Okay, sure. But it can't just be "soft" records. As if people in the EPO era weren't trying to run fast or pick up bonuses?
It has to be the bi-carb + super shoes + the sprung up tracks.
I know the shoes are real. I run in Vaporflys and they "work" to make me faster. That is not up for debate. I have never tried the bi-carb but might do it for a 5000m race, why not, right? I would love to run on one of those boosted tracks myself and see if you can really feel it. Has anyone here had the chance to do that?
Vaporflies =/= Dragonflies. It is absolutely up for debate how much impact the so-called super spikes have on elite 1500/mile times.
Soft records play a huge role here, especially in our perceptions of what we're seeing. Without context, it's shocking to watch a time held by El Guerrouj get smoked by runners who are clearly not as good as he was (even college kids are faster than him now!), but 3:48 really isn't that fast for the mile. Kejelcha was able to run 3:47 without super spikes, so I don't know how you could possibly believe 3:48 was anywhere near max effort for El G. Go down the line of other greats who have lost their indoor records to lesser athletes, it's the same story.
I don't know why top athletes care more about indoors now than they used to, but the fact is that they do. We're seeing way more elites show up in serious shape than ever before, running on fast tracks (a 200m banked track is as fast as any outdoor oval at this point) in perfect conditions, so of course the times are going to be good.
This is a Great post. Again, back to Eamonn and Marcus who ran 3:49.x and 3:50.x.. 41 years and Marcus over 30 years ago at same track fastest of it's time ,a once a year usage track at the Meadowlands. They won 12 Millroses between them, Give them BU or the newly surfaced Armory surely the record would have been lower pre Kejelcha, without super shoes or any other BS. The shoes? Laughable they would have lower without them .what even old timers(and I am old) will never admit to for some reason, is progression would have been logical, it has occurred in every sport, every single one. Nate Brannen ran 3:55.11 20 years ago in College ,11 off Tony Waldrops 3:55.0 on a 160 banked I presume? Which lasted, how long ,he ran that 50 years ago ? . Only in Middle and LD running as opposed to the obvious steroid use in baseball, is improvement is simply illogical to some.
malmo wrote: "they're just better today" doesn't cut it. The athletes are coming from the same gene pool as before. Humans haven't suddenly evolved into something different in the space of one or two generations.
The question is, WHY are today's runners better? Maybe they're better-funded, have better equipment, faster tracks, better coaches, better competition, better nutrition, are more likely to be discovered at an early age, have better compensation as motivation, etc., etc. But they're not better "just because".
One thing that is noticeable is how many of these kids have had elite athletes as parents. Not all of them but Centro, Strand, Rupp, and many others have parents who were extremely good (if not world class) athletes.
And in my peer group (of mostly college athletes), a lot of us did marry girls from the team as well. I know a lot of people who have kids running very, very well and it is not surprise when you find out the mom was an all-American and the dad ran for the Farm Team or whatever...
Not saying we are "breeding" better runners, but there are a lot more families that have both a mom (thanks to Title IX) and a dad who were good/great athletes in college.
In prior eras, I don't know if that many college/pro runners (men) were marrying women who were also runners...
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I don't claim to be an expert, but in my experience, the tendency to have a bad race (or frequent bad races) stems from a lack of aerobic development.
I don't know how you support that statement?
Anecdotally of course, but at a certain point (when you see dozens of similar anecdotes) a pattern begins to emerge.
I've been running for more than 15 years, and the runners I know that consistently have bad races tend to be the people that do very intense training but lower mileage. These people will have very good performances every so often, but they always seem to struggle to peak at the right times, and drastically underperform more often than not.
Whereas, runners who train less intensely, but with higher mileage tend to perform more consistently at the top of their ability.
Perhaps you can recite contrary anecdotes, but I did preface my initial comment with "in my experience".
I don't run anymore but just as a test I bought some carbon fiber shoe inserts ($45) that are full length and placed between shoe and shoe liner. These things are like 5mm thick so you barely notice them. But Stiff and Responsive. I walked around in them a few days for a couple hours at a time just to get used to them and was utterly amazed at how they absorb energy and spring back when you're walking. So, for the heck of it I jogged a couple 200s at like 8:00 pace and then 6:30 pace. Wow. I couldn't believe how these things helped. I can't imagine having had shoes with carbon fiber or super compressed foam to train or race in. Would've massively preserved my legs and probably allowed me to do extra volume without breaking down. I also have a friend who owns a running store who sent me a pair of the newer stacked foam shoes. Same thing. The first few jog steps I thought I was gonna pitch forward. Definitely made to get you up on toes/forefeet. I could walk a lap 5-6sec faster with same effort in them or with carbon fiber inserts. I know the effect might be less with running but I can see how athletes can do 25x400 rather than 20x400 in these newer shoes without extra work beating up legs. I know it's not all shoes but as someone who ran, cycled, and swam 19years I've never seen or trained in anything like them. I remember moving from a chromoly bike to a carbon fiber bike. Huge difference. I rode 1.5mph faster with same gearing and effort on that carbon fiber bike and it was only like a hundred grams lighter! So the tech is HUGE.
