Why was American running terrible in the 90s?

The mileage connection is a bit tenuous since plenty of guys ran high mileage in the 90s.

The simple truth is we just didn't have too many <3:35 guys running 5000/10000/and up.

All US records 5000m to 800m are held by moderate mileage runners.

Demographics were a key factor also often neglected in this conversation.

Fewer births around 1970 = fewer athletes peaking in the 90s.

These were the world records in the early 90s : just under 13, just under 27 and just under 60'.

The US records haven't gained any ground on the world records since, we're still down ~ 2% across the board. If anything, we are worse at the marathon and half marathon than ever. Plenty of runners doing 120+ miles per week, nobody anywhere close to 58' or 2:02

Kennedy was far closer to a world record or a medal in 96 than anybody we have now relative to the current records When Kennedy upped his mileage for 10000m competition he ran slower and got hurt, career over.

First of all, excellent JS mention, Baby Ruth.

OK, here's a question and a possible point. I ran a lot in high school. Could do 75 a week, could sustain 70, and 80 was pushing it. My main event was 10k. Now, most of the distance runners at school were the same way, trying to do what was for each a lot of mileage and racing mainly standard distances that are still recognized today. Most did a marathon or 2 during prior to the start of senior year. That probably describes the scene at the time pretty well because there were a bunch of kids at the same races and it was hard to win our age group. Going under 3 got you nowhere near the podium for 17-and-under. This was late '70s and the very beginning of the '80s.

Thing is, I'd never heard of a 1600 nor 3200 being contested at the time. I'm not sure when these were invented, but 0 kids at my school ever mentioned running, training for, or spectating either of these. So, there must have been a time when teenagers became interested in non-standard non-events. I couldn't tell you when that was, as the first time I'd ever heard something like this mentioned was after the turn of the century.

Well, my generation produced some decent runners I suppose; their peak years would have been prior to the time period being discussed. Is it possible that the first wave of teenagers to hear about, train for, and race non-standard distances not recognized by USATF (or TAC, or whatever it was called then), IAAF, nor T&FN were the adults who underperformed when compared to generations prior and since? The OP and many posters seem to believe that there was a generation that didn't get it together, and various posters mention 1600 and 3200. Were these races invented early enough that the leading US runners in the '90s could have been involved with them when they were in high school?

I will admit to running a few non-standard races in my teens. Although I ran the universally recognized 10k a fair amount, and marathons, one could find a 3 or 6 mile race. This seems a lot like a 1600 or 3200, but they had been considered actual events in the Pre era, and that was just several years earlier. There was a big, hotly contested 10 mile and another 20 mile in my locale. So perhaps one cannot argue that random made-up non-official distances will ruin an entire generation of young runners - and ther adult runners they'd become in their primes.

Still, the question remains:

When were the 1600 and 3200 first contested? What years would the first to run them be in their athletic primes? Is there an overlap with that group and the American runners that the entire thread exists to point out were weak?

otter wrote:

I'm sure it has already been said here but:

- Low Mileage

- Stress on short interval training

Yes

In the 90s I went to the back of my high school library and dusted off a book by a guy named Arthur Lydiard. It said to run an hour a day and not race your runs. So I did and in one year went from a 18:30 to a 16:30 XC runner. Before I was running really hard intervals and really hard half hour “easy” runs as my training. Because that was what was popular at the time.

My simple theory: East African distance runners absolutely dominated and took Americans out of the spotlight in the 90',s resulting in waning interest. The combination of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, and movies like Prefontaine and Without Limits in 1997/98 renewed some interest. This interest produced Alan Webb. Webb broke the high school mile record in 2001 with a huge performance on a big stage. Webb's performance inspired a new generation of American distance runners. Thereafter, solid American performances become more standard again.

Leaded gasoline started to go away in 1975, and almost immediately, violent crime dropped.

What am I getting at? Life, everything, was far, far harder prior to then. We were being poisoned, everywhere. So that stops, and all that self-preservation effort went somewhere else. To running. To innovation. To self-improvement.

A couple years later, running fast is the thing. The early 80s see Americans going crazy at NYC. You know what happened with computers, with phones. To finance, yuppies, all that crap.

By the early 90s, though, all of us who'd lived through the leaded/non-leaded world were run out. The next generation wasn't as hard, didn't do as well. Only once we had the WWW, and everyone could see what everyone else was doing, did things start to improve.

