Utah Valley Marathon Strategies, Banter, and Hype

[Paul Petersen]

Yes. IMHO.

Let's just agree that it's slower than StG, between 1-6 minutes, depending on how many butt-slaps you get at aid stations.

[Superfly]

Yeah but how many of those guys train on hilly (aided) stuff. I'm not so sure if anyone of them would have broke 2:20 in STG and I'm really sure none of them would have gone 2:15. I saw the Kenyans at the marathon awards and a couple of them could barley walk. A testament that they hardly ever train on downhill.

[Superfly]

IMHO I agree with the butt slaps at aid stations. Maybe at STG this year we can get that with the elite bottle drop too.

[Paul Petersen]

1 butt-slap = 1 minute

[Sasha Pachev]

I have run the first half of St. George in 1:11:49 (2003) and 1:12:12 (2007). So it is not that slow. Especially considering that in both of those years I hit the first half of TOU (which is completely downhill and was aided by tailwind significantly in those years) in 1:10:31 and 1:10:57 respectively pretty much flooring it two-three weeks prior finishing out the marathon with an all out effort in both cases for a nice pre-St. George "warm-up". I can run the worst Veyo mile around 6:00 without signing my own death sentence. I have run 5:40s through Dameron Valley. Here at Utah Valley my slowest mile was from 6 to 7 and it was 6:25. The one after was 6:02, which I believe is the third slowest. HR was actually a little high, I was not slacking there. Then the miles that followed were more in the Dameron Valley range, but I have a suspicion I would have been faster in the Dameron Valley than on miles 8-12 of UVM in spite of the net downhill. The simple truth is that grade kills at altitude, miles 8-12 are at about 5300 feet. and do have 6% uphill occasionally, while Dameron Valley is a steady 1% up at 4000 feet with no 6% spikes.  Comparing the course further, no miles where you can coast and crack 5:00, and the last 10 K alone is probably worth 3 minutes.

I like Paul's description of Ogden-like, I think we are on to something here. My feeling was that had this been on the Ogden course, my first half would have been anywhere between 1:13:15 and 1:13:45, while the second would have been roughly the same - a low 1:17. The second half of UVM is definitely almost an exact copy of the Ogden second half. The first one is very different, though.

Here are some more numbers for a comparison - in 2003 I ran the first half of Richmond (after racing TOU and St. George) in 1:12:08 with an effort that compared to the effort in TOU and St. George. In 2007 I ran the first half of St. Jude in 1:12:43, also with an ambitious effort just like in TOU and St. George, and also after TOU and St. George. So that suggests that perhaps the first half of St. George is comparable to a mildly rolling sea-level half, while the first half of TOU is comparable to a perfectly flat sea-level half.

[mike warren]

All I know is that nobody broke 2:20 (despite several of the top runners having sub-2:20 PRs on non-aided courses, including 2:18 on a very difficult Seattle RnR course). And aside from James H, who has been long deserving of a big PR, nobody I know came even close to their St George times. You can look at the women for this as well. Yeah, I realize that most people get in a little better shape by October, but not 6 minutes better shape. In other words, I don't think the entire field was out of shape and/or sandbagging. IMHO. 

All that concrete surely came into play as well.

I was 12 minutes faster at UVM than STG.  Ok, there were other factors that played into that.  How about this, I have no idea what I am talking about and yes I am a crappy runner.  I would like to run the fist half of UVM combined with the second half of STG. I am thinking that would be a pretty fast course.  That way everyone is right.  That work?

[Paul Petersen]

More food for thought:
http://www.marathonguide.com/results/browse.cfm?MIDD=57091003
http://www.marathonguide.com/results/browse.cfm?MIDD=2964100612

StG Ave time: 4:15:13 (49:42 StDev) - 2009 times
UVM Ave time: 4:18:40 (46:50 StDev) - 2010 times

Of course stats are not everything, but are certainly interesting. If you look at it from this angle, you could say that StG is 3:30 faster, although the greater standard deviation could perhaps indicate a bigger bomb-factor? Or a bigger "bust-a-big-one" factor?

Ha ha, but of course if you look at 2007 StG, which had perfect weather...4:11:42 avg

[Hyrum]

