5000m World Record Splits: A Progression

Do you said the wind affected times. I disproved that by pointing out how fast a boxer run. Now it because Mo was tired. Mo wrecked he's a highly trained athlete and would actually be rested if anything after the break.

Complete nonsense on the whole field all only capable of .2 to .3 faster. One boxer running fast does not mean they all can.

Now get back to the other thread where you claim Jazy could have beaten Snell in the 1500m in 1964.

I've said before that it would be normal to expect Africans to enjoy ever increasing success as their populations and GDP grow.. What's more difficult to explain is the near overnight dominance that coincided almost exactly with the availability of EPO. Well you're obviously far more knowledgeable than me and I tip my hat to you in that respect but it seems to me that claiming that they would have dominated the 70's and 80's if it wasn't for the boycotts and subsequent lack of stimulus is frankly absurd. It didn't seem to affect West German runners, for example (the boycott of Moscow).

Yes, even with my limited knowledge of distance running history I'm aware that East Africa was producing outstanding athletes like Rono and Bayi etc in the 70s. I mentioned here a few days ago, that even in the 70's Kenya alone had a bigger youth population than the UK. Kenya had Henry Rono, the UK had Coe, Ovett, and then Cram. It's funny how proponents of the 'natural African superiority' view will point to lack of funding etc in East Africa at the time, and yet not accept that Europeans today have massive obstacles preventing the development of elite runners, such as horrendous child obesity, video game culture, over protectiveness on the part of parents, and competing sports (in particular football).

Also, there is the moral consequences of this 'African superiority' view to be considered. It can obviously be self-fulfilling in that young white distance runners in Europe and America probably lack now the self-belief that they can compete with Africans and don't devote themselves or move onto other things. But thanks for giving a defence of your position that doesn't simply involve the claim that EPO doesn't work.

Renato,

Have you ever seen in Kenya or Italy (or elsewhere) an EXTRA Talent that is clearly able to better the WR at some distance but never decided to train or reach any kind of fitness because was not interested in athletics?

rekrunner wrote:

The fact that you gave us the original quote, and still say it's just generally about doping in the two sports makes me doubt your ability to comprehend plainly written English. Or if you can comprehend the distinction, then I wonder why pretend you don't.

Ok, back to your lame ad hominem attacks. Why not, it's letsrun, and you got to keep trolling. However I'll ignore you again, until you get more creative with those.

Just for the fun of it, I'll look at the evidence as per usual:

wtfunny wrote:

And yet, we have all kinds of evidence that shows cyclists were doping during that time.

And yet, we have all kinds of evidence that shows runners were doping during that time, and still are.

Again...

I joined the conversation with this:

You responded with a lengthy post, ending with "In conclusion: you are extremely optimistic, or naive, to think that runners are cleaner than cyclists."

Your long post and conclusion led me to believe you did not really understand what I said, or what "wtfunny" said that I was clarifying.

Instead you saw this as an invitation to respond to something I did not say, and conclude with your own lame "ad hominem" attack.

Your stubbornness now leads me to the same conclusions. Either you still don't understand, or even worse, you did.

To suggest "everybody doped back then" is total nonsense. Steroids were banned in the 70's & 80's, and all medal winners were tested as was all world record performances for them to be ratified. There was also out of competition and out of season testing of British athletes long before the IAAF introduced such measures for all world class athletes. And the UK system caught out many domestic athletes over this period. If "everyone doped" then why were GDR and Soviet athletes (who clearly did dope as part of a state sponsored programme) so consistently better and with such superior depth to British and other western European competitors in those events that were considered at the time to be beneficial to steroid use? E.g. power events like sprints and field events, or women's events generally?

Other than steroids, which were not considered to be of any use by the current thinking of the day back then, there was not the plethora of peds that are available now.

Your use of a survey from 2011 where c. 50% of competitors admitted to using drugs, as some kind of evidence that athletes from the 70's doped in equal numbers is completely irrelevant. The likes of Coe, Ovett and other athletes from that era, got involved in an amateur sport where there was no or very limited money to be made. There just wasn't the same financal incentives to dope in 1980 as there was in 2011.

Canova has already stated that blood doping was of no use to events that were less than 10 mins long. No middle distance runners from that period (late 70s to late 80's) have ever been caught or admitted to having blood doped. Those that have been named are 5 & 10k runners from Finland and Italy. Thus not a thread of evidence that Coe or anyone else running 2 laps was having transfusions.

Blood doping was banned in 85 after a paper put forward by Coe and Moynihan proposed banning it. It would be very strange that if Coe had blood doped, that he would call for it to be banned, and then go on to run his fastest ever 1500m the following year! Coe was still running 1:43.3 at almost 33 in 1989, which would have still been good enough to make him the WR holder in the event until 1984! when he would have been subjected to OOC and OOS testing by the IAAF and UK athletics. It is perfectly believable that someone running such a time would have been capable of 1.5secs faster when he was 24.

