Thursday, September 28, 2006

Run, Lance, Run!

There's a lively discussion on a Washington, D.C. running message board on how fast Lance Armstrong will run the New York City Marathon. Predictions range anywhere from 2:21:54 to 3:16:09. Here's an article on Lance's marathon training.

Max Lockwood, a very fast local runner, has this to say about the Tour de France dynamo:

I think everyone underestimates the amount of work it takes to run a fast marathon and then what it takes out of you. I mean you look at guys like Geb [Selaissie] and [Paul] Tergat. They run one or two marathons a year at most. Tergat has not run a fast race since the NYM last year. To run a race that fast and with such push at the end might just take your career away from you. Look at Salazar after the Boston Marathon duel with Beardsley? Never was the same. The only person I can think of who performed at a world class level for a really long time is Bill Rogers, the greatest distance runner the USA ever produced! Does Lance want to push himself, I ask myself. He must know what endurance sports can take out of the body.

It is so hard to put Armstrong in a category because he is such a unique creature starting with cancer, recovering from Cancer to win the Tour the ever looming questions about performance enhancing drugs. In this respect, I sort of place him in the Barry Bonds arena. Barry, regardless of what people say, what you think of him, etc. will break Hank Aaron's home run record and go into the history books as one of the best ever. To this day, he has not been banned from the sport for drugs and yet, if you were to take a survey and ask the American public if they think he did em' , I bet you would get a 80% yes he did. To most folks, his body is not real and the power he generated later in his career is not possible through any natural effort.

With Lance, don't know. Seems like every great cyclist today, almost by default is guilty. Somehow, at least, Lance never got caught. The debate will go on forever.

Nobody really knows whether Lance took any performance-enhancing drugs. But in any case, anyone out there in the RBF willing to wager how he'll run New York?

My prediction: 2:43. You heard it here first.

5 comments:

  1. There's an article about this same topic - Lance and the NYCM - in this month's RW. I'll go with 2:51:16. (I totally just made that up, based on...nothing. heh.)

    I will say this...I *don't* think he'll be in the 2:20 range like many people think. The sense I got from the RW piece is that he hasn't been logging as many miles as he'd like, nor will he have time to log many long, long runs. (either that, or he's just saying all that so we'll be really, really impressed when he runs a 2:30). =)

    It will be interesting to watch, for sure.

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  2. I'm going with 2:32:18 cause I like it. I also don't think he will do a 2:20 because that's just really fast and he has never been an endurance runner before.

    The funny thing is that people spend so much time speculating. How about we just give him an 'atta boy' for finding a new goal?

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  3. I just want to know if he got in through the lottery.

    He'll finish. Weather will decide how fast.

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  4. Oh, can I take a guess?

    I'll saaaaay (*closing eyes*): 2:59:22

    When is the marathon? LOL!

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  5. I agree, Lance definitely won't be in the 2:20 range unless he has wings. My guess is that he'll start slowly b/c of the crowds, speed way way up in the middle, then hit the wall at Mile 22 and slow down.

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