A lot of old guys WERE pretty fast

"Back in the old days ('80s are the old days?) there was no accurate way to measure the time so all these results are invalid."

By your logic Banister probably wasn't the first man to break 4 min. Do you really think stopwatches are a NEW invention? And the Cal Ten was a CERTIFIED course.

As a runner that grew up in the '80's I can say objectively that short courses back then were a reality. You can't just skirt the issue by not responding and hoping no one mentions it. If you're genuinely interested in why the times were fast you should look into all possibilities.

We had a local 5k where before 1988 the winning times were 14:mid every year. Then when we got it certified we had to lengthen it 279 meters to get to a 5k. Winning times were then 15:30 or so every year.

Guess what happened after it was made a true 5k numbers plummeted and we stopped making as much money. Back then people just wanted to say they ran a fast time. Now it's important for people to run on a certified course so they know for sure it was a legitimate performance.

I was extremely slow in high school in Northern California in the mid to late 1980s but even then I remember the large number of races and how so many people were running super fast times. How many 32 minute teenagers there were in just one race, the Oakland Brass Pole 10k. The fact that I ran a number of these at the time when I didn't work during the school year indicates that they must have been very cheap as well, but there would have been prize money.

Consider that the median of the population, i.e. the baby boomers was 20-30 years old. Then Frank Shorter won the gold medal in a race that had the nation's attention.

Boomers wanted to run like Frank. A lot of the boomers tried to get as fast as they could and a lot of runners trained to run 60 minutes or better for 10 miles and then, they could run no faster. Injuries followed; other time commitments. When most runners figured out they couldn't get faster (and even if he/she could, so what? No big reward for all that time spent) they moved on to other things.

If there was a similar boom today, or an incentive to run six minute pace or faster, you'd see the same numbers as the 70s-80s.

By the early 80s there were many certified races perhaps more than now. The focus was different. I ran in some marathons with a couple thousand and scraped top 15 with 2:30 or so. Today that would be top 3 and prize money. Hobby joggers almost look down on faster running.

The phenomenon can be explained by reading an article that appeared in "Marathon and Beyond" magazine sometime in the last two years. It was about a running club from Buffalo, New York (called the Belle Watlings) that won the Boston Marathon team title in the late '70s. If I remember it right, they were just a bunch of regular guys that ran 100 miles a week.

You don't have a lot of regular guys doing that anymore.

I have never been fast. I would say the scene is much worse now in terms of times. I think it is expectations and time.

People work more hours these days and a lot of people just workout to look good. They don't workout to compete.

Much of the growth in running has been at the old end and the slow end. A forty minute 10K was middle of the pack in 1980 in Colorado-and the pack was smaller and younger. 40 and 50 year olds who ran roadraces were very unusual in 1980. Now, the bulk of the field is 40 to 50 year olds. A 40 minute 10K will easily place you in the top 10% of any citizens' race run today.

My parents were born in 1930. It was all they could do to come and watch me run in the late 70s. Participating in such a sport was completely out of their generation's frame of reference. In a town of 10,000, there were three "old guys" that ran in my small town back then. Two were assistant high school coaches who both ran in college, and another was the mom of one of my teammates who took up running because she was driving her daughter to road races, and thought she might as well participate.

Ackley wrote:

The phenomenon can be explained by reading an article that appeared in "Marathon and Beyond" magazine sometime in the last two years. It was about a running club from Buffalo, New York (called the Belle Watlings) that won the Boston Marathon team title in the late '70s. If I remember it right, they were just a bunch of regular guys that ran 100 miles a week.

You don't have a lot of regular guys doing that anymore.

Agree. What people can't see just from looking at results from those days is how much running people were doing and how many of them were doing it. Almost any serious runner in those days could have introduced you to at least a dozen people running 100 or more miles a week regularly. It would be hard to do that now.

And it wasn't just elites who were running that much. "Regular guys" as you call them, were doing it too. The idea that it was a waste of time to run big miles if you weren't at least close to national class didn't exist. What happened was that a lot of those regular guys got really good.

Mister 'get a job!'

What are you talking about?

I'm not skirting the issue of short courses in the 70's & 80's. I know that there were many. But I clearly stated that the Cal Ten course was the PA-TAC 10 mile championship race in '83 and THE COURSE WAS CERTIFIED! I've mentioned that twice. How is that skirting the issue?

If any of my friends ran an unrealistic PR our first thought was: the course must be short. None of us wanted to claim a false PR.

Modern man wrote:

Back in the old days there was no accurate way to measure the time so all these results are invalid. Results got slower once modern timing methods were introduced e.g stopwatches etc.

The old days? I think of the old days as when my parents grew up, before I was born.

