Nevada Hoya
Blue & Gray (over 10,000 posts)
Posts: 18,427
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Post by Nevada Hoya on Apr 16, 2006 15:49:46 GMT -5
Since tomorrow is Patriots' Day in Boston and the annual running of the Boston Marathon, I thought this might make a good story about the Georgetown runner, Jack Fultz, who won one of the hottest races in its history. The Georgetown record (at least for a graduate of GU) is still held, I believe, by my classmate, Eamonn O'Reilly, who ran 2:11:12 in the 1970 Boston Marathon, finishing 2nd to Ron Hill of England, who was #1 in the world at the time. www.boston.com/sports/specials/marathon/articles/2006/04/08/us_collegian_beats_heat_wins_80th_baa_marathon/
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CO_Hoya
Golden Hoya (over 1000 posts)
Posts: 1,109
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Post by CO_Hoya on Apr 17, 2006 13:54:39 GMT -5
Hey Nevada, I have a question for you: Are men's marathon record times plateaued (if that's a word)?
I notice that today's winner (Robert Cheruiyot) broke the Boston Marathon record, set in 1994, by 1 second. That's in a time of 2:07:14, or a difference of 0.013%. I seem to remember (perhaps incorrectly) that times decreased during the Kenyan influx, but that was at least a decade ago.
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Nevada Hoya
Blue & Gray (over 10,000 posts)
Posts: 18,427
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Post by Nevada Hoya on Apr 17, 2006 15:05:43 GMT -5
Hey Nevada, I have a question for you: Are men's marathon record times plateaued (if that's a word)? I notice that today's winner (Robert Cheruiyot) broke the Boston Marathon record, set in 1994, by 1 second. That's in a time of 2:07:14, or a difference of 0.013%. I seem to remember (perhaps incorrectly) that times decreased during the Kenyan influx, but that was at least a decade ago. CO, that is an interesting question. With the Kenyans and Ethiopians, we have runners that are capable of doing around the 2:06-2:07 mark, with the record being 2:04:55 (I believe). That record should be broken by Haile Gebraselassie of Ethiopia, if he doesn't get injured. He has recently broken the half marathon and 25K mark, so I think the marathon mark will eventually go down to him. Courses vary and weather conditions vary so much that you cannot really predict, when a record will be set. If one is set, it will be on one of the speed course marathons - Amsterdan, Berlin, even Chicago (indeed not Boston or NY). Marathon performance at the top end should slowly improve incrementally. And maybe the US is poised to make a move, as five US runners finished in the top 10 today. If they had a team event today, based on the top four or five runners of each country, the US would have beaten Kenya for the title. That is amazing given Kenya's dominance in long distance running recently. The US runners actually hadn't performed as well as 15-20 years ago, until this race. Maybe it is a bit of plateauing by the world's powers - East Africa, and maybe the US runners are incorporating techniques used by the Africans and finding out what it is like to compete on the international stage. Incidentally, today was just one second improvement over the record, but I consider it a much better run, because in the earlier race, there was quite a tail wind, so this race was probably worth 30-40 seconds faster than the former record.
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