I’m in a near state of it due to the amount of discussion going on concerning Monday’s Boston Marathon. It matters not which position you are siding with regarding the record eligibility of the performances, the mere fact that there is MOSTLY intelligent discussion signals positive to me. Go over to LetsRun and you’ll see an enormous amount of debate, check your local funny pages and its there too. This has done more to educate the masses about Record Eligible courses than my stumping has in 10 years.
World Best. Period.
I like the fact that so many are jumping on the World Record bandwagon as it highlights just how far we have to go if the American running populace is to fully understand record keeping, excellence, and the history of our sport. Ask poor Mark Nenow how it felt to have a World’s Best (27:22 at the 1983 Crescent City Classic 10K) go unrecognized for over 10 years. Point to point courses are not record eligible due to degree of separation of the start and finish. This makes Monday’s wind aided performance the new poster child for road racing’s World Best designation. Tell me what you want of the hills and difficult nature of the course, I’ve run Boston.
If I were the BAA I’d be fighting like mad to get those performances Officially recognized as World Records. But my efforts would be couched in a wink and a smile.
Steve Scott won the Queen’s Street Mile in Auckland, NZ in 1982. It was a downhill mile created for the purpose of covering the fastest mile in history. He split 47 at the 1/4 and 1:40 through the 1/2 before coming home in 3:31:00. Point to point and aided by net elevation loss.
I could decide to run the Ft. Collins Marathon the same day as Lincoln if all I were after was a “record” or a “best”. With 1100′ of elevation drop I’d expect Ft. Collins to be at least 10-12 minutes faster than Lincoln. I’ll grind it out in the Capitol City, thanks.
This evening’s Track Workout at Millard West, 6:00 pm start-
Marathoner & Half Marathoners: 2 mile warm up, 2 X 1200 meters at goal race pace (2:00 recovery) 2 mile warm down.
5-10K runners: 1.5-2.0 mile warm up, 8 X 400 meters in 2 sets of 4. 1:00 recovery between 1/4s, 3:00 recovery between sets, 2 mile warm down.
Mark Nenow was one of America’s brightest stars during the 80s.
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