With all the corruption exposed and the criticism Coe has faced as VP of the IAAF during Diack's tenure, it beggars belief that not a shred or sniff of corruption has been exposed or uncovered on Coe during his career. Someone in the IAAF or WADA would know if there was any chance of exposure, and there is no way that either he or the ruling bodies involved would have allowed him to continue as IAAF president.

So you are totally wrong to suggest "everybody doped" during that period and there is no evidence whatsoever that Coe took anything that was illegal or morally wrong.

I can't say if I saw somebody extra talented not interested in athletics. I can say I saw somebody extra talented only partially interested in athletics, able to reach very good results, but very far from his hypothetical potentiality.

Some name :

Cornelius Chirchir, if had continuity and motivation in training in my opinion could be able to run 1500m under 3'25".

Raymond Yator, could be at the level of the current WR of steeple, if more interested in training and less in drinking.

Gilbert Kipchoge, whom few people know, running with me 1'44"3 with very little training, and long periods of vacation.

But also among athletes who were at the top of the lists, I can have something to say :

Stephen Cherono (Saaeed Shaheen) : in spite of the WR, he was far from his real limits, because a stupid accident terminated his career when 24 only. Without that accident, I'm sure the WR could be today well under 7'50" (and frankly I don't see any athlete of today with a talent close to his talent).

Nicholas Kemboi : he ran 26'30" with two months of real preparation in 2003, and in 2005 was always better than Moses Mosop in every training (long distance, speed and speed endurance). Since Moses won bronze in WCh in Helsinki in 10000m running the fastest last lap (more than Kenenisa), I think Nicholas, if not spiked 4 laps to go and suffering in his tendon, could also beat Bekele that day, and had the talent for becoming WR holder very close 26'.

The list of athletes of great talent who, in spite of their final results, analyzing their training, their life and their behavior, were not able to achieve their potential best performances, can be very long, in any Country.

This is the reason because I well know the current WR are not product of doping, but of talent (I speak for middle and long distances) and in several cases could be also better, in clean way, if some athlete was more lucky, or more motivated and more serious in training.

Finally done sense. This at least makes sense Bekele always looked to have a faster finish over 200m. Over 400m it's less certain and Mo',s poor start would be less if a factor.

I don't agree on Bolt that lack of testing cannot be ruled out to have affect. Over 100m everyone under 9.80 failed a dope test. So add on .2 to them and that makes Bolt .4 faster than anyone who ever lived. He never improved over 400m by the way. That's not to say he is not talented. All the sub 9.80 guys doped and he beat them.

I recall being accused of cherry picking once by picking a group representing 85% of the world's population, to represent "everyone else" in a comparison to East Africans. In many threads, I spend a great deal of words clarifying what I previously said, because of gross misunderstandings, and defending myself against things I did not say. I think this myth of shifting goal posts are really misinterpreting me unshifting the goal posts back to where they started. Just look at this thread. I jump in to clarify an obvious mistake, and somehow I immediately have to defend myself against "casual obsever's" non-factual conclusion that I believe runners are less dirty than cyclists. I've written thousands of posts that from the beginning, ask what does "EPO works for Kenyans, like everyone else" mean, when most of the world plateaued before EPO. This goalpost has never changed. The problem with "casual obsever's" posts, is that while he often brings information, there are always elements of exaggeration combined with faith to help bridge the gap from facts to his conclusions, and we cannot reach his conclusions from the information alone. Baumann was busted for steroids, and yet we must conclude that EPO helped him two years earlier. Coe (allegedly) has some character flaws so this makes him part of Diack's inner circle and IAAF corruption. Diack creates an "unofficial" structure, at first with Russia, and therefore Diack must have also "bribed" Paula to protect her from blood tests which were not enforceable, and in any case did not exceed suspicious thresholds in effect. The list is almost as long as the number of his posts. You mentioned to "research the spring classics", when I already included "many one day events". I'm not sure how your very different cycling stories and running stories help show that the "narratives are the same". Thanks for sharing these very different "narratives".

We don't have to just believe they would have dominated. East Africans started dominating World Cross Country in the 1980's. In 1981, Ethiopia beat a strong American team, and Kenya took third. Eventually they started dominating both senior and junior events, showing unusual depth for relatively small populations -- long before EPO was synthesized. What are the moral consequence of accusing winners of winning only because of doping? It can obviously be self-fulfilling in that young white distance runners in Europe and America probably lack now the self-belief that they can compete without doping and don't devote themselves or move onto other things.

Coevett wrote:

... but it seems to me that claiming that they would have dominated the 70's and 80's if it wasn't for the boycotts and subsequent lack of stimulus is frankly absurd. It didn't seem to affect West German runners, for example (the boycott of Moscow).

