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What will it take to run a 2-hour marathon?

rw.runnersworld.com

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Re: What will it take to run a 2-hour marathon?

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically what drugs allow you to do is recover faster and better - which allows you to train far harder than your clean competition and build all of these superhuman stats you enumerated. A famous cycling reporter took drugs for a month to see just want the effect was and apparently it was like being superman. He would go out and ride 100 miles (something that normally leaves you in couch mode the next day) and be r…

NFL players aren't particularly violent outside of the gridlines: http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/the-rate-of-domestic-viol...

...relative to the income level (top 1 percent) and poverty rate (0 percent) of NFL players, the domestic violence arrest rate is downright extraordinary.

You've really misrepresented the article.

Re: What will it take to run a 2-hour marathon?

#92
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it should be part of HTML. A dimension or unit tag. It seems like a perfect continuation of semantic tags and the direction of XHTML 2 before the presentation-focused monstrosity that is HTML 5.

Units are harder than you might think. If I write 1 pint do I mean an imperial pint, a US liquid pint, or a US dry pint? The foot is equally tricky. This requires that the person writing the page gets it right, whereas with plain text we can rely on context to make a good guess at the unit that was meant.

I'm confused. Why is that a problem?

If I need to pay and the price is in 'Dollar' I assume the recipient can clearly indicate if it's a USD or a AUD that he wants to receive here. Francs and Swiss Francs shared the same name, but were different things (and had different abbreviations).

The same would be possible for the units you mentioned.

Re: What will it take to run a 2-hour marathon?

#93
post #82
post #71

Is there software that makes it easy to put together a presentation / design like this? (e.g. wysiwyg / point-and-click)

Yes, but it will improve your presentations in much the same way that screeching car tire and ricocheting bullet sounds improve PowerPoint presentations.

So everyone should use it is what you're saying? I'm a star fade man myself: use it every couple of slides to keep things interesting.

Re: What will it take to run a 2-hour marathon?

#94

Better drugs than they are currently on. Nobody wants to admit it, but that is the real reason for the change in inflection of the line. See cycling.

I don't think it's as bad as Tour de France, but it is likely. Doping and anti-doping is a rat race.

Do you think there is no doping control for elite marathoners (and other runners)?

Re: What will it take to run a 2-hour marathon?

#95
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NFL players aren't particularly violent outside of the gridlines: http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/the-rate-of-domestic-viol...

...relative to the income level (top 1 percent) and poverty rate (0 percent) of NFL players, the domestic violence arrest rate is downright extraordinary. You've really misrepresented the article.

I don't think I tried very hard to pin the article down.

I did make the comment from the comparison to the general population though.

edit: I have to say, I'm pretty ticked off you accused me of being dishonest. My one sentence blurb is a reasonable response to the context from the parent comment to mine, where the NFL players are claimed as a group that is more violent than normal. There is certainly room to point out that they have cohorts where they don't compare well, but it is not outrageous to answer an assertion about how they compare to people in general with an analysis of how they compare to people in general.

Re: What will it take to run a 2-hour marathon?

#97
post #31

So much thought was put into the design and yet nobody bothered to add an option on whether you want to see units in standard or american measures. It's 2014, can't you people just detect I'm not american and put up normal Centigrade, km, kg, etc?

I think the tone of this comment is condescending and not constructive. The units displayed are "normal" to the majority-American audience of this American publication which makes most of its money from US advertisers [1]. Granted, they could appeal to a wider audience with this interactive presentation by supporting both SI and "American" (as you call them) units. But is it really an affront to not do that? [1] http…

America uses a measuring system that is not normal compared to almost the whole rest of the world, is maybe what is being meant.

Re: What will it take to run a 2-hour marathon?

#98
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's as bad as Tour de France, but it is likely. Doping and anti-doping is a rat race.

Do you think there is no doping control for elite marathoners (and other runners)?

The tests don't really work. All the athletes are on cycles of daily microdosing protocols that to date are undetectable. It works for EPO as well as androgens.

If you have any question whether an athlete, model, or actor is using drugs it is safe to assume the answer is yes.

Re: What will it take to run a 2-hour marathon?

#99

I especially like this paragraph from the story: "Kenyans and Ethiopians have dominated the marathon since 1999; in fact, of the 100 fastest marathoners in history, 59 are from Kenya and 31 are from neighboring Ethiopia. Is it genes or environment—nature or nurture—that is responsible for this overwhelming domination? The answer doesn’t actually matter when it comes to who will run the first sub-two marathon. The suc…

A lot of the success of Kenyans and Ethiopians is probably down to the economics of running (which is to say, it is an easily accessible sport to even the poor) and the feedback loop of other successful Kenyans. Kimetto, the recently crowned world marathon record holder, was a subsistence farmer just years ago (http://www.runnersworld.com/elite-runners/from-poverty-to-po...). There are simply no western school kids growing up thinking distance running is a viable career path for them (and given what we make the kids do for exercise in school, we couldn't spot a talent anyway).

Contrast this to other extreme endurance sports such as pro cycling, where there are basically no Kenyans, Ethiopians or Africans at all to be found. Theres a high cost to entry and it requires infrastructure to train.

Re: What will it take to run a 2-hour marathon?

#100
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What will drugs give them though? As the article says, the perfect runner will be light, short, have long legs, insane VO2 max, good heat dissipation, low oxygen requirements. Apart from blood doping to increase VO2 max, what can one do to improve those other things?

Basically what drugs allow you to do is recover faster and better - which allows you to train far harder than your clean competition and build all of these superhuman stats you enumerated. A famous cycling reporter took drugs for a month to see just want the effect was and apparently it was like being superman. He would go out and ride 100 miles (something that normally leaves you in couch mode the next day) and be r…

Hmm, I wonder what the long term effects of these drugs are. Medicinal and therapeutic use may be very promising for average people just trying to stay in shape. If the long term effects aren't too terrible, say like that of coffee, then greater acceptance may be possible.

Also, as toward the 2 hour marathon, drugs that are psychoactive may be of as great a benefit as the physical ones. Not just caffeine and other placebos, but getting into the right 'head space' is just as important to breaking such records. LSD was an integral part of one of baseball's no hitters, a terrific feat of athleticism. Many feats of the mind may be broken in Washington state due to the permissive pot laws.

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