

AB ran 28:32. BYU has 4 guys faster than that on their track team right now. I'm not surprised there are several triathletes running 28s, but it's not a world class time when there are probably 30 NCAA guys in the 28s each year.

What am I missing here, last years NCAA D1 final, looks like Ali would have won it, and only 7 guys in the 28's?

https://www.ncaa.com/...s/008-1_compiled.htm

Like I said before, everyone can draw their line in the sand on what is world class. I think if you are near the top 200 in the world on a given year in just about any sport, you are world class. If you play baseball, football, soccer, golf, and a hoard of other sports, you are probably competing at the highest level, in the largest forum for that sport. To me, that is world class, but feel free to choose your own line..

I'd say you are missing by comparing a championship race time to a PR time in an event....33 different guys in D1 have run in the 28s this year. It's pretty common in many big stage races for the final to be slow and tactical. A lot of those 28 min NCAA guys won't even be all americans this year. I agree it is very fast...but if 30 guys ran that fast in college this year it seems a stretch to call 28s world class in my mind...but I get where you are coming from as it is very fast at the national level for the guys who keep grinding after college...

and you are missing comparing what a professional triathlete, who had won the olympic gold the prior august who hops in a 10k for kicks one time with no speed work at the beginning of his tri season, with a bunch of collegiate guys who have taken multiple cracks at time trialing the distance. do you seriously think he would not have broken 28 had he focused on the 10k in 2013?