Doing the Dirty Du
Unless you've been cave ridden, you're probably familiar with his background as an elite triathlete. So he's definitely not a stranger to running. Even during his cycling days, he would often run the Dirty Duathlon in Texas, sometimes with the entire US Postal Cycling team as a form of pre-season bonding. His most recent 5K on April 8th, 2006 (4th Annual fertileHOPE event in Austin) was done in a time of 18:20 or 5:54 mile pace. Translated over to a full marathon, he is currently in shape to run around a 2:35:00. If you're thinking, yeah that's great, but last year's winner Paul Tergat ran it in 2:09:30, so Lance is still around 30 minutes and about 4-5 miles off the pace, you'd be correct. Imagine what Lance could possibly run after training for around 7 months.
Improbable, but not Impossible.
The only other former member of the peloton to whom we can draw a comparison is Laurent Jalabert who completed the 2005 ING NYC Marathon in a time of 2:55:39, finishing in 391st place. Fairly remarkable for a 36 years old (at the time) who retired from cycling in 2002. What would a 33-34 year old Lance, who is only one year removed from the epoch of cycling, run?
Improbable, but not Impossible.
My intent is not to insult any runners (elite or amateur) by insisting that someone from another sport can just step into their's and immediately dominate it. But we are talking about one of the elite endurance athletes of our lifetime. Take it from Granny, who is making an attempt this year to qualify for Boston, it may be highly improbable for me to come in under my age qualifying time (3:15:00), but its not impossible. So who would you rather bet on when it comes to an endurance event, me or Lance Armstrong?
3 comments:
What a great picture of Lance on the run. Where did you find it?
Of course you can qualify for Boston this year! If you do qualify...I am there!
I'll hold you to that...maybe you can pace me for a bit???
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