All of the men's sprints are pretty much at their limit, 100 to 800. Hurdles haven't been capped yet because hurdling technique can still get better and the caliber of runners doing the hurdles can always get better (Grant Holloway actually isn't that fast on the flat but has perfect hurdling technique. Imagine combining his hurdling with Noah Lyles' top speed or Christian Coleman's start?). The Norwegian double interval method has quite literally unlocked new levels of performance from 1,500 to 5,000. It's enabled runners of pretty much every background to perform at an elite level in these events, and the great competition is going to keep driving down times. Can you imagine when some Kenyan or Ethiopian talents start implementing this training from a young age (I get that a lot of the Kenyan training is already doubles or triples that limit the intensity, but it is a lot more loosely regimented)? The longer events can all get faster as well as the speed is already there to run faster, but I don't think the limits of running economy, oxygen uptake, and fatigue resistance have been reached, and super shoes and nutritional factors (some legal, some not) can help greatly here.
All of the men's sprints are pretty much at their limit, 100 to 800. Hurdles haven't been capped yet because hurdling technique can still get better and the caliber of runners doing the hurdles can always get better (Grant Holloway actually isn't that fast on the flat but has perfect hurdling technique. Imagine combining his hurdling with Noah Lyles' top speed or Christian Coleman's start?). The Norwegian double interval method has quite literally unlocked new levels of performance from 1,500 to 5,000. It's enabled runners of pretty much every background to perform at an elite level in these events, and the great competition is going to keep driving down times. Can you imagine when some Kenyan or Ethiopian talents start implementing this training from a young age (I get that a lot of the Kenyan training is already doubles or triples that limit the intensity, but it is a lot more loosely regimented)? The longer events can all get faster as well as the speed is already there to run faster, but I don't think the limits of running economy, oxygen uptake, and fatigue resistance have been reached, and super shoes and nutritional factors (some legal, some not) can help greatly here.
Did El Guerrouj run double threshold? Bekele?
Ethiopians and Kenyans having genetic advantages to distance running is very much something that is real; however, what I am saying is that double thresholds have enabled basically any runner in the world to hit performance levels that we only thought Ethiopians, Kenyans, and EPO science projects (El Guerrouj) were capable of. The fact that that quantity of runners now have that capability is going to breed competition, and competition will drive down the records. Heck, the three best 1,500 guys in the world right now are a Brit trained in the US college system, a Norwegian that now has the 2-mile WR, and an American (albeit of Ethiopian ancestry) trained in the US college system, but there are also several Kenyans, Ethiopians, Brits, Americans, Aussies, Spaniards, and another Norwegian all nipping at their heals. We have never had such a cross section of nationalities with this level of capability in any event.