...

Also, there is the moral consequences of this 'African superiority' view to be considered. It can obviously be self-fulfilling in that young white distance runners in Europe and America probably lack now the self-belief that they can compete with Africans and don't devote themselves or move onto other things. But thanks for giving a defence of your position that doesn't simply involve the claim that EPO doesn't work.

And yet, only one East German was caught, despite apparently all of them having been heavily drugged up. So the tests were all but useless.

Because well-organized state-sponsored doping beat state-encouraged and -protected doping. Remember Carl Lewis beating everyone from the East, and then it came out that USATF protected him? To no surprise.

Remember also that the GDR had a highly developed talent-search system, which provided them with yet another advantage that we had to overcome.

Strawman discussion. The argument went to other way: even today, the athletes are far from clean, although officially the climate had changed, e.g. by taking the doping tests away from the national federations - because they kept covering up for their drug cheats - and creating WADA.

Yes, we have learned a lot about Lord conflict-of-interest Coe's character in recent years. Honestly, how can you be a fan of someone like that?

Kenya and Ethiopia don't have a relatively small population. Even back in 1980 their under 30 population was greater than any European country. Today, Ethiopia and Kenya have a combined population of 150 million, which is twice that of any European nation. The important thing though is the age demographics are completely different meaning that both those countries together probably have more 18 to 30 year olds than the USA or most of Europe combined.

Lets just take football as an example of a siphon of talent. Say even just 75% of talented middle-distance runners in Europe would likely go into football these days by the time they are into their mid-teens, and the corresponding figure for Kenya and Ethiopia is something like 10%. That alone would mean that Kenya/Ethiopia should end up producing over 7 times as many elite middle-distance runners as Western Europe combined. Impressive domination, but not much to do with natural superiority.

Your last point is absurd. No, the answer is to fight harder against dopers, and the first thing to do is admit that there is a problem, especially in Africa. Having said that, the African doping epidemic certainly played a big part in the decline of European running in the 90s. What the point is denying it though, especially when Africans are getting popped every week? Are you saying we should cover up African doping busts lest they discourage clean European runners? Wow, that's a new level of stupidity on this board.

If 'state sponsored doping' beats 'well organized and encouraged doping' do you not think that it might also help the athletes evade positive drug tests? Might also be why the Soviet bloc male athletes rarely ran on the circuit and tended to have their most impressive performances behind the Iron Curtain.

rekrunner wrote:

We don't have to just believe they would have dominated. East Africans started dominating World Cross Country in the 1980's. In 1981, Ethiopia beat a strong American team, and Kenya took third. Eventually they started dominating both senior and junior events, showing unusual depth for relatively small populations -- long before EPO was synthesized.

Well just looking at the top 10 results for the 1985 world cross country, I wouldn't say Africa dominated.

Ethiopia yes had 3 of the top 6, but Portugal had 2 of the top 11 and the winner (Carlos Lopes). Ethiopia had a young population of 40 million and Portugal an already aging population of 10 million. Carlos Lopes, btw, would have been football player, but his father forbid it and so he joined the local track team instead.

Live High Train Low wrote:

Subway Surfers Addiction wrote:

I have no doubt that altitude training can be beneficial, this statement of yours is correct. But Mo hasn't been beaten by a Kenyan over 5 or 10 for ??? He does do training stints at altitude but he spends long periods at sea level but sleeps in an altitude tent. I think it was Ron Hill that blamed altitude for his problems at the 1972 Olympics (this could be wrong). But that was probably more him. I think it was Peter Snell (among others) who tested this and claimed live high train low was the most effective.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11509506

Good spotting

Finally they are getting tough with the Kenyan dopers :

http://www.newsobserver.com/sports/article186281418.html

Root It Out wrote:

Finally they are getting tough with the Kenyan dopers :

http://www.newsobserver.com/sports/article186281418.html

And they need to get tough with Ethiopia!

? "Back in Addis Ababa there is more evidence Ethiopia’s phenomenal track and field success is not purely down to the popularity of the sport and a genetic edge African-born runners possess. A high-profile female athlete is caught on a hidden camera asking another athlete about sourcing a new “doping programme”. She talks casually about her running schedule, admitting to having taken Eprex, a brand name for EPO, before one of her biggest victories, in Europe several years ago.

After much discussion she settles on a 45-day programme, taking EPO and human growth hormone on alternating days. It is agreed she will tell the fictitious doctor who has devised the programme about her progress and she will stop taking both substances a week before she is due to compete in order to evade the testers."

> a "high-profile" female Ethiopian is recorded ( interesting...who could that be? ?).

> a 45 -day program of EPO & HGH (GHRP-2? ?) used for the synergistic effects.

> credits EPO for one of her "biggest victories" in Europe.

> well versed in the glow times for these substances "in order to evade the testers."

