Question:How fast CAN you do a marathon without training?
Answer:
Isn't 50 miles a week good enough for marathon training? I hope so,
because that's been my max week for a marathon I'm running here in
Memphis in December. Of course, my long runs have been up to 20 miles.
How can you call average weekly mileage of 50 miles "no training"? It's hard
to run 50 miles/week and have no runs over 9 miles, but of course it can be
done. Had Sparks done no running whatsoever for 6 months preceding the race,
I'll guarantee you he wouldn't have had a 2:31--or a 2:51 or a 3:21.
Perhaps this issue is: How necessary are long runs? From my personal
experience, overall mileage base for the 2 to 3 months preceding a marathon is
a more important factor than doing long runs (15+ miles), but to do really
well a few long training runs are very useful.
I was amused by the discussion about running a marathon on no training, so I
ran John's reported time of 4:17 into Dr Jack Daniels' Oxygen Power equations
(willing to supply a copy to anyone who asks for it). The result was that a
4:17 marathon represents a VO2 max of 35.
Since the the VO2 max of a healthy sedentary young man would be in the range of
38-44, can I ask why was John so slow? Was it all that muscle mass from the
weight training slowing him down?
I do recall that when I took up running again (I was a sprinter in high school
and college, but let's say that my first 5K came after a 15 year taper), I ran
the Laguna Beach 5K in something like 28:30 on basically no training, and the
multiplier that Owen Anderson uses (9.55) would say that would be something
like a 4:30 marathon. (Note I am NOT advocating anyone actually doing
this--all I want for Christmas is a 4 minute mile)
I DO know that Ken Sparks ran Chicago last year on no marathon training, and
finished in about 2:31, the 5th fastest 50+ marathon time ever. His longest
run was 9 miles and his weekly mileage was about 50.
So, now, how fast CAN you run a marathon on no training?
The 1st of 9 NYC marathon wins for Greta Waitz was the 1st
time she ever ran a marathon..she had never run more than
12 miles before!!!
What Ken Sparks, having been world class on the track for a long time, could do
wasn't the real issue of my original post--what somebody without training
could do was.
Sparks said that in training for Chicago last year, he had some days where he
ran 15 miles, but that was in 2 runs, and no single run was more than 9 miles
(presumably less than an hour for someone who ran a 4:36 mile last year). He
said he felt that his long-term strength from track workouts (mostly 400
sessions twice a week) gave him a strength base to do the marathon without any
long runs. The result pretty much speaks for itself.
Note that someone in decent shape but who had never run should be able to WALK
a marathon in 8 hours or so. Thus the real answer would be in the range of
2:06 to 8+. You cannot reasonably argue that a fit person cannot finish a
marathon at SOME pace.
