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GFA? is it possible for the average person?
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yep tmap
...and enter the race after a drunken bet, then loosely following training programs (eg as advocated on this site) that advocate 30 miles per week of jogging and walking for a few months
the way you explain things sets your own boundaries. saying "i don't have that mindset" sounds much better than "i can't be arsed"
it's a bit like my old mum, who is perennially dieting, but tries to blame her own inability to delay gratification on external factors. she often says "i will eat this cake because i have no willpower". trying to make "willpower" a separate external factor just makes life easier by refusing to accept responsibility for your own choices - like saying "i have no rocket boots". but it isn't.
as i told her, if she just changed the record to say "i am going to stuff this lard down my gullet because i would rather have the instant gratification of tasting sugar, than the delayed gratification of losing weight and getting my knee operation", then she might start to do what she needed to
tough love!
things are much simpler here - training for a GFA is much much harder than not eating cake, and of course getting the arbitrary GFA standard is less important than new knees. so worry not!
(ps- i can't be arsed to train for a GFA, so no pots or kettles here!)
Being slower than the GFA times does not make you a bad person anymore than being faster makes you an obsessive with no life. Unfortunately, some quicker runners behave in an elitist way towards slower runners, some of whom exhibit reverse snobbery in return.
All of us could be a lot quicker with more free time, more money, more motivation, better diets, better coaching and so on. Hopefully, we all choose a balance that we are personally comfortable with. For some it's faster than GFA times, for others it's slower.
One thing I am probably guilty of is assuming that most marathon runners always 'want' to run quicker times. At some point of course, the sacrifices required will no longer justify the returns.
It's clearly got a lot to do with why people run the marathon, and what goals they set themselves. When started to train for last year's marathon (my first), I had a look at the GFA times and dismissed them out-of-hand as unattainable. I set out to train for a 3:45 marathon, but as the training went on I found that it was easier than I expected and I had some positive feedback from half-marathons run with negative splits. So on the day last year I aimed for a GFA time. I missed it by 51 seconds in the heat, but knew I could do it in the future. Did it in Nottingham and then again last week (although I was a bit gutted to just miss the sub-3 I know I can run).
I possibly had some natural talent as a teenager, and I was fairly fit having cycled a lot, but I was surprised to get that close at the first attempt. I reckon anyone with some talent, residual fitness dedication to training and diet (I lost 2 stone in weight) and luck in avoiding injuries could get to GFA in a year. For others it would take longer. Whether 80mpw is necessary I don't know, the most I've ever run in a week is 71, but I have benefited from upping the miles gradually from 40pw last year to 60 this year.
And I'm not in the top 2% of runners. Most of the people running on Sunday were not aiming to complete the course in the best possible time they could manage. They were doing it for the experience, or to raise money for charity and there's nothing wrong with that - without them the race wouldn't have the pull for everyone else.
But the best thing about the GFA targets is that they are a bit challenging - the sense of achievement when I ran my first GFA time was immense - if they were easy, then what would be the challenge. (And I am aware that as a 43 year old, my target is as easy as it gets for a male runner)
just doesn't do it for me
but coming back to what 20 mins said - the whole age group system for GFA is madness.......are FLM really expecting a 59yr old to get similar times to an 40yr old assuming all other factors are the same (weight, ability, experience etc)?? to me that's a no-brainer
to equalise matters they really should look at 5 year age bands, much like they do in many other sports so you can directly compare yourself against those of similar age
it's almost like FLM are trying to make GFA even more elitist so they can reduce the qualifying numbers
I take the opposite opinion to this thread, and think the question should be 'Why should GFA runners get guaranteed places?". If you remove the system of allowing the same 2,000 people an entry every year, that means that a wider range of club runners would get in through the ballot.
The belief in this thread seems to be that all runners have equal ability - the only difference in race times is the difference in training and preparation. That's a rough forumula, but I doubt it is true for all people. Running is about your lungs, legs and heart all functioning well - what works for one person physiologically might not work the same for someone else.
Anyway, for me the whole ethos of running should be that you are only running against yourself, therefore everyone is a winner. The GFA is suggesting that if I complete a marathon in 2:59 that makes be more of a runner than someone finishing in 3:59. I disagree with that entirely. It certainly makes them a faster runner, but I don't see why faster runners deserve special considerations.
For me, the system should be automatic places for championship runners, including veterans championships to cover the age issue. After that, all runners not of Championship standard should be considered the same. The system at present is no different to saying that a 3:50 runner should have more chance in the ballot than a 4:45 runner.
CO -- Good point -- Running (and not eating that cake) is all about deferred pleasure -- jam tomorrow. Agree totally, and have often written about this. Even back-of-the-pack plodders benefit from this by feeling fitter and more alert and so on, after a run. But that's not what this thread is about; it's about whether a GFA is attainable by anyone. I say no. In order to get there you have to have the desire to get there, and therefore you have to believe that the reward for getting there is going to be worth the sacrifices and the obsessiveness. I suspect that most people, if asked, would agree that being able to run unusually quickly would be a good thing, but also that they don't want it enough to think it worth the effort.
Let's rephrase the question, and we may be able to agree -- is a GFA achievable by anyone in good health, of average to good fitness, below 40, who is desperately keen to get a GFA place and is willing to make whatever sacrifices are necessary?
I'd say likely, yes.
that's perfectly true.
but then again "championship" is pretty arbitrary, too.
the easiest way to get in is to go golden bond, wait 5 years, or enter Paris instead!