Paul has pointed out the Utah Valley to St. George Marathon Average finish time according to Marathonguide.com  I have put below all the main marathons in Utah average finishing time, and you can see that only St. George has a faster average.  In earlier discussion there were some that said TOU and Ogden would be faster, but that doesn't appear to be the case:
Utah Valley Marathon - 2010 Results
Finishers: 1392, Males - 799 , Females - 593
Male Winner: 2:21:27 | Female Winner: 2:46:18
Average Finish Time: 4:18:40 | STD: 0:46:50
Ogden Marathon - 2010 Results
Finishers: 1966, Males - 1058 , Females - 908
Male Winner: 2:29:20 | Female Winner: 2:52:34
Average Finish Time: 4:22:10 | STD: 0:44:37
Salt Lake City Marathon - 2010 Results
Finishers: 1041, Males - 632 , Females - 409
Male Winner: 2:30:30 | Female Winner: 3:15:36
Average Finish Time: 4:26:11 | STD: 0:42:03
Top of Utah Marathon - 2009 Results
Finishers: 2026, Males - 1018 , Females - 1008
Male Winner: 2:23:07 | Female Winner: 2:44:10
Average Finish Time: 4:27:08 | STD: 0:46:24
St. George Marathon - 2009 Results
Finishers: 5618, Males - 3145 , Females - 2473
Male Winner: 2:21:03 | Female Winner: 2:48:29
Average Finish Time: 4:15:13 | STD: 0:49:42
Deseret Morning News/KJZZ-TV Marathon - 2009 Results
Finishers: 526, Males - 353 , Females - 173
Male Winner: 2:25:42 | Female Winner: 2:56:41
Average Finish Time: 4:22:40 | STD: 0:48:44

The other item about no one breading 2:20 involves a factor that many of you are not aware of that I am.  The men's champion of the race flew straight from Kenya, and his flight was extremely delayed from a tornado.  He had asked me for a hotel room while at a layover waiting for his next flight, but he didn't make it to SLC until 3:00 A.M.  He got to our bus stop one minute before our last bus.  To go with no sleep, and fly all the way from Kenya and still run a 2:21 is in my opinion just as impressive as him having ran a 2:18.  No sleep, and the super long travel has to account for at least a few minutes.

[Steve P]

I didn't run UVM, but one thing that seemed to come out from people's race reports was that the very gradual downhill on extremely hard cement going down University Avenue seemed to help people run faster in both the half and the full. I thought it would cause people to slow due to the pounding, but maybe the fact that the surface is unforgiving and allowed people to get in a good rhythm was a positive thing. Any thoughts?

P.S. I hope UVM and Half keep growing.

[Superfly]

St. George 2008 Average Finish Time: 4:17:34 with rain.
We had solid rain for the first 15 miles of UV. Not too bad but not ideal either.

[Superfly]

Actually my theory of runners being faster by October than they are in May or June is a lot more valid with runners who fall into the "avg" 4 hourish zone. Basically anyone running over 3 hour for males and 3:30 for females is most likely going to be in much better shape 4 months down the road. 

[Paul Petersen]

St. George 2008 Average Finish Time: 4:17:34 with rain.
We had solid rain for the first 15 miles of UV. Not too bad but not ideal either.

Don't know about the marathon, but I considered conditions ideal for the half. I believe StG in 2008 had a driving wind too?

[Superfly]

Conditions aren't ideal when your soaked through and running against a heavy rain. My shorts, shirt and shoes were completely soaked. However it wasn't the driving wind of 2008's stg. But we did have some swirling gusts. We'd get a tailwind for a quarter and then it would circle back around and slam us in the face. Holt and I both were talking about it durning the race.
My perfect conditions are like STG in 2007. Clear, dry and slight tailwind here and there along the way.

[Paul Petersen]

My perfect conditions are like STG in 2007. Clear, dry and slight tailwind here and there along the way.

I'll agree with you there. It doesn't get much better than StG in 2007.

[Sasha Pachev]

3:00+ marathoners are not useful for statistical analysis to evaluate how fast the course is because they are extremely unpredictable. In fact, I would go as far as saying that men slower than 2:40 and women slower than 3:00 are unpredictable. Most of them have a potential that is 30+ minutes faster, and that potential could randomly come out in varying degrees on years when they decide to train more seriously. So you could have a guy with a 3:20 St. George PR run 2:58 in Ogden next year. That does not make Ogden 22 minutes faster. That same guy could slack off during the winter and run 3:40 in Ogden next year instead. That does not make Ogden 20 minutes slower either. Or he could come to Ogden expecting to to be faster than St. George, go through the first half faster than he did in St. George (an undertrained runner is capable of hitting the first half of a marathon 10-15 minutes faster than he should), and then having a royal blowup. An argument can be made that random factors even out when you add up the times of 2000+ runners, but I am not willing to put my faith in that. Plus, even if they did, with the majority of the runners huddled around 4:15, how meaningful is anything from those calculations to even a sub-3:30 marathoner?

Faster times are much more stable because in most cases they cannot be achieved without serious training.  So this is what I will put my faith in. Runner A beats runner B by X minutes in marathon U and runner B beats runner C by Y minutes in the same marathon U;  runners A, B, and C have been hitting near career bests in shorter races around that time, while their marathon to 5 K time ratio is less than 10. Runners A, B, and C all break 2:40. Then runner A beats runner B in marathon S by the same X minutes and runner B beats runner C by the same Y minutes. If I can find three runners meeting the above conditions, I put a whole lot more confidence in saying that the difference between marathon S and marathon U is the difference of the respective times of our runners than in anything else - Course Tool analysis,  RunWorks calculator, perceptive arguments (I think I could have run the second half in this), statistical analysis, etc.