Measuring methods haven't changed, and the percentage of accurate courses was much higher in the 1970's than now. Probably very few of the courses around here are accurate now, except for the old ones. There used to be quite a few articles in running magazines (would be online now) about measuring courses. Watches with second hands and stop watches have been around a long time. I almost always carried a watch with a second hand or a stop watch to run, and digital stop watches have been popular since the 1970's.

I guess I missed the point that you were specifically talking about that one race and not that a lot of old guys were pretty fast in general.

I was talking about both. A lot of old guys were pretty fast in general and I used the Cal Ten as an example.

I could have picked any number of races, but picked the Cal Ten because it always attracted a fast field. So did the 'Wharf To Wharf' in Santa Cruz and 'The Mercury News 10K' in San Jose. There was a little race in Los Altos, the Willy's 5 Miler, that also had a small but extremely fast field.

I ran 48:24 at the Cherry Blossom 10 mile race back in 1980 and was the 11th american finisher, 12th overall. I was just some nobody running 110 miles per week, did 112 the week of the race.

In 1977 I ran Cal 10 in 55:11. I don't believe I was in the top 30.

Jim O'Neil finished right behind me in 55:13. He was 51 years old.

Simply more depth back then. More competitors and fewer participants.

And no chip timing in 1983 so there were likely a couple more under 60.

looking 'back' - late 60s early 70s there was a fair number of fast guys. I lived in SoCal and there was a decent number of road races and virtually every day in the summer there was a pretty high caliber track & field meet. Prob not 'pretty high' ... very high. Had Bruce Dern, Burt Lancaster, Dick Van Dyke and the Jacksons in attendance - If one was aware there were races throughout LA county (pretty big area) and or Ventura county - even Santa Barbara. It was not uncommon to see/race some prominent names. And they were quite fast - in the early 70s a sub 2:20 marathon was somewhat rare but by mid 70s times were dipping into teens.

I must say I didn't pay for a lot of races, by sneaking in. But entree fees were as has been mentioned $3-5. I ran Bay to Breakers without paying. Not real proud of that now - but I did it nevertheless. It seemed like race organizers didn't make much of a big deal about - at least I don't recall.

I did run one 10k race in Long Beach - and didn't get to race until 5-10 min before the start - not really enough time to register. Won the race by a long ways and asked the meet people if I could register - gave them the circumstances - they said no. I also 'ran' the Culver City marathon just out of HS. No real training for it. But Norm Higgins (I think) won in 2:15 - he was about 100 yrs old at the time.

At the time we had some nationally and internationally season runners who would show up from time to time. Summer track meets saw Bob Schul break WR 2 mile and about 4 or 5 guys over 2-3 years broke 4 min ... this was 67-69. Some World leading PV heights. pretty fast 100s, hurdles, relays - especially mid-long distance (880 to 3 mile) AND they were well attended- better than some of the meets I've seen now. AND the track meets were all free - sponsored by LA City Unified School.

It seemed like there were a lot of guys who were both serious and 'carefree'. Training was just being influenced by Lydiard, Igloi and others. Runners and coaches alike were sort of feeling their way thru - most relying on the tried and true interval approach (everybody ran 10x440 +/-. There was some exchanges in training methods - more by athletes than coaches. Lots of friendships during summer - and serious rivalries during other seasons. I ended up a 100mpw guy at a school that had 1 or 2 200mpw guys (sporadically) and many in the 120mpw range - all at paces you prob wouldn't believe - along with quite intense track sessions. Gotta say I left some races in training workouts. Okay - said enough

Same in England.

We didn't/don't have much of a college program, so after school, you would generally compete for a local club.

There were virtually no "Running Clubs" or "Jogging Clubs" and not a lot of age group competition, so basically anybody competing in a track, road or x-country place.

I can remember a race called the Klix 6, which was quite a good local race, but nothing like a destination or target race like Carlsbad. The year I'm thinking of, the first prize might have been something like a golf umbrella. On a pretty undulating course I went through three miles in 15:18, was back in the 30s and could not see the leaders, I think something like 32:22 scraped me into about 25th at the end. These days the halfway time (say 15:50) for 5k would have people thinking you were fast at most local races.

We also had regional and national road relays. I remember doing a 3 mile leg in 14:38, which made me about the slowest guy on a 12 leg team, and the team finished tenth in the Southern Area to scrape into the 50 teams that did the national road relay. That was just a local club and there would have been two other clubs at a similar level within less than 30 mins distance from us.

Modern man wrote:

Back in the old days there was no accurate way to measure the time so all these results are invalid. Results got slower once modern timing methods were introduced e.g stopwatches etc.

For Pete's sake, we're talking about the 1980's here, not the 1780's. We sent a bunch of guys to the moon about 15 years earlier- I think we had a handle on the technology for timing a foot race.