Look out for Jim Walmsley
The U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials are in less than a week, and there’s constant buzz about every true contender in the 260 qualifiers. So I’m by no means the first to talk about Jim Walmsley.
But I might be among the few who will say they think he can actually do it.
Walmsley is an ultrarunner who holds the record at the Western States 100, a 100 mile race in the Sierra-Nevada Mountains in California.
He’s got course records across multiple other trail courses, but Western States is the most high-profile.
Leading up to the trials, he’s clocked 175-mile weeks and 30-mile long runs at paces around 5:45 per mile leading up to the trials. On one particular workout, he covered over 2,000 feet of elevation change . The course in Atlanta has around 1,300 feet, and is widely considered, and feared as, an extremely hilly course.
What’s so exciting about Walmsley’s presence in the Trials is how fresh and how unexplored his training style is.
He’s been taking notes from Japanese runners from the ‘80s on high-volume training, while also incorporating long tempo efforts and shorter interval workouts.
This style could pave the way for American distance running the same way Bob Larsen did back when he popularized the tempo run in America.
In Houston, Walmsley qualified for the Trials with a half marathon time; 1:04:00. It was the exact time needed to qualify for the race. He also ran 1:02:13 at a different half marathon in Arizona, but that course was 286 meters short of the full 13.1-mile distance. But it’s clear that he was on his way to a personal best had the course not been short.
What’s significant about that is how Walmsley was able to, at such high volume and intensity, qualify for the trials with a race half the distance that has an arguably harder qualifying standard than the full marathon’s 2:19:00. It was clear from his training that the endurance would be there. It’s Jim Walmsley, after all. But what his halfs showed is that he’s got some of the speed he needs, too.
To some degree, it’s like if a slugger was chosen for the all-star game over his prowess as a shortstop.
Walmsley’s going to face some steep competition in a field of sub-2:10:00 marathoners that includes Galen Rupp, 2016 marathon bronze medalist in Rio and 10k American record holder.
But I think he’s going to be written off by the top contenders far more than he should.
Credit: @walmsleyruns