Missy Franklin Wins Olympic Gold 13 Minutes After Her Previous Race - Could This Ever Happen In Running?

Olympic trials 2008.

Angelo Taylor

400IM Final run at 4:17 pm:

- 48.42 3rd place.

400m Quarterfinal starting at 4:24 pm, but running in heat 4.

- DNF

I would have to guess it was about 12 minutes between event for Taylor.

Montesquieu wrote: To put it simply--runner's have to contend with gravity, but swimmers do not.

Seriously? Maybe you didn't a physics class?

To everyone saying these events were sprints - not entirely. Her first event was the 200 free. This is the third longest freestyle event after the 50 and the 100. It took her 1:57.57, about how long a women's competitive 800 will take. We certainly don't consider the 800 to be a sprint or the type of event you can easily do again and again. Her pr, by the way, is 1:55.06, so she put up a solid effort, this was not joke of a swim.

The backstroke took her 58.33, so a little slower than a female 400 hurdler would take.

This could never be done in running, an 800 within 3 seconds of your pr followed 13 minutes later by a world record 400 IH.

Swimming is a joke.

Adam C wrote:

Paavo Nurmi's 1500/5000 double at the 1924 Olympics is pretty darn impressive. I always thought the two races were 90 minutes apart. But according wikipedia they were just 26 minutes apart. That sounds wrong to me but who knows.

Perfect comparison. Nurmi dominated the sport when it was nowhere as competitive as it is now. Swimming must be at that level.

jeepers wrote:

This is the third longest freestyle event after the 50 and the 100..

Make that third shortest :)

jeepers wrote:

To everyone saying these events were sprints - not entirely. Her first event was the 200 free. This is the third longest freestyle event after the 50 and the 100. It took her 1:57.57, about how long a women's competitive 800 will take. We certainly don't consider the 800 to be a sprint or the type of event you can easily do again and again. Her pr, by the way, is 1:55.06, so she put up a solid effort, this was not joke of a swim.

The backstroke took her 58.33, so a little slower than a female 400 hurdler would take.

This could never be done in running, an 800 within 3 seconds of your pr followed 13 minutes later by a world record 400 IH.

Swimming is a joke.

Three seconds in swimming isn't the same as three seconds in running. Water resistance is high, so the effort curve to take off additional time is steeper.

The men's 100m freestyle world record is 46.91. The 1500m world record is 14:34, which is 58.33 per 100m - certainly no one is going to run a 5k at 11.x seconds per lap slower than WR 400m pace.

"A 17 year old could win a running event if they had put in two a days - running 4 hours/day, like a lot of these young swimmers have done since they were 6 or 7 years old. It seems like there is so much ignorance on this site as to just how much work these very young kids have put in for years. Most Americans start running much later and after trying many different sports in their youth."

Really. In all the world, no one has noticed that if they just worked as hard as the swimmers do, they could be a 17 year old olympic champion? So it's not that there is something inherently different between the 2 sports, it's that not one single motivated runner has noticed this and done the "correct" training? Sorry. Not buying that.

Wisconsinite wrote:

This.

Not tearing Franklin down at all, because she's a very impressive swimmer, but what she accomplished is much more feasible in swimming for several reasons:

A) Both races were short distances. Not a ton of aerobic work for an Olympic swimmer.

B) She got to cruise her qualifier; nowhere near 100% effort required.

C) She swam different strokes. This is the key. Her legs might be a little tired, but your arms aren't affected too much when you switch strokes/techniques etc. It really would be like Bolt jogging a qualifier in the regular 100 and then coming back to race the "hands on your head" or "arms crossed" 100.

Also, I know (from pool-running, sadly) that one recovers much more quickly in the water than on land. Relates to the coldness and the pressure of the water. Perhaps that had something to do with it as well?

At the end of the day, they are two completely different sports and affect the body differently. Running is obviously a high impacting activity on the body while swimming is not. This allows one to come back much quicker.

My gripe with swimming is the multitude of events that are basically the same. Hence having someone like Phelps win a bunch of medals.

The IOC/IAAF should add the sprint and distance relays to the schedule and consider the 1/2 marathon too. Too big of a gap between the 10,000 and marathon.

As a side, I like how the open water swim at the Olympics is called the "10k marathon".

LI Runner wrote:

At the end of the day, they are two completely different sports and affect the body differently. Running is obviously a high impacting activity on the body while swimming is not. This allows one to come back much quicker.

