Why was American running terrible in the 90s?

Um, have you heard of Steve Spence?

I was curious so I did this research on my home state of CT. I looked at the 6th place finisher at the State Open which gets you the last all-state spot. I figured this would be a good marker of the quality of the running scene rather than the champion who could be an individual outlier. I started with 1981 since that's the farthest back I can find results. For 1986 and 1996 not all results were available so I used the prior year.

6th Place Finisher at State Open - 800/1600/3200

Times are truncated not rounded

1981 - 1:58/4:25-ish/9:56-ish (converted from 1500 & 3k)

1985 - 1:56/4:24/9:44

1991 - 1:59/4:26/9:53

1995 - 1:59/4:25/9:51

2001 - 1:58/4:28/9:39

2006 - 1:58/4:20/9:38

2011 - 1:54/4:20/9:26

2016 - 1:55/4:24/9:19

I was expecting the 90's times to be slowest and they are but not really different from the 80's which I expected to be faster.

But you can definitely see a shift in the middle and times today really are much faster for 3200 and a couple seconds for the 800 & 1600 too. Interesting.

Honest question; who has the Hanson’s grill up produced who performed other than Brian sell?

Raysism wrote:

I was a pretty good high school runner from 1988 to 1991 in a very large county (top 20 or 30 in county every year) and I don't think I ever ran more than 25 miles in a week. Our long run was a 6 mile run. My coach was a great guy, but he was just doing what all the other coaches were doing.

In fairness, though, I did a lot more low-level aerobic stuff outside of running than kids these days do (i.e., riding a bike, pickup basketball, tennis, beach volleyball). A lot of kids who run 55 to 60 MPW in high school these days don't do much other stuff outside. If you're running around outside 2 to 4 hours a day, you can probably get away with 25 MPW to some extent.

Agree. Same experience. We did all track workouts. Few, if any long runs even in XC and in XC season we did almost all easy runs 4-5 miles probably with only an occasional day of repeats. We did do hills I guess. But mileage was half what kids today do.

We had one weird kid on the team who would do long runs, like run 5mi home after practice or to school (we were like "what is wrong with him? lol). Not surprisingly, he performed way above his talent level compared to the rest of us.

la gente esta muy loca wrote:

Demographics.

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0sDT5GLuJ_k/XNw5Pm-uviI/AAAAAAAAyFs/l3GHxHrBx9QSGIGvhU1LsWasE9SlIwrxwCLcBGAs/s1600/Births2018.PNG

Underrated point

Of all the runners you mentioned above, only 2 were true distance runners - Trautman and Kennedy. Also, notice 1500m runners you listed had their best years in the late 80s (other than Holman), so it's kind of a stretch to include them in the 1990s generations of runners.

A different perspective:

Culturally speaking, the 90s were much different than the last 20 years. Kids weren't as intrinsically motivated to better themselves at pursuits such as running. Grunge was cool. Hedonism was popular.

Showing up to practice and running hard, even if it was interval based and low-mileage, was not deemed cool. Not that it is now, but at least today's kids seem to have a drive to be successful.

World Domination wrote:

This was just before the floodgates opened of East African nation-hopping. The US and other countries have benefited greatly from this, giving the illusion that we are much better now than we were in the ‘90s.

Thats not true, although yes we benefitted greatly from the imports for sure while we got up to speed. Our garden variety americans NOW, are starting to become very competitive from, I would argue, a few decades of more altitude training, and training with like minded/like talented runners in groups. Brazier, Houlihan, Coburn, Simpson, Rupp (siver 10k), are not east african. Times they are a changin', and if we quash what some cynical folks would call a east african doping problem, maybe we will see even more clearly.

EZ10Miler wrote:

4. New drugs. The theory before is that steroids didn't help distance runners because they just help explosive/strength based events. EPO came in and changed all that.

I think everything you wrote is a solid summary. I would just amend this point a bit: lots of distance runners in the 70s, 80s, and 90s did use steroids. I know this from talking to some old guys who were elite in the 70s/80s/90s and used steroids. They seem to help distance runners by aiding recovery between workouts.

But agreed, EPO is a much more effective drug for distance runners. Steroids help you recover so you can do more and harder workouts to try to boost natural EPO production (among other things). Taking exogenous epo is a lot more efficient and direct.

Of course in the 70s/80s, many guys were blood doping with transfusions. In some ways that is the more direct version of blood doping compared to EPO. Just directly make the change to hematocrit rather than taking exogenous EPO. So I'm not convinced the "EPO" era is quite as substantial as people claim. I think the other factors you mention were bigger impacts.

I other words.....demographics.

The GenX demographic lull resulted in - among other things - fewer people running.

It was also much easier to get into university.

Early on during the resurgence of American running, I think that the internet played a big role in disseminating training information. But its impact in the last decade has gone way beyond that.

Our sport is niche. It's not on TV, and it's not in Sports Illustrated. It was easy to live in your own bubble and think that you were good because you finished 5th in your high school conference. Today, everyone involved in the sport has an easy time of knowing what's going on around the country and around the world. 9:20 ain't so hot when you see a train of guys breaking 9:00 in the big high school meets.