Of course, there's absolutely nothing to see here since the sports has "cleaned up" it's act and the great performances we see now are the "real deal."

All is well & good...rainbows & marshmallows. ?

Subway Surfers Addiction wrote:

Yet to extrapolate a potential time off one lap is erroneous, it was a very, very good time run by Gebremeskel that day but he never got close to that time again nor has Ndiku ever gotten close to 3:27. Consistency is the only guide we have to make predictions from. The rest is immature speculation.

Yes and no. Let's talk about where all of this is coming from.

The idea behind the concept is that once you know both aerobic threshold and FRC you know exactly how much power an athlete can put down for any given duration (ignoring longer durations where fatigue resistance becomes a factor, or short ones where pure force matters).

With one lap, we can't extrapolate an exact potential, but what we can do is say "the athlete could have run faster than this". How much faster, it's hard to say; but for a 52 it's a minimum of 10s. With more power data as that grows more popular we will be able to hone in on a much more exact figure for this. So with an athlete that runs 13:05 and closes in 52 we know he can run at least 12:55. That's all we can say. Whether he can run 12:05, 12:35, or 12:55 we don't know.

Now if we start to have other fast performances, then we can get an idea. The idea is that if you know two performances, they are going to decay, based on FRC. Take a hypothetical athlete with zero FRC. This doesn't exist but illustrates the concept well. I'll use power because it's easier to conceptualize, and running lap times require exponentially more power.

If this athlete could run 400 in 60s, that would have to come entirely from aerobic energy. Aerobic energy is 100% sustainable, so he could run 800 in 2:00, 5k in 12:30, and 10k in 25:00. This is why you see that athletes that are stronger decay less over time, because aerobic power is a constant supply. You can supply 300w/350w/450w/whatever it may be aerobically for a sustainable period.

FRC on the other hand is a limited reservoir. You have X amount of it, usually measured in kJ. If someone has a 24kJ FRC that means they can do 400w anaerobically for 1'.

Or 800w for 30s.

Or 200w for 2'.

Or 40w for 10'.

Etc.

This is why faster guys decay quickly. A guy with a small FRC, say 12kj, is losing a much smaller amount of power each time the duration increases. Let's take our two examples, big FRC guy and big aerobic engine.

Athlete A: Big aerobic engine might have a threshold of 450w, and an FRC of 6kj

Athlete B: Big FRC monster might have a threshold of 420w, and an FRC of 24kj.

Now how does this breakdown?

Well at all durations (longer than about 1') power is simply aerobic + anaerobic. So at 1':

Athlete A can do 820w (420w aerobic, 400w anaerobic) so that might be like 50s pace

Athlete B can do 550w (450w aerobic, 100w FRC) and gets obliterated running perhaps 54s pace

Now at 5' we can see the gap closing

Athlete A can do 500w (420w aerobic, 80w anaerobic)

Athlete B can do 470w (450w aerobic, 20w anaerobic)

Now out at 30' we have

Athlete A can do 433w (420w aerobic, 13w anaerobic)

Athlete B can do 453w (450w aerobic, 3w anaerobic)

At this point, athlete B, our 10k runner is faster. But of course he can still lose in a slow race. If he run at 420w, that would be at threshold for A, so both A and B would arrive at the the last lap with the full tank of FRC, but now it's A with 24kJ vs B with 6kJ. B gets blown out.

Now of B runs at 430w....then it's different. B is below threshold, and still arrives to finish with 6kj. Meanwhile, A has to run at 430w, 10w of which must come from FRC, so that's going to leave runner A with 6kJ as well, now it's a dead heat who wins. If B runs a bit faster than that, then A will arrive with even less, and likely lose. And of course if B can force A to run faster than 433w, then A will be unable to hang and be dropped.

Renato Canova wrote:

EPO works at its best for events lasting around 10 minutes, directly connected with the Aerobic Power and the Lactic Threshold, because its effect is to raise the LT. However, how I explained before, the increased viscosity has a NEGATIVE effect on the velocity of the blood circulation, and, when we have a long intervention of the circulatory system in the performance, LONGER IS THE RACE, LESS IS THE ADVANTAGE, because the disadvantage of a reduced velocity of the circulation becomes, minutes after minutes, bigger, and, when we speak about Marathon, THE DISADVANTAGE IS HIGHER THAN THE ADVANTAGE.

Not buying it! ? Here's why:

And here's some marathoners who were involved with O2-vector doping (either tested positive for rEPO or were sanctioned for ABP hematological anomalies):

Ekupe (2:05)

Bouramdane (2:07)

Kiprotich (2:08)

Di Cecco (2:08)

Ornelas (2:10)

Barbi (2:10/2 x rEPO positive).

And lets not forget the gals:

Jeptoo (2:19)

Sumgong (2:20)

Shobukhova (2nd all-time fastest marathon! ?).