Think about it.

Simple, the medicalization of distance running. All of the too groups are using grey area methods right up to the line. Here in the UK the governing body has even been implicated in promoting medicines to distance athletes. Mainstream use of medication like thyroid and asthma medication. Physiologists linked to groups and governing bodies. The 'team' ideology and promotion by corporate groups is far closer now to the cycling landscape than it ever was in the 90s. Let's face it, we haven't even seen how the top guys will perform with the new track shoes yet. The gap may be just as big when the Kent and and Ethiopians start popping 12.40s and 26.30's come Tokyo.

la gente esta muy loca wrote:

Demographics.

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0sDT5GLuJ_k/XNw5Pm-uviI/AAAAAAAAyFs/l3GHxHrBx9QSGIGvhU1LsWasE9SlIwrxwCLcBGAs/s1600/Births2018.PNG

I was going to mention this. Obviously if you have more kids to choose from your talent pool will be deeper.

Alan

And low mileage is a cop out. BK and TW didn't do low mileage. I wonder how many runners got hurt trying to emulate them? You try to do the training that makes you the most successful.

People waited too long to try the marathon. Our 10000m runners outside of TW were basically marathoners coming down instead of 5000m runners coming up.

But yea, simple demographics explains a lot.

Alan

Runningart2004 wrote:

I was going to mention this. Obviously if you have more kids to choose from your talent pool will be deeper.

Alan

China and India's lack of distance running success kind of destroy this theory, don't you think?

An Inconvenient Possibility wrote:

First of all, excellent JS mention, Baby Ruth.

OK, here's a question and a possible point. I ran a lot in high school. Could do 75 a week, could sustain 70, and 80 was pushing it. My main event was 10k. Now, most of the distance runners at school were the same way, trying to do what was for each a lot of mileage and racing mainly standard distances that are still recognized today. Most did a marathon or 2 during prior to the start of senior year. ?

So in HS your main event was the 10k and most runners had done a marathon prior to their senior year?

Just making stuff up or what? I'm calling BS on all that.

I think this is a case of "the older I get, the better I was."

I trained with and raced against a lot the guys I mentioned from the 90s.

My question is why didn't I run at 3:35 or better?

I barely qualified for the Trials.

Once I figure that out, I can question why there wasn't more distance and middle distance depth and starts in the 90s.

Not to nit-pick, but I don't think it is accurate to say that Hansons predates the Farm Team. The Hansons bought their first house to start the project in 1999. The Farm Team already existed. In fact, it won USATF Club Nationals in XC that year.

In any event, I agree that Letsrun was really important, along with Dyestat. I remember 2000 seeing guys like Ritzenhein and Sage trade off 8:41-43 3200 times in a single weekend, and the year ending with a bunch of guys under 9:00. Only a two years before Mark Pilja was the only guy under 9:00 in the 3200.

I think the way the Sage/Tegenkamp/Dobson class of 2000 and the Ritzenhein/Webb/Hall class of 2001 got so huge through Dyestat changed the way high schoolers across the country looked at thins.

Multiple reasons:

1. The economy was good in the 1990s. American distance success always correlates with a stagnant domestic economy. Our two "golden" periods were the 1970s and the last 10 years. When the economy is good for the average joe (not just the rich) Americans have too many options. The economy since 2000 has only been good for the rich.

2. The training was terrible. Anyone who claims otherwise wasn't there. I ran HS mid 1990s, and for a top 15 D1 XC program in the late 90s. Even on the west coast, you were a badasz if you broke 4:20. NOBODY was breaking 9:00. I remember when Adam Tenforde tried to break 9:00 at Arcadia. Did he even do it? Now 20 kids do it in one race.

Our college program was exactly like someone posted above--2 HARD track workouts per week. One 4mi HARD tempo (aka race) per week. The rest was mileage run too fast, and not enough. Almost no one on our team was consistently over 75mpw.

3. Pre-internet. LRC and other forums = Learning and trading information. Expanding horizons. Invaluable.

Not a reason, but a note: Fascinating to see today that when Paul McMullen (RIP) won the trials in 1996, the Oly standard was 3:38 and almost NOBODY could do it!!! Yikes.