My gripe with swimming is the multitude of events that are basically the same. Hence having someone like Phelps win a bunch of medals.

paragraph 1:

The effort in swimming is spread out across the entire body (at least 4 limbs). The effort in running is focused on 2 limbs. This makes the two very different in terms of aerobic and anaerobic thresholds. Which then makes the two very different in terms of effort. A previous poster said something about a Missy Franklin's 1:57 swim being like an 800m run. Considering the effort is spread across more limbs, the effort might be more like a 5k run. You get the point.

paragraph 2:

If you have that gripe about swimming, then you should have that gripe about running also. The steeplechase? The 400m hurdles? The 100m hurdles? The long jump and triple jump?

I don't think there's much overlap between the 100HH/110HH, the 400IH and the steeplechase. In fact, I doubt there's any athlete doubling up with any of those three events. The jumps have some overlap I suppose. But still, Phelps had eight medals after Beijing, and Bolt (comparable star) had three. The most a track runner has gotten recently is probably Carl Lewis with the 100/200/4x100/LJ and that was nearly 30 years ago.

This statement likely reflects the fact that I'm not properly schooled in physics, anatomy, or physiology, but... How in the actual hell is a two-minute swim race "more like" a 5k than an 800?! Not trying to pick a fight; I would love to know more about your reasoning behind that. How about rowing? We use all our limbs/full body there, too, but I'd say the effort of a 2000m eight sweep race (~6 minutes or so, depending) is subjectively a lot closer to a 1500/mile race than it is to any other conventional footrace distance, simply because of the time commitment involved.

paragraph 1:

The effort in swimming is spread out across the entire body (at least 4 limbs). The effort in running is focused on 2 limbs. This makes the two very different in terms of aerobic and anaerobic thresholds. Which then makes the two very different in terms of effort. A previous poster said something about a Missy Franklin's 1:57 swim being like an 800m run. Considering the effort is spread across more limbs, the effort might be more like a 5k run. You get the point.

paragraph 2:

If you have that gripe about swimming, then you should have that gripe about running also. The steeplechase? The 400m hurdles? The 100m hurdles? The long jump and triple jump?

raw dog wrote:

I don't think there's much overlap between the 100HH/110HH, the 400IH and the steeplechase. In fact, I doubt there's any athlete doubling up with any of those three events. The jumps have some overlap I suppose. But still, Phelps had eight medals after Beijing, and Bolt (comparable star) had three. The most a track runner has gotten recently is probably Carl Lewis with the 100/200/4x100/LJ and that was nearly 30 years ago.

I didn't mean that those events had overlap which each other. I meant that each of those events overlaps with at least 1 other track event (not listed). For instance, the 400m hurdles overlaps somewhat with the 400m dash.

SWIMMING is a pathetic sport. "let's make up 10 different almost identical events to blow out of proportion the importance of our sport, so the ignorant sheep can gawk in envy and stupefied awe at MICHAEL PHELPS THE GREATEST OLIMPIAN EVVVRRRR, by winning lots of medals in identical events (and don't forget all the relays)

It would be like adding 4x800, 4x1500, 4x3000, etc to the track events.

What a joke.

Sprint skiing in Nordic is somewhat analogous, but they don't have separate events on the same day and everyone who sprints are in the same rounds.

Still at the World Cup/World Championship/Olympic level they have a prologue in the morning (1 to 1.5K usually), then quarter finals, semis, and finals in the afternoon. Sometimes there is only 10 to 20 minutes recovery between the 2nd semi and the final. It's pretty brutal and I'd much rather ski an all out 10K (or longer) than face all those rounds.

BMA rower wrote:

This statement likely reflects the fact that I'm not properly schooled in physics, anatomy, or physiology, but...

How in the actual hell is a two-minute swim race "more like" a 5k than an 800?! Not trying to pick a fight; I would love to know more about your reasoning behind that.

How about rowing? We use all our limbs/full body there, too, but I'd say the effort of a 2000m eight sweep race (~6 minutes or so, depending) is subjectively a lot closer to a 1500/mile race than it is to any other conventional footrace distance, simply because of the time commitment involved.

Simply because of the time commitment involved? So forget the intensity, it's just about the time? So, 2 minutes of jogging is equal to the a 2:00 800 run? I disagree. The intensity is important also.

I suspect that in swimming, your heart/lungs get tired before your limbs. Or at least more so than running. Since your effort is not focused on fewer muscles, each muscle has to work less than it would in running. Therefore, the limiting factor might be your heart/lungs/breathing ability.

It's like sometimes when you are training for running and your legs are in better shape than your lungs. Never felt that before?

Sorry if that response above is a bit inarticulate or unclear. I'm trying to hurry up get off here so i can take a nap.

Ah I apologize for misunderstanding

It could happen in running, but its not really possible to have the range to win the 100 and the 400.