Trail races are slower, and 7000 feet is a decent amount of climbing.. but he was in no danger of setting any land speed record. 15 min miles is not that much faster than walking.

So this proves you can speed-walk an ultra in a fasted state. Which is cool and shows how strong our bodies are. scott jurek is amazing at ultras, and a vegan - but he definately eats and runs off sugar.

What is it about the running community that makes them say ridiculous things like this?

The fastest average marathon pace I could find anywhere was 9m 6s for 20-year old men.[0] To say that it takes only someone "slightly" above average to maintain a pace 12% faster than that for an entire marathon is ridiculous. Just because a lot of people do it every year doesn't mean that it's a great accomplishment. For context, that means someone finished nearly half an hour sooner.

[0] http://www.pace-calculator.com/average-marathon-pace-by-age-...

Lets pick a real race. Say the 2015 Chicago Marathon.

Let's look at men 30-34

http://results.chicagomarathon.com/2015/?pid=list

3200 people there finished. So let's take middle, #1600: 4:11, which is 9:34 pace.

8 min pace is 3:29, which is something like finish 700 / 3200 in that age group.

So to me, finishing in 700th place out of 3400 people in a race is "slightly above average". But who cares, even the 9:30 pace is far above the 16 minute pace of OP.

Realize too, that many people running a marathon are running their 1 lifetime marathon - they never ever plan to run another. Drop all those out, and you will find 3:30 may be about average or even a tad worse among people who are serious runners.

I agree, my point was that the fastest "average" time I could find (regardless of quality of the source) was still sufficiently slow enough compared to the 8:00 pace figure that 8:00 is in fact not slightly above average.

As you can see in this [2] it climbs from a low of 2500 feet to 3700 feet. I'd estimate 1500 feet total so much less than in the article.

I usually place in the top 5% of men in most races.

[1] http://www.othtc.com/ultra/course/Course.htm [2] http://www.othtc.com/ultra/course/ultra%20maps/30kprofile.jp...

I make that a 3:30 marathon which I would suggest is rather more than "slightly above average" - you'd be in the first 25% male finishers at London 2015, for example.

Why not? Someone wanted to quantify "slightly faster than average", so I made up some percentiles. I don't think there is a scientific definition of "slightly faster than average" so I think I can do this. You could I suppose counter with you think it means "35th-49th percentiles" which is valid but doesn't really change the argument too much.

> Do we know the distribution of first-and-only marathon runners to repeat runners or is this a pure intuition?

Just intuition. It would be a tricky thing to survey, as you would need to wait for all current people who have ran exactly 1 marathon to die, to confirm they do not indeed run more .

I did look for those stats for London but I couldn't find anything relevant - I'd assume they collect that information on the entry form but it's possible they don't or just don't care to publicise it later.

> The average finishing time globally for 26.2 miles in 2014 was 4hr 21min 21sec – about 40 seconds faster than the average for the period 2009-2013. Men’s average finishing time was 4hr 13min 23sec, while women’s was 4h 42min 33sec – 29min 10sec slower.

I'd suggest your 3:30 was still definitely more than "slightly above average".

If you want to quibble about the median instead of the mean,

e.g. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/23/sports/23marathon.html

> In 2008, the median finishing time [for men] was 4:16, a pace of 9:46.

Which still puts 3:30 way above, I think.

I've run everything from flat, paved marathons to alpine mountain ultras. The paces are totally different. I'm going to be running a technical ultra a good 3-4 minutes/min slower than I'd run a flat road marathon.

I don't know what this moving pace thing is, if you choose to take a 45 minute break that still counts on the clock.

So at best, his 15 minute technical ultra translates into a 11 min mile road race, which is below average.

And pfft 2000m+ elevation gain over 50km. Those are gently rolling hills ;-)

I can walk up to an 8:30 mile pace. Elite race walkers can outwalk recreational runners; the paces are around 6:00 at that level, which is astonishing (though not in comparison with elite running of course).

If someone covered some distance at 11:00 to the mile, we have no idea whether they ran or walked without eye witness or video evidence of what it is their legs were doing.

I definitely ran my first marathon in 2003, in some 5:05:12. That's like 11:44 to the mile or thereabouts. I definitely made a point of not taking any walking steps in this thing. It happened by accident several times, but I immediately went back and re-ran those small stretches of the course where I had strayed from the pure running discipline. On subsequent ones, I didn't make a point of that at all, just the first one. I've never taken planned walking breaks or walked extensively, but I never re-ran any walked steps. The clock is ticking; no time for foolery! :)

I also want to point out that when running barefoot/minimal you reduce the stride and increase the cadence. In my experience the result of it is that speed its generally reduced, specially downhill and flat surface.

And by going completely barefoot the surface of the terrain it really defines the speed you can go. When going fast the pressure on the sole its greater and if the terrain its harsh you are forced to slow down. A lot of time until the point of walking, or even slower. In complicated terrains the potential outcome for stepping over the wrong stone it really makes you to be conscious about every movement, slowing down as well.