Is one reason today's runners are fast because fast runners getting together and having kids is more common?

Proponents of long term athletic development would have young kids do multiple sports year round as opposed to year round running.

This is a really interesting question. Prior to the 60s / 70s, women had limited opportunity to pursue their ability in both sport and career. This continued to a lesser extent through about 1980. From the 80s, women have broadly had the ability to pursue sport and career opportunities. As such, men and women who have similar interests and abilities in sports (and career) can now find each other much more easily than they could have 50 years ago. So I think in fact that we probably do see more fast runners as a result - and maybe more slow ones as well. I wonder if increased ability to select for partners with similar intellectual and athletic interest and ability is increasing the standard deviation for both among the population.

You guys are hilarious. Like this has never been thought about before. If only someone had studied this phenomena like 140 years ago!

I’m not being facetious.

Perhaps true with humans. But not true with horses. Horses are much more selectively bred than humans yet the current track record for the Kentucky Derby was set in 1973. 90% of Derby-winning times have been 2:01-2:03 since then. Needless to say, every major running record has come down significantly in the last 50 years.

I didn't know Jimmy the Greek posted on here.

Adjusting for today's advanced training and jockey tactical knowledge, thoroughbreds are no faster than the 1700's - hundreds of years of data proves it. For every standout with track parents, there's numerous whose are not.

Definitely not just the pandemic, people were already running quite a bit faster before it

it's because they all wanted to grow up to be like the great Galen Rupp. He paved the way that Alan Webb failed to pave.

Indeed, there are studies showing now that one reason income inequality has increased is because men and women with high incomes are marrying each other quite often, thereby doubling family income.

Speedy father and speedy son/daughter

Leroy and Cameron Burrell

Willie and Kellie White

Lennox and Inger Miller

Kevin and Noah/Josephous Lyles

Really not all that many

Tons of speedy brothers.

It's similar for any activity that requires participants to be competitive by their early twenties, at that latest. If they have a family background which encourages them, they will be far more likely to succeed. Not just in running or in any sport, but in academia and professional careers too.

Yes, some can succeed despite no family help and others later in life, but if a kid hadn't established those habits by the time they are a teenager, they are not only fighting against their competitors but their own late start.

I also see runners who have got the talent but who have never been encouraged to be motivated or single minded enough to work through the hard training and early failures to stick at it.

If you follow Jordan Peterson/A Tate etc who are popular amongst many young males now, they advocate AGAINST marrying successful women and I guess that would include runners. They tell their followers to choose "traditional" women and homemakers, and you just know that kids from that sort of family background are going to struggle against nature and nurture to be motivated individuals. Some might succeed despite it. The irony is that they mistake traditional women for non motivated women. Outside college, the discipline of athletics usually necessitates quite a spartan, disciplined lifestyle with an emphasis on healthy eating, low consumption of alcohol, etc..

I suspect we will see more and more successful runners coming from sporting families in the future and more of a divide between them and the general population.

Don’t forget Bershawn Jackson and his daughter Shawnti Jackson, the current US HS record holder over 100m

Casey Combest (US Hs record holder over 60m) and his son King Combest, the current 8th grade record holder over 60m, and this past winter clocked a 6.90 over 60m as a hs freshman

Makes sense to me, even at the hobbiest level. I feel like we got a lot more post here 20 years ago about wives being mad that the husband is off running too much. Nowadays more and more runners are getting together due to various clubs, dating apps and easier to do long distance relationships.

Fair point. But generations of assortive mating can have powerful effects and there is definitely assortive mating in long distance running. If the theory of assortive mating holds , we might expect to see fast runners get faster and average runners get slower, thanks to clustering of relevant genes at the top. It is, of course, hard to assess performance of the average runner given secular trends..

Yes, but there was no assortive mating based on stature. Between any parent pair and their offspring, there will typically be regression to the mean, except when assortive mating is carried out over multiple trials/generations. Statistically, the odds start to tip the other way after repeated trials.

Knowledge and coaching is a big factor as well. If the kid's parents were great runners they already have the knowledge and background to coach the kids. Will Sumner's mom was his high school coach. Most of us are/were coached by some lousy gym teacher who has no sense about the sport. Now you got Sean Brosnan's or parents like Coach Sumner and the sky is the limit for those that want it.

Sumner's parents were both All-Americans at Villanova. He is a genetic hack. It's wild