🚀 go-pugleaf

The whole point with these "in order to run blah, you should be able to do ..."
is that a lot of people want to know how fast they might be able to run at
distance X without ever having run that distance.  This makes a fair amount of
sense if X is a marathon because it is pretty important to have an idea what
you are capable of so you don't go out too fast.  In a 10k, it is more just
because people are interested.

(Rick Schubert) writes:
>People who are naturally better at shorter distances are
>going to find a 6:15 mile much easier than a 43-minute 10K, and people
>naturally better at longer distances are going to find the 43-minute 10K
>easier.

Actually, it is pretty well established that the faster you are at the shorter
distances, the faster you will be at the long distances (see Noakes' book).
Said differently, the best predictor of speed in a long distance race is speed
in a shorter race (by shorter I mean 800, 1500, 5k or 10k, not 100meters and
by longer I mean 10k, marathon or ultra).    The best milers could have been
the best marathoners, had they chosen to train for the marathon instead of the
mile.

Note that I am not talking about the minor differences between two elite
runners.  You cannot take runner A who runs a 3:49 mile and runner B who
runs a 3:54 mile and say A has more potential than B in the marathon.  But you
can say that since both A and B have elite performance in the mile, both
would be elite marathoners if they trained for it.  Further, if C trained
for the mile and could never break 4:12,  (ie. very talented but not elite), C
will be a very talented but not elite in the marathon. 
-- 
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Thomas W. Page, Jr.			email:   page@ficus.cs.ucla.edu
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Department of Computer Science	
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