Friday, November 5, 2010

NYC Marathon

This is the first year in 5 or 6 years that I'm missing my favorite marathon, but in the meantime, you can follow along as Lee DiPietro runs, and if you're in the mood for some good reads, check out these two articles:

Matt Long, NYC Firefighter

Alberto Salazar, former winner of New York, on running form, more specifically how he changes the form of those who run for him (thanks Mellow Mike for the article).

14 comments:

Collin said...

Salazar's coaching tactics haven't succeeded all that well once again. His athletes tend to perform better in their workouts than their races... Sad. :(

RM said...

It's hard to say that with certainty, because look at the way the race was run. Super slow to start. Obviously Dathan Ritzenhein isn't stupid enough to go out and try and run 2:07 pace on his own. Each race is different from another.

Yeah, it would have been sweet to see him do better, but it's not like Meb had a great race either. It just looked like a slow year.

In other news, the website they used for tracking blew. I have confirmed Chilean miner at 5h20m or something, after a 2h07m half split. Waiting on Jared Fogle's results...

cheese said...

jared was 5:13:28.

alex and i told you all nonbelievers that the miner didn't have enough miles in

Collin said...

You're right that Ritz would be dumb to go out in 2:07 pace alone, but I think the way the race went out probably favored someone like him. Based on his half marathon time compared to his 10k, he excels more at longer distances but still has excellent speed, so I'd expect him to run a strong second half and be able to stick with anyone after a modest start. I think what his biggest problems were here are: a. Salazar injured him and he didn't have enough time to get a truly complete training cycle and b. he shouldn't have run 20 miles at 4:51 pace 3 weeks back. 20 miles even at marathon pace is going to be a tough run, 20 miles at 10+ seconds per mile faster is going to basically be a race effort. I'm no elite, but I wouldn't race 20 miles as hard as I could 3 weeks before NYC.

RM said...

What's annoying is that Pena came through the half in 2'07" and finished at like 5'40". I blame all the people that were getting in his way. It was obvious that more people were sweating his nuts than were sweating Jared's. But, being a fat pussy paid off for Jared in this venture.

cheese said...

a la pena (sounds dirty), dude clearly wasn't ready for a marathon after his tunnel training, knee or not. we tried warning, but nobody would listen...

re ritz - both he and salazar knew they had to put it out there to shoot for a big race, and although i can't say i followed ritz's training, i think salazar has enough experience that the injury was gonna happen with any coach. per that workout, a) that's baller, and b) what's wrong with doing a monster workout that far out? i know i'm far from the twss marathon expert, but i feel like 3 wks out on most training cycles is a good time to put in a big effort. plenty of us have seen this year that sometimes, the race just doesn't go your way.

Meg said...

I agree with cheese. And I still <3Ritz. He's young; his day will come.

Dart said...

I have always done my longest effort 3 weeks prior to marathon distances. not that i'm stellar in the results category, but, this gives you plenty of recovery time. I raced 63 miles @ GEER & came back w/ 28-miles in a relay 3-weeks later and felt just fine.

RM said...

I rode my bike 1000 miles in the month of October...with my biggest workouts coming exactly three weeks out

THE KRIS said...

which is all fine, but why run so much faster than mp? why not run 20 @ mp? seems kinda like when they say not to run full marathon distance in training... the chances of getting hurt outweigh the benefits.

RM said...

The old school way of thinking was always train harder than you're going to race, it makes the race seem easy.

We're pinpointing one workout, and I'm sure it was hard. But in order to run fast, you gotta run fast. In time the workouts will either catch up to the racing for Ritz et al, and he/they will run amazing - or they'll catch up with them and they'll fall apart. Like my man 50 says, get rich or die tryin'.

Dart said...

Dude 1,000 is absolutely INTENSE!!! Great job Elf. Man, you are gonna crush buttts @ IMAZ

Collin said...

Don't get me wrong. Nobody thinks Ritz has more potential to win big marathons than I do. But seriously, 20 miles at 2:06 pace at altitude is insane. That's a race in and of itself. With the level of strain that must've put on his body, he might as well have run a 2:10 marathon 3 weeks before trying to run NYC.

My problem with Salazar's camp is how much he hypes his runners. When he goes on about how Ritz ran 10xmile at 4:31 with minimal rest at high altitude and then how he killed a 20 mile race effort run 3 weeks out, he's just only setting his runner up for ridicule if he doesn't make the podium. We've seen this crap with Goucher before.

Ritz ran really well last summer, but most of that fitness came from his last coach, so I won't even give Salazar credit for it. All Salazar did for him was to put an extremely injury prone runner in a compromising position. Clearly his stride wasn't holding back as he was on the cusp of being the fastest white half marathoner ever (and 2nd fastest white 5k-er ever also, if I'm not mistaken).

Maybe Ritz should just hire Ryan Hall as a coach. :P

RM said...

Well I do agree with that - don't hype up your runners that much. If anything, underplay their fitness. Nobody is going to be scared of Dathan Ritzenhein if they hear of these workouts he's doing.

Hire Ryan Hall as a coach? Haha.