Boston Marathon winner

[huskydawg]

Is anyone else shocked by this? Kawauchi Yuki, a Japanese amateur runner with a full time job making ~35k a year working in high school administration beat everybody, including professional runners from Kenya, the US, Ethiopa, and everyone else from around the world including Olympic medalists. Professional runners get the best training, coaches, sponsors, equipment, optimized meal plans, physios, anti-gravity treadmills, great surfaces to run on like loose wood chips, and even liquid nitrogen treatments to reduce inflammation and speed up recovery. He doesn't have access to any of these advantages. This was also his first time running the event, in unfamiliar territory. Yes, he is hardly a normal amateur as he has run over 79 marathons, like once a month but with the pounding and abuse the body takes during these long runs and hectic training schedule, it's amazing his joints aren't destroyed. For example, Alberto Salazar's pro running group generally won't even run more 5 training miles at a time on the hard road due to the pounding. The bad weather definitely helped Kawauchi as he'd probably lose to the pros under more benign conditions, but on that day the weather tested mental fortitude more than anything and he came up with the answer.

 

I think I'd put this above UMBC beating Virginia for upset of the year. It's amateur vs amateur athletics and UMBC was still a good team that earned their way into the tournament. They found weaknesses and exploited them despite being a 16 seed. Nothing like an amateur beating dozens of pros in one race and a major one at that. Congratulations Mr. Kawauchi!

 

おめでとうございます!!

[MtlJeff]

Wasn't the girl who came in second a full time nurse with no sponsors aswell?

[llamont]

Wasn't the girl who came in second a full time nurse with no sponsors aswell?

 

Yes. During a post marathon interview she revealed that this was only her second competitive marathon although she was a 10k runner in college... Her story was cool though. She said she didn’t expect to finish so high and she didn’t know that she would take home $75k in prize money.

[raynorfan1]

I’m happy for the winners / high finishers...but this wasn’t so much a marathon as it was some psycho endurance test.

 

The weather was so bad it is almost indescribable. Cold. Headwind. Sheets of rain coming down. I sat in the car waiting for a break in the rain before running 20 feet across the parking lot to Dunkin Donuts.

 

Most of the elite runners DNF’d. Almost all of the East Africans bailed. The winning time was something like 12 minutes slower than last year. It was just not a race that identified the best distance runner in the world.

[MtlJeff]

Pretty much all marathons are psycho endurance tests LOL. They cancelled the one here last year actually due to weather, but it was due to heat not rain/cold. It was something like 35-36C before humidex.

 

Problem in Montreal is it's not a qualifier race like Boston. So you get a lot of amateurs. If they had held the race a few people would have died

[raynorfan1]

Pretty much all marathons are psycho endurance tests LOL. They cancelled the one here last year actually due to weather, but it was due to heat not rain/cold. It was something like 35-36C before humidex.

 

Problem in Montreal is it's not a qualifier race like Boston. So you get a lot of amateurs. If they had held the race a few people would have died

 

At the elite level, it’s really not bad. There are a lot of sports that require you to be at your aerobic threshold for 2 hours.

 

It’s dramatically more difficult for casual runners who at at their AT for 3+ hours.

 

But Boston 2018 was a whole different level. There were times when the water was 2-3 inches deep in the street (and ice cold).

[MtlJeff]

Pretty much all marathons are psycho endurance tests LOL. They cancelled the one here last year actually due to weather, but it was due to heat not rain/cold. It was something like 35-36C before humidex.

 

Problem in Montreal is it's not a qualifier race like Boston. So you get a lot of amateurs. If they had held the race a few people would have died

 

At the elite level, it's really not bad. There are a lot of sports that require you to be at your aerobic threshold for 2 hours.

 

It's dramatically more difficult for casual runners who at at their AT for 3+ hours.

 

But Boston 2018 was a whole different level. There were times when the water was 2-3 inches deep in the street (and ice cold).

 

Yeah that pretty much sucks!

 

But to be honest, it's a good thing that it happened in Boston. Because like i said at least Boston is a race for legit runners....if they held that here people would have actually died or had really serious problems

 

Yeah i meant more for the "bucket" list people. I think they mostly don't know what they are getting into

[rsj1360]

Wasn't the girl who came in second a full time nurse with no sponsors aswell?

Woman

[dcmidnight]

Boston always has thousands of amateur runners who "buy" their way in through the charity set asides. I dont want to say its an urban legend that Boston is only for elite runners or qualifiers but I know people every year that run Boston that have no business running it and sure as heck didn't qualify.

 

I've run finished three marathons (not Boston) and to me its no surprise that the elite runners all bailed on this race. The elites know there is always another race right around the corner. As prestigious as Boston is, its not worth it to them to be miserable or even worse risk a serious injury.

[MtlJeff]

Was not aware of that, I have friends who have run it and they had to qualify I think. My parents ran it a bunch of times back in the day and they also qualified

 

 

[raynorfan1]

Was not aware of that, I have friends who have run it and they had to qualify I think. My parents ran it a bunch of times back in the day and they also qualified

 

Yeah, you can buy your way in by running for a charity - but it’s not cheap. Most have a ~$5,000 fundraising minimum.

 

You do end up with several thousand “runners” who have no business on the course (but it’s a very emotional thing). One lady this year apparently stopped and went home multiple times to dry off/warm up, only to return to the course and grind it out to finish after midnight.

[huskydawg]

It was just not a race that identified the best distance runner in the world.

 

I would argue that it identified the best poor weather distance runner in the world. In my opinion if you run as a profession, you don't just DNF when conditions are bad. You worked hard on your training cycle and conditions are bad for everyone. It'd be different to quit due to injury, but there are ways to get around cold/wet weather.