Superstars Competition half-mile run record is 1:57.36?

Yes I too remember Evander running the 800 in the superstars competition when he was a light heavyweight. I was blown away by the 180 pounder running the way he did.

just the facts wrote:

Soccer players do not "run" for 90 minutes unless you consider the 5 miles they "supposedly" cover in a game (in 90 minutes) running.

Because of the lack of technical skill and the inability to possess the ball, American soccer is a game of constant changes of possession and breakaways. This leads to dozens of periods of sustained running between 30 and 60 seconds with little more than active recovery between intervals. They easily hit five miles in a game, and they are very hard miles. Also, your use of quotes makes no sense.

just a sidenote on hollyfield, he ran a 48.4 for 400 in high school and his son evander holyfield jr ran 21.94 for the 200 and 47.40 for the 400 in 2007 in heats of the SEC championships.

just a sidenote on hollyfield, he ran a 48.4 for 400 in high school and his son evander holyfield jr ran 21.94 for the 200 and 47.40 for the 400 in 2007 in heats of the SEC championships.

actually the 47.40 by his son was at a meet in atlanta on june 2nd 2007

and the 200 was at the auburn invite in april 2007

Sorry for the hard to understand post. I was agreeing with you that soccer is many short bursts.

I was replying to the post:

"We're talking about soccer, a sport that is constant running for 90 minutes."

I was implying that if soccer is "constant running" and they cover 5 miles in 90 minutes, it is very slow running. Not many runners would be happy with a 5 mile time of 90 minutes.

I didn't know that about Holyfield and his son. Thanks for the info.

Would expect Bob Seagren to have run a good 800 in Superstars, as he ran 52+ in 400h at USC in addition to pole vaulting.

I watched that race on ABC TV and I remember it for sure..he just bolted from the gun and blew the doors off everyone else with a nice even and smooth race. I was a high school 880 runner trying to break 2 minutes myself at that time so I remember it and I was impressed and inspired by the guy's studliness. Brian Budd was intensely competitive and had already competed AND WON in the World Superstars competition the year before (1978) and also it looks like he won the Canadian version too. The 1979 competition was in the winter (either in Florida or Carribean?) so it was his off-season from soccer in the American soccer league (not a high-paying gig at that time). He VERY LIKELY TRAINED HIS ASS OFF for this competition, as the money was VERY good and you got paid for winning individual events as well as overall.

check out brian oldfield running the 100yd. a dog tries to bite him near the finish--crazy.

oldfield was a redonculous athlete.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZkK7umu3JI&feature=related

Couple of things:

First a pro soccer player running 1:58 is not really a big deal. Pro soccer players run a several miles every day for conditioning and then their practices and games are full of sprint training. Combine the two and you get someone who can run a decent 800. Not world class but pretty decent. Remember this guy was a pro soccer player because he was pretty fast and good at running (among other skills of course).

Secondly, Evander Holyfield revolutionized the sport of boxing by regularly running interval workouts with the intervals being the length of his rounds in boxing. Until that point boxers mainly just did easy running for cardio, but Evander and his trainer took it to a new level and several times a week did repeats. His recovery between repeats was the same as he would get between rounds in boxing. So you take a guy who was a good high school quarter miler, is a crazy talented athlete, and have him do easy mileage 3 days per week and intervals 3 days per week and a 1:58-2:00 half isn't all the crazy of a time.

The 1:55-2:00 high school 800 runners need to get over themselves and thinking their time is better than it really is.

Makes sense, you take a guy with 48 second quarter speed and have him doing a mixture of easy mileage and VO2 Max intervals (3:00 repeats) and sure he can run a 2:02.

just saying here wrote:

What is so hard to believe about this? We're talking about soccer, a sport that is constant running for 90 minutes.

You americans have no idea what soccer is... 90 minutes of running? You gotta be kidding me. They only do a few sprints during a game and the rest of the game is stopped or they are walking.

They do as much as 10km each game if that much (that's the above average of each players distance covered). And most of it is walking and jogging slowly. They only do a few sprints, though.

The only reason they may have endurance is because of the training, as far as I'm concerned in europe only in the UK and Germany they do loads of fitness training during their workouts, because the new philosophy for soccer is doing every single exercise with a ball, which is the one adopted in the PIGS.

Just an example, Ozil, Real Madrid's player, an extremely good player but look at his fat belly.

Some interesting links:

Here is an old article on USMNT training-

http://magazine.stack.com/TheIssue/Article/3440/Speed_and_Strength_Training_with_Landon_Donovan_.aspx

The other link is from the last World Cup covering speed and distance-

http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/archive/southafrica2010/statistics/players/distanceandspeed.html

whirledpeas wrote:

check out brian oldfield running the 100yd. a dog tries to bite him near the finish--crazy.

oldfield was a redonculous athlete.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZkK7umu3JI&feature=related

Now we are talking.

Oldfield is one of the greatest athletes of our time.

He ran a handtimed 4.3 40 yard dash, a 10.6 100m dash, high jumped 7', and many other amazing marks at the weight of 280.

Check out some of Oldfield's youtube videos. Among other amazing things, Mongo dunked a 16 pound shot put on a 10' basket.

During a superstars competition, after Lou Ferrigno won the military press, Oldfield proceeded to press the winning weight 10 times. He was an extraordinary compinbation of size and speed.

We had a high school freshman run 2:04 first time out...he's been a mid-fielder since 3rd grade on an elite travel team that has been working their asses off for years. He also coasted through a 10:04 3200 first time out.

Soccer has spawned many a mid distance runner. I've also seen basketball players make a nice transition.

Soccer players basically do some mid-distance training.

They aren't training for specific track races, obviously, but often at upper levels 1) they run quite a bit to stay in shape, and 2) they do interval work to maintain their speed late in games.

They were running 800M not a Half Mile.

A blazing 2:19.85...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eqz_QfmxERI

LOL, they keep pretending 800M is a Half Mile!

2:08.29 by Renaldo Nehemiah.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZqITCB7yV8