Star wrote:

There was a low mileage guy who emerged at the end of the 90s who has gone on to have a pretty good career and is still going.

His name is Bernard Lagat.

.

FantasyIsland wrote:

An Inconvenient Possibility wrote:

First of all, excellent JS mention, Baby Ruth.

OK, here's a question and a possible point. I ran a lot in high school. Could do 75 a week, could sustain 70, and 80 was pushing it. My main event was 10k. Now, most of the distance runners at school were the same way, trying to do what was for each a lot of mileage and racing mainly standard distances that are still recognized today. Most did a marathon or 2 during prior to the start of senior year. ?

So in HS your main event was the 10k and most runners had done a marathon prior to their senior year?

Just making stuff up or what? I'm calling BS on all that.

I think this is a case of "the older I get, the better I was."

Absolute fact. 3 of us running, with my dad driving, went to a marathon my first year of high school. I went under 3 hours. No world record, but not bad for not having yet run for years and years. A couple of them and I went to the same event the next year. Actually, it may have been 2 of them besides me that first year and 3 the next. These were guys just from one school, and another guy at school had run another marathon long before Senior year.

I know there are others from that same era who would recall this, and it's hard to believe now, but kids used to race on roads in the '70s. If it was just my training group, we would have cleaned up the top-3 medals for our age group every time. However (I say fortunately, but one could say unfortunately since I would have picked up more trophies) every other teenage distance runner did the same. Or so it seemed, anyway, as it was not easy to win 17-and-under. If it was just a couple of them, we would have recognized and maybe known them, but an army of kids our age were at a random 10k. Not just one iconoclast who was trying to prove a point, but most of the distance crowd in the area. During the so-called running boom, this was normal. I understand why you'd find it hard to believe if you're 40 or younger.

So check this out. The second time we went to that marathon, I went a few minutes faster than before, getting into the lower half of the 2:50s. Again, nothing spectacular, but you certainly have to train to pull that off. I was so far down in my division, having hoped to be into the medals this time, that we didn't need to wait for the awards ceremony that was standard for road races at the time. Here's the good part of the story: I was behind the Girl's winner from our age group. That's right, high school girls went well under 3 hours in the era. I don't want to out anybody and mention names, but look at some of the old, well established races you know of. And look up the course records for each age/gender group if they're kept track of. I actually stumbled across the same girl's name recently. She still has the course record for a well-known race in my part of the country, for the age group she and I were in back then. And that's what I would expect: the course records for 17-and-under or 18-and-under are very likely to be set inthe '70 or '80s for races that existed, and were popular, at the time.

If you are too young to be aware of high school long distance runners, as opposed to primarily mid-D runners, that's cool. I mean, I'm old. There are those over 50 somewhere who can back this up, though. There was somebody beating me to the Junior Division trophy after all. It wouldn't be a miracle if a few check out the Board these days. One of my memories is of going under 34 for 10k, and not on a super flat course. It was a good race for me at the time but again, was shut out of the medals. Didn't place in the division.

The last point I wish to make clear is that I wasn't any superstar. Look at the US high school Boy's 10,000 record, how fast it is,and how long ago it was set (and, by the way, how little threat there has been to it). 2 points will be proven:

1) I was comparatively slow.

2) Teenagers trained for and ran distance events in earlier eras.

Wanted to post on another topic besides the fact that I and everyone I ran with ran longer events 40 to 45 years ago than teenagers tend to today. I didn't do anything worth bragging about now, that's for sure!

The training.

I agree with a couple points that keep coming up.

Training theory and knowledge has improved, and

Dissemination of said knowledge has improved.

I look back at the training I did during the 'Running Boom' and realize how inefficient it was. The prevailing concepts at the time seemed to be opposite of a decade and a half later. Many of you point out the short fast intervals and the lack of mileage common during the '90s. Popular during the '70 was a program of high mileage and little speed. Or that's what I was aware of and did. Maybe that was good for my development at a young age, but I didn't really do specific work.

But here's the thing:

Some of you may recall ripping off all-out quarters and not much else back then. A few may have stumbled across something you'd call smart by today's standards.

And that's just it. Pre-internet, I didn't read from Canova or whoever was coaching the world's best during whatever time period. I now know what good specific training can look like and what one can do to get to where you can do it. I did very little anaerobic work decades ago. Some did little else. I did long runs (although not long or fast enough perhaps). Some barely did.