Well I got back to running, after some schoolboy salad days, and did the FLM 02 in about 4:50. Just run 3:15:11 and I know there is much more in the tank.
The secret, lots of training and diet, and stay off the weights.
Wirral Dave - a lot of the reason is simply that allowing GFA runners a place allows the field to be more spread out. If you took all those people and gave them ballot places, the strain on the logistics (especially at the finish) would be worse. I suspect this is also the reason for the apparent meanness of GFA cutoffs for older runners.
You make an interesting point about the ethos of the race, but some might argue that a race is a competition between runners, and that finishing in 2:05 makes Martin Lel a better runner than me. I'm quite happy with that judgement myself.
Personally I am glad that GFA exists, even if I never quite make it. It's a tantalising goal that may just be attainable, whereas finishing amongst the elites never could be. It's sort of like getting that last Champions League spot, where the title seems always out of reach (guess my club!
).
I will keep chipping away at my PB (now 3:59) in the hope that, once I get over 40, 3:15 might be within reach. If I didn't have that, I may have less motivation to improve my marathon times and consequently may lose the urge to run them. It's reaching for the stars, so at least I soar into the sky.
FB
Yes, 5 (or even 10) year age bands would be much better. I wouldn't have a problem with some of the standards being raised either, just as long as they were fairly consistent challenges across the ages (and sexes).
I refer to prev e-mail on normal distribution - the bell curve means every time they up the time by 5 minutes they draw in disproportionate number of racing snakes - I would hazard a guess also that the faster the runner, the more frequent they race and therefore the less likely they are to be doing the cheridee thing, so would raise less for good causes etc.
I'd be interested to know what the distn of times is for each of the majors - would FLM be "slowest" because of a higher proportion of charity fundraisers?
FLM is biggest fundraiser of all the majors by far so does this mean that it has proportionally less "serious" runners in it?
Why mot compare the relative achievments from other disaplines or sports to see how "easy" or "hard" it would be to achieve those targets?
The GFA is more than attainable for an average woman. I have no natural talent for long distance running and at the time I got my first GFA had a BMI of 25.
Got fed up with being rejected so printed out the sub 3:45 RW schedule, put it up on the wall and ran the sessions. It's not rocket science!
June '04 - Gave birth to 3rd child
October '04 - Rejected from London. Set sights on getting a GFA at Robin Hood Marathon in September '05
September '05 - Ran 3:40
I did not sacrifice my life for the sake of my training and my family didn't suffer. I ran early in the morning when most people were still in bed but it was worth it to me. I haven't had the same sense of achievement in any race I've done since.
On the other hand, the GFA for men is a different story. My other half has the build and the talent for long distance running. He ran a 1:25 half off the back of 20 miles a week. However, if he tries to up his training beyond 30 miles a week or to introduce speed sessions then he gets injured. He managed to run 3:11 off the limited training he could do but I think a sub 3 may be too much to ask. Therefore, I think propensity to injury is a factor in the average man being able to train for a GFA as it simply isn't possible for the average man to run sub 3 without decent mileage.
Johnny Blaze says:
"I'd be interested to know what the distn of times is for each of the majors - would FLM be "slowest" because of a higher proportion of charity fundraisers?"
Just a quick looksee at the most recent FLM, NYC and Paris maras would suggest not:
FLM 2008
1000th male (out of 23612 finishers): 2:59:03
Median male: 4:11:32
NYC 2007
1000th male (out of 26071 finishers): 3:04:40
Median male: 4:15:46
Paris 2007
1000th male (out of 22507 finishers): 3:05:01
Median male: 4:10:27
Please can someone explain to me where GFA targets come from?
What is the significance between them and the FLM? E.g does it affect your entry in some way?
Sorry to be a noob, but thought it would be better to ask rather than only have a vague idea of what's going on
I'd be interested to know what the distn of times is for each of the majors - would FLM be "slowest" because of a higher proportion of charity fundraisers? FLM is biggest fundraiser of all the majors by far so does this mean that it has proportionally less "serious" runners in it?
You can do some crude analysis fairly easily by just looking at the numbers of sub-3 finishers. London has about 1,100 or so; Paris is about the same now, and Berlin is about the same too. New York has just 800 but is a considerably stiffer course. Chicago, oddly, only seems to have just over 200, from a field of 25,000. I couldn't work out the Boston one.
So it looks to me like the FLM compares quite well, at least at that end of the field. I'm fairly sure Paris 4 years ago had about twice the sub-3 finishers, but that seems to be no longer the case. I blame Sarkozy.
achieveing a GFA time gives you an automatic entry into FLM as long as you can substantiate the time with a previous result within a certain time period before the event (9months?? not sure)
the GFA times are set by FLM but I have no idea how they have been established and they are different for sexes and age ranges although the age bands are very wide
With reference to the relatively easy qualification standards of women compared to men, the age band for younger men is 18-40 as opposed to 18-49 for younger women. Whilst I agree that 3:30, or 3:20 even, is a comparable figure at the lower end of the age scale, surely for a woman approaching 50, this would be a much more challenging target and beyond what I would say is achievable for the ‘average’ woman of her age. It seems ludicrous to me that a 21-year old woman can currently race alongside her 49-year old mother and both be considered equally ‘good for age’ with a 3:44:59 finish time.
P61 of the May issue of RW has a table of average and fastest marathon performance in the 2007 FLM by age and sex.
It doesn't show any dramatic falling off with age up to about 50.
no wonder I'm shite
Thanks fat buddha!
What are the GFA limits and times?