3 Weeks in a row, this blog may just be back. Or I may get a job and become a functioning member of society again. Only time will tell.
Last week I ragged on the Canadian Marathoning scene. I pointed out flaws, but did not offer any suggestions to make it better.
Honestly, I don’t know exactly what will make it better. There are many different scenarios it which athletes excel. Every athlete is on their own unique path in their quest for greatness. There is no set way on how to do it to guarantee success.
I believe that when the record finally goes it will simply come down to a special athlete working with a talented coach. He will have kick ass training partners and a good contract. Jobs kill recovery. The record will be broken by a dude who naps every damn day.
I’ll go back to the Guelph model. Reid + DST + the SpeedRiver crew. That is as close to ideal as it gets in Canada. They have been so damn close.
If I had to make a prediction I’d say that Mo Ahmed will be the one to break the record. He has an ideal set up with Nike down in Portland, and Coach Schumacher has really upped his marathon game. Mo is hard as nails and has the proper mindset. He also just happens to be the most talented runner Canada has ever produced. He has all the tools to do it.
Of course many thought the same of Simon Bairu. That’s one of the great things about the marathon- it is such a unique event and you never know what will happen until you toe the line and give it a go. My one reservation about Mo crushing the record is that his stride is VERY similar to that of Mo Farah, they are both beautiful runners, but over 42.2km they are not the most economical- We all saw what happened to Farah over the last 10km of his Marathon debut. If Mo Ahmed can find that efficient marathon shuffle then I believe he is the best shot we currently have.
While were are talking about the marathon let me take a minute to chat about Dubai and the sub 2:00hr marathon.
Dubai was pretty standard Dubai. It’s like a Japanese race with more talented runners. A bunch of dudes toe the line and just friggen hammer from the gun, and eventually a guy we have never heard of blows up the least to win in 2:04-2:05. I love the Dubai marathon, always carnage out there.
There has been a tonne of talk about the sub 2:00hr marathon over the past little while. I am firmly in the camp that we are a long, long way off. First off, I am quite skeptical of many of the 2:02, 2:03 & 2:04 performances we have seen over the past few years. I do believe that there are athletes out there capable of these times, but I also think that for every legit 2:05 there are two dirty ones. My point is that the talent pool is not a deep as we think.
Also, they are still SO far off, they need 3minutes, 3minutes! The winner would have to be more that a km ahead of where Kimetto was when he broke the record in 2014. I was in that race in Berlin in 2014. The weather that day was as perfect as I’ve ever experienced in a marathon. Temperature was perfect, no wind and a pancake flat course. I have hard time imagining a course or a day that would give athletes much more of an advantage.
I gotta add though, I was also in the London Marathon last year where Kipchoge ran 2:03:05. That effort in London would have been 2:02:30 on that Berlin course in 2014.
It’s also not like these guys are not already training their asses off. It’s not like we are suddenly going to come across a training breakthrough that will make them too much faster.
Throw as much money and science as you like at this sub 2:00 attempt. Shit ain’t happening soon.
Ok, I Gotta go.
Have a great week.
-rob-
