Why the Sub4s of today are bogus.

SDSU Aztec wrote:

BSPenn wrote:

I watched a replay of Leo Daschbach's tremendous mile run. He is credited with running a 3

Call me a purist, but I don't like to kid myself (too much, LOL!!)

I remember meets being cancelled because of rain. One time, an invitational I was looking forward to running in, was cancelled because the sprinklers accidentally ran the night before.

All weather tracks are a good thing.

Haile G DEMANDED the track be sprayed down with water before a 10,000m, he claims it made it easier to run on.

Sub 4 is sub 4. So much more advancements in training, health, and not just simply the track are present now and believe it or not. We have better athletes now

Ryun's 3:55.3 in HS was on a synthetic surface in '65, not a cinder track in '66.[/quote]

Even if it was asphalt, that is slower than today's trampolines.

However, how do you know it was "synthetic." Prove your statement.

On the flip side, one small, but potentially very significant, disadvantage to runners today is hand timing vs electronic/FAT timing. Any sub-4 miler that broke the barrier with a 3:59.8 or 3:59.9 hand time, and maybe even a 3:59.7 or 3:59.6 might not of achieved the feet if it were electronically timed. Conversely, some may have achieved the mark if their time was hand vs electronic.

I think hand timing rules were (and maybe still are) the average of three or more hand times per individual, but throw one out if was an outlier.

But think about it. How many times have you raced and heard various hand times coaches, fans, or friends have delivered to you (before you had a chance to see the electronic time). The electronic time is often .1 to. 4 or .5 slower. Ok if you say I ran 1:52.8, well then I probably ran 1:53 something, for example.

The typical conversion from hand to electronic is to add .24 or .14 depending on the distance. But more often than not, even the official hand timers have a greater error than those numbers.

Here is an interesting example. Back in the 1990s, two USA runners ran their season best in a 5k in the same race. One was 8th and the other 9th. The 8th place runner ran 13:58.94 FAT, and for the 9th place runner the FAT malfunctioned for him only. No photo occurred. The back up was hand timing. The hand times on the 9th place finisher were 13:58.6. So even if u decide to add the .24, the 9th place finisher was credited with a faster time than the 8th place finisher, and subsequently finished higher than the 8th placer finisher on the year end USA marks list.

So as far as timing is concerned, today’s runners basically have a tenth or few tenths of a second disadvantage compared to those that ran hand timed races.

coach g:

Jim Ryun could have run on a polyurethane track. Polyurethane was invented to replace rubber. So, it was, at best, a soft rubber track in 1965 that he ran on, and you have yet to prove even that.

He ran faster in 1966, and that was on Cinders.

ugvghjj3454ty wrote:

Please stop quoting the OP!!!

It makes reading this site a chore!!

Oops, I quoted the OP.

Ryun's 3:55.3 in HS was on a synthetic surface in '65, not a cinder track in '66.[/quote]

DEFEND your statement!

Seppo Kaitenen wrote:

As someone who ran 3:52 on a cinder track, I can tell you that, at the very least, Nike's new Viperfly track spikes should be banned.

BTW the cycling hour record is now over 34 miles. That's a big difference from what Merckx did.

I believe that a sub4 is a sub4, but still really think the OP's ideas are very cool. And it's really awesome that Seppo K. has posted here!

doctorj wrote:

You are a purist? then call for full naked races, barefoot as the Greeks used to.

This would be one way of increasing TV ratings and making the sport more popular again ...

Wow, that's a fascinating obeservation. So does this mean that Bannister was not really the first sub 4? - an over-excited timer could have easily stopped his watch early. The history books will have to be rewritten and put Landy as the first sub 4 as his effort was over 2 seconds under the barrier which should be beyond the margin of error of hand timing.

In "No Bugles No Drums" Snell said the track in 1965 was synthetic. Synthetic tracks then were a far cry from the ones today. They were usually a mixture of asphalt and ground up rubbers bits and were generally hard, like a highway, unless the weather was fairly warm. Then there would be a bit of "give" to them.

Did they give an advantage over cinder or clay tracks? At times, definitely. As meets went on and you'd had distance races where lots of people were running in lanes 1 and 2 the cinder tracks would deteriorate as the meet went on. That did not happen on an asphalt composition track so if your race was late in the meet you'd likely run slower on the cinder track but if the race was early in the meet a really good, well maintained, cinder track would be as fast if not faster. And of course the advantage goes completely to the synthetic track if there was rain.

This whole invalidating modern-day performance mentality is one of the many reasons why these kids call it a career near the end of college.

Start off calling their peak high school performances as "not that great compared to what he had to do" and add in the fact that in hindsight they have to deal with terribly planned USATF meets and the awful pay. Might as well leave quietly after college ends and just forget about the whole thing happening.

Technology to improve performance is a part of virtually every sport that involves equipment or surfaces on the planet. You name it: golf, tennis, skating, skiing, gymnastics, baseball, football, basketball, bowling, kayaking, whatever. So why should running be any different?

That being said, those performances should certainly be respected for the greatness that they were, given the technology of their time in history.

I ran 4:10.8 on a cinder track in 2006 and my legs were fried.

I look at it more like what incredible athletes those guys from the past were to run so fast with such primitive technology and training methods relative to today. Kip Keino ran 3:34.9 for 1500 in 1968 at 8000ft elevation! That's worth 3:29 at the absolute slowest with today's shoes and tracks and at sea level.

With Bannister, it has to be understood that a big part of it was mental. There were many people at the time who said sub 4:00 simply could not be done. For years, men would get close, but once Bannister broke it, John Landy broke it too something like a month later, then Bannister's two pacers during his sub 4:00 also went under 4:00 the following couple years. It was a psychological barrier as much as a physical one at the time.

Any guy who runs sub 4:00 today no matter the conditions is in an insanely tiny club of the world's most athletic humans.

The "tuned" tracks make up for Ryun doping

Kip Keino ran 3:34.9 at 7200 feet actually. The closest NCAA D1 site for the altitude adjustment is Laramie, Wyoming at 7188 ft. They give 9.2 seconds for a 3:56 1500m! For 3:35 it would be a bit less than that but close. In other words, the NCAA would give that performance the equivalent of about El G's wr, right around 3:25.9-3:26. Now Keino was an altitude-born and raised athlete who was not affected as much by the altitude and never ran faster than 3:34.9 at sea level. He had a fantastic pacer in Ben Jipcho in that race. To this day, I think only one altitude race has been faster, a 3:33, I think, in Kenya at maybe 5800 or 7000 ft, so it's clear that Keino could have run 3:29 or better at sea level on that day, and Ryun could have run faster than that in his 1967 shape with a pacer at sea level, even on cinder.