There wasn't much communication between runners who didn't know each other. There were like 5 guys at school; that was the extent of the brain trust I had access to. Someone else, even a few miles away, might have been doing it just like us, given that many thought long moderate running was the thing to do. Or they might have been doing it just as inefficiently but in a different way. Or maybe they were closer to figuring it out. We didn't know because we didn't communicate with each other.

LRC and similar media have changed everything. Even though I was looking even further back than the topic of the thread, the time period being discussed was still pre-internet. If it started picking up steam in the late '90s and really became useful after the turn of the century, that could explain why even the best runners (and certainly people like me) were stuck in an informational quagmire. Now, there doesn't seem much question what to do. The training concepts of even the most reticent coaches can make their way online. Ritz has shown a month or more of Salazar training (prior to 5000m AR). Others, of course, are very open about what they do. This information sharing has been a rising tide that raises even American boats!

i think its because doping wasnt as rampant in usa middle and long distance running,as it is,now.The sprinters and field athletes were all on the juice,(and still are)but not so much longer distance runners.When the africans started completely dominating,and mass doping, the rest of the world had to catch up,or not be competitive.

Simple: unless you had the perfect coaches (few and far between in the late 80s/early 90s), your youth development looked like this:

Middle school: 10mpw, workouts like 2 x 400m or 3 x 200m. This was my 9th grade track season.

High school: 30mpw. I had a 'good' coach so I got down to 4:23 1600m. Most of my league competition ran 4:40+. I had a good teammate (9:10 3200m) who was my only comp for 2 years (we were within seconds of each other in every event until SR track when he focused on 3200m and ran 50mpw). At state champs level we'd get smoked by well-coached Mead HS. I often wonder how good we could have gotten with Pat Tyson as our coach. Another teammate of mine at the time was a 4:35/9:50 guy and later went on to make a World Championships team.

College: sudden jump to much higher competitive level (Pac 10). Increased mileage to 50mpw, increased intensity of every single run to 5:45-6:00 pace. If you survived overtraining you'd get into the 14:30s for 5k but inconsistent since the overtraining would leave you flat on the track more often than not. Mileage still not enough to reach your real potential. Not one person I ever knew, other than the Kenyans, would consider running more than 50mpw. How the f do you run NCAA Div 1 10000m on less than 50mpw? Our best guys were often sidelined with injuries because of overtraining.

Post college (most never bothered): difficult to find a training group. Training groups tended to be gung ho like college teams and everyone would grind each other to a pulp. Still nobody doing real mileage. I remember watching Bob Kennedy (I think it was post race interview after 1996 Oly 5000m), commentator said "What happened out there, Bob?" Bob replied "65 miles a week was not enough". Within a couple years, Kennedy had set the 5000m AR under 13 for the first time after increasing his training load.

In the beginning, when letsrun came out (I was done with competitive running by then), there was a lot of great information and Q&A type threads here. I found out that almost everything I had ever done in training and racing was counterproductive. With quality coaching, many people would have done much better. You also have issues of commitment if you aren't improving. I had a strong desire to keep competing throughout my early life but it's humiliating when you put in tons of work and sacrifice and aren't improving. This wasn't limited to walk-ons like me. All americans on my college teams would quit running the day after college because they weren't improving anymore and were injured much of the time.

I think coaching is MUCH better today, and if your coach - at any level - sucks, you can find this out using the internet. The information I needed to find out why I wasn't getting better just was not available in my time and led me to continue beating myself into oblivion for nothing. Most of our good runners today have a solid progression and continue to improve. This keeps more people in the game for longer and is leading to more competition; it is a feedback loop that keeps bringing the level of running up.

Runningart2004 wrote:

la gente esta muy loca wrote:

Demographics.

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0sDT5GLuJ_k/XNw5Pm-uviI/AAAAAAAAyFs/l3GHxHrBx9QSGIGvhU1LsWasE9SlIwrxwCLcBGAs/s1600/Births2018.PNG

I was going to mention this. Obviously if you have more kids to choose from your talent pool will be deeper.

Alan

Births IN the US doesn't exactly translate to the number of participants in track and specifically XC during the 90s. We addressed that issue in the thread from 16 years ago.