May, finally. 

    Personally, I am jealous as well as excited.  Being injured entirely for 4 months killed any hopes of being personally involved with the fast track racing.  But, Portland is turning the corner weather wise and showing why it is the best place to live for a runner (one third of the year at least).  So, I am enjoying getting back to base training.  It was 65 degrees and sunny for my 12 mile run this morning in the huge temperate-rainforest-in-the-middle-of-the-city, known as Forest Park, and the flowers are still blooming.  Don’t hate.  I grew up in and trained in Illinois for 23 years, so I do not take this heaven for granted.

    My plan here is to start a discussion amongst you all on a very interesting topic in my mind.  I was going to just write why I disagreed with this doctor and I might be wrong, which is totally fine.  But I would like others to interject opinions before I put mine.

    So I will give you the brief summary of a presentation that sparked this idea.  Just last week my lab hosted a top physiology doctor.  One of his topics discussed the limitations of humans and the men’s world record in the marathon.  He stated Frank Shorter had a VO2 Max of about 69 ml/kg/min.  VO2 is measurement of a runner’s maximal ability to transport and utilize oxygen.  69 ml/kg/min is elite level but still slightly low considering how fast Shorter ran.  The amazing trait about Shorter was his lactate threshold was at about 85% of his VO2 max.  Lactate threshold (LT) is where we start to accumulate lactate acid in the blood stream (note: the word accumulate because at lower intensity we still produce lactate we just clear more efficiently).   So he could run at about 59 ml/kg/min for quite a long time.  That is impressive, and his outstanding running economy is one reason why he won a Gold Medal in the 1972 Munich Marathon, among other marathons, and ran so well on the track. 

    The doctor suggested that the physically we should be able to run a marathon in 1:45.  His rationale was an athlete with a  VO2 of 80 ml/kg/min (which is very common for these men) with a similar LT to Frank Shorter would be able to run at 68 ml/kg/min and click off 4:20 pace with relative ease.

    1:45 is fast, really really fast.

    Why is the world record only 2:03 then?  Why can we not even run a 5k at this pace?  What is limiting us?