Holy Trinity

There has been some interesting discussion recently on social media about the relative merits of a sub-30 10km against a sub-50 10 mile, which is the harder of the two.  No real conclusion was reached.  Add in a sub-2.20 marathon and you have, perhaps, what could be called the Holy Trinity of real quality running performance indicators.

Sadly, I just missed out on all three: best times, 30.50; 51.00 and 2.23.14.  One conclusion that was reached in the discussion was that beating these times is definitely an indication of a quality athlete rather than just a good club runner, so I have to see myself in the latter category which is something I've always accepted.

There is certainly a connection with these times, other than just being barrier breaking.  If you punch in a 30.00 10k into McMillan's pace chart www.mcmillanrunning.com , the equivalent times come out at 50.09 and 2.20.45.

Could I / should I have done better and joined the top club?  Yes and no is my answer.  At 10k I think I would have struggled to have bettered 30.30 even though I rarely ran the distance in the 80's when at my fittest.  (Five miles was the historical preferred distance.)  I never had the basic speed to run any faster than 4.50 miling.  Five minute miling for 10 miles?  Well, my 51m was done on a hilly course in Wimbledon - three times up Wimbledon Hill from the tennis courts - so there was definitely more time to be sliced off, but again, sustaining sub-5's for that distance was probably always going to be beyond my shuffling running style!

The marathon though is a different matter.  As an endurance based runner the longer distance always suited me, my favourite distance was emphatically 20 miles, which I ran competitively rather than as a build-up to a marathon.  My best marathon of 2.23 was achieved at the age of 26 on the notoriously tough New York course in a torrential downpour; it also involved walking inside the last mile!  I was on 2.20 pace for most of the race but the hills in Central Park just tipped me over the edge.  For various reasons I never ran another competitive marathon although was undoubtedly a lot fitter two years later when I opted in the spring for the famous Finchley '20', which incorporated the Southern Champs, and the Isle of Wight Marathon (incorporating the National Road Runners Club Championship).  I won both but often wonder what may have transpired at London that year where I drove the lead timing vehicle instead!!

So my conclusion is simple, one out of three was attainable but never the Holy Trinity of all three. There is no simple answer to which is the hardest as it really depends on the background of the runner.  I think McMillan has it spot on, they are all equally difficult to achieve.  What I'd love to see is some of today's club runners achieving these targets.  They are very difficult and seemingly out of sight for all but the very best, but they are achievable for the club runner with aspirations and should be seen as a real tangible target.

Then there is the two hour marathon ...

(For what it's worth I think this will happen but it may now take longer than previously thought because of so much current conjecture about how clean the East African runners are.)