The internet has also made it easier to follow the pro side of the sport, and not just the races. We get youtube videos and instagram telling us what elites are doing, day in, day out. That stokes enthusiasm and makes running cooler. It also makes those pro athletes more valuable to brands, so there's a much wider range of sponsorships available.

In the post-collegiate world, the internet has been huge in keeping people involved. If you're some 2:25 marathoner in 1995, you might have a few training buddies, but you're basically living in an isolated world where you and a couple of people care about what you're doing. With the internet, you can get hundreds of Strava kudos when you run a great race, even if only a handful of people actually saw you break the tape in person. It also allows you to maintain a sense of community with former teammates scattered around the country. I think this is the primary explanation for the explosion in Trials qualifiers. People feel like they can actually get some recognition and that there's a larger group of people supporting them.

I didn't think beyond my state. A lot of times not even out of my county. Fastest kid was a 4:23 1600m guy on the other side of the state I had never met. That was the standard but most of the fast kids ran 4:25-4:30. Then one day coach handed me Highschool Runner magazine and it had an article on 4:04 miler Michael Stember, I was blown away. HS kids ran that fast? GTFO. Then I became curious and searching the interwebz. None of the other kids gave a crap.

Dyestat came on late in the 90s. Before that there was this random guy (Phil something?) in Massachusetts who maintained a website of all time rankings of HS runners. On his list, you had guys like Jeff Nelson, Gerry Lindgren, Prefontaine , and some dudes in the 70s and that was that. A lot of tall tales of days gone by but nothing concrete in the present (90s). I didn't even know the fast guys in my own school from past years but somehow our gym was lined with names of studs from other sports going back the 70s. Track/XC was a third class citizen for the rejects and kids who got cut from other sports and black kids (of which we didn't have many in our school).

It was an era where you might get called a fag for running in short shorts. In the open. Or maybe you were sprayed with a water gun while being called a fag. I am not totally surprised kids opted to either skip the hard training on the roads or skipped the sport altogether.

la gente esta muy loca wrote:

Demographics.

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0sDT5GLuJ_k/XNw5Pm-uviI/AAAAAAAAyFs/l3GHxHrBx9QSGIGvhU1LsWasE9SlIwrxwCLcBGAs/s1600/Births2018.PNG

This is likely the real answer.

Juice Springsteen wrote:

Honest question; who has the Hanson’s grill up produced who performed other than Brian sell?

It wasn’t a matter of who Hansons or LETSRUN produced. It was the creation of concepts that paved the way. LETSRUN created a format that allowed running to progress. HANSONS brought back the importance of group training. I would say anyone that benefitted from a training group in the US has Hansons to thank. People are still learning from Letsrun.

American sprinting was great! You had MJ, and MJ too. At the time, neither had been busted. Lots of other great sprinters too. Even Carl Lewis was still hanging around.

How did you expect an American distance runner to compete with the likes of Morceli, El Guerrouj or Komen? That level of success had the price of extreme risk to personal health, not a common western ambition.

pavement88 wrote:

A different perspective:

Culturally speaking, the 90s were much different than the last 20 years. Kids weren't as intrinsically motivated to better themselves at pursuits such as running. Grunge was cool. Hedonism was popular.

Showing up to practice and running hard, even if it was interval based and low-mileage, was not deemed cool. Not that it is now, but at least today's kids seem to have a drive to be successful.

Um, the kids of the mid/late 80s and 90s (millennials - gasp!) are the ones who brought back American Distance running. Notice how the renaissance began when they started competing in college in the mid 2000s. They are beginning to age out, but look how much faster they ran, how much deeper the talent pool became, and the growing size of the medal haul they are continuing to add to.

Nike farm team? I’m not tryna bust your balls but how could the concept of a training group sponsored by a shoe company be so groundbreaking? I though runners trained at least in semi official groups and clubs back in the day

Kenneth Copeland, verified millionaire wrote:

pavement88 wrote:

A different perspective:

Culturally speaking, the 90s were much different than the last 20 years. Kids weren't as intrinsically motivated to better themselves at pursuits such as running. Grunge was cool. Hedonism was popular.

Showing up to practice and running hard, even if it was interval based and low-mileage, was not deemed cool. Not that it is now, but at least today's kids seem to have a drive to be successful.

Um, the kids of the mid/late 80s and 90s (millennials - gasp!) are the ones who brought back American Distance running. Notice how the renaissance began when they started competing in college in the mid 2000s. They are beginning to age out, but look how much faster they ran, how much deeper the talent pool became, and the growing size of the medal haul they are continuing to add to.

Right. High school kids in 1994 were not the ones leading the renaissance. Kids born in 1985-1990 were not running competitively in the mid 90s.

Hansons predate The Farm Team.

Hansons had no connection with a shoe company.

Hansons provided housing, travel, and equipment. I don’t think anyone has ever done this without shoe company money before 1999.

Shoe companies were forced to respond.

LETSRUN began with no sponsorship as well. 2 brothers that saw an opportunity. Why have they had no real competition? Because no one else is willing to make the same level of investment.

We have all benefitted.