Subject: RE: Most Difficult Originally posted by Hot Runner
But maybe not to marathon, at least not without a lot of specific training, and even then maybe not. That was my point. You have runners who have good speed at 1500m/mile and can move up to do strong 3-5 km, 10 km at the outside, then the more distance oriented types who really excel at 5 km to marathon. You don't generally see someone who's equally outstanding at 1500m/mile and marathon. Guessing that is partly natural ability and partly the effect of quite different training.
Where IM fits into that would be anyone's guess. Rinny's not amazing because she can probably (just guessing here) run an open marathon somewhere in the low 2:30's--there are quite a few women who can do that. She's amazing because she can still run 2:50 on the last leg of Kona. That's got to be something beyond just VO2 max with muscular endurance, being able to keep cranking it out at a reasonably high percentage of max for hours, mental toughness. and physiological adaptation to those conditions.
I agree with you that you won't see too many people that can do their corresponding 1mile and marathon times at a given point in time. They will typically line up for a distance or two below their "best event" and one or two above. But I suspect that's more their specific training at that given time.
The question is how much can you train the shift in either direction.
Yes, once you start getting into very short distances there is more of an anaerobic contribution that you don't have at longer distances. But again, some of that is trainable. Some say training one system for a specific event is at the detriment of the other.
Edited by marcag 2015-03-30 6:24 AM
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