But as a biology major in college with several courses in human and animal physiology, and genetics, and molecular biology, etc. I think I have a theory for the new way to dope. Similar to synthetic EPO being damn near impossible to distinguish from natural EPO. You use CRSPR Gene Editing to tell cells in skeletal muscle to produce more mitochondria or myoglobin each time they undergo mitosis. You alter either DNA or just inject mRNA or tRNA with sequence that matches the athletes natural gene sequence for proteins comprising mitochondria and boom, the cells increase mitochondria density. Talk about aerobic efficiency and faster recovery! Something like this might be the next wave of "doping". It would be nearly impossible to test unless you regularly measured skeletal mitochondria density several times a year. Just a thought. Not accusing anyone of this but after women's marathon record a few months ago this idea seemed possible. How do you enhance without being able to get caught? You have to stimulate the body to make more of something that aids performance without an ingested or injected substance that can be traced...so you use gene editing or RNA tech to do it. It gets used up and discarded within hours. So this kind of "doping" would be as difficult to detect as EPO was thirty years back.
Anecdotally of course, but at a certain point (when you see dozens of similar anecdotes) a pattern begins to emerge.
I've been running for more than 15 years, and the runners I know that consistently have bad races tend to be the people that do very intense training but lower mileage. These people will have very good performances every so often, but they always seem to struggle to peak at the right times, and drastically underperform more often than not.
Whereas, runners who train less intensely, but with higher mileage tend to perform more consistently at the top of their ability.
Perhaps you can recite contrary anecdotes, but I did preface my initial comment with "in my experience".
Nothing to help you here. I've never been around the kinds of "drastically under-performing" runners that were in your circles. That's why I asked.
Shoes and Sodium Bi-Carb are training advances. They don’t belong in another bucket. If Ryun, Walker, Coe, Cram, El G were in their prime today they’d be running similar times as the top guys today…El G probably faster.
It’s also a golden age for young milers globally. Cam Meyer is 18 and went 3:47 today and it’s barely been worth a mention. Of all the indoor and outdoor records set by men the last two seasons how many have been set by someone who doesn’t have a global medal in the 1500? Fisher’s 3000 today is the only one. Jakob is the guy pushing the development with Josh and Yared behind.
And…they are young. We still talk about Jakob like he’s a young phenom and Hocker, Kessler, Laros, and Meyer are younger.
We’ve heard and said since Tokyo that the 1500/mile records should be rewritten this decade. Now that it’s happening people act shocked? It’ll balance back out again at some point but just enjoy it now.
I don't have any explanation for why, but top runners seem to take indoor a lot more seriously than they used to, on top of the shoes and bicarb improvements.
I'll keep saying it - there's more of them. Back in the day, most of the schools, especially on the west coast, didn't even run indoors. Know your history.
Same thing happened in the girls high school race, although no one took bicarb. 4:50 according to the media guide has won 80% if all Millrose Miles yet hat wouldn’t place top 10 today
Take a look at the population growth of East African nations between 1960-2020. Nothing to see there? Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Somalia. They had some of the highest birthrates in the world for decades. The gene pools were not finite, they were rapidly expanding juggernauts. Do you think that might explain the explosion of East African talent? Compare that to the United States.
The Demographics of Kenya is monitored by the Kenyan National Bureau of Statistics. Kenya is a multi-ethnic state in East Africa. Its total population was at 47,558,296 as of the 2019 census. A national census was conducted i...
The demographics of Ethiopia encompass the demographic features of inhabitants in Ethiopia, including ethnicity, languages, population density, education level, health, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspect...
Demographic features of the population of Uganda include population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and others. Population According to the 2022 revision of...
Demographic features of Somalia's inhabitants include ethnicity, language, population density, education level, health, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population. Somalia is believed to be on...
The United States is the third most populous country in the world, and the most populous in the Americas and the Western Hemisphere, with an estimated population of 340,110,988 on July 1, 2024, according to the U.S. Census Bu...
I also call BS to "better training and coaching". There's nothing guys are doing now that the elites weren't doing 20 years ago.
I contend this. The best of any era is about as good as the best of any other era. Guse = Coghlan. Jakob = ElG. Etc.
It's the tech that makes the top 100 of this era look as though they're superior to the top 20 of previous ones. The depth of amazing performances screams tech evolution.
Look no further than the NCAA qualifying lists - 3 sub 3:50, a sub 13, some 7:30s, Washington's stable of sub 4 guys, and on and on.
I refuse to believe it's just "better coaching" or "more information". That's so disrespectful and ignorant, frankly.
Or maybe everyone should be required to run in leather spikes with leather shoes on cinder tracks? I think know that you're the one who's being disrespectful and ignorant. Runners are better today, even accounting for the technology. Accept it and move forward. I think it's cool, perhaps you should too?
I don't think the spikes were made out of leather, ma'am.
Or maybe everyone should be required to run in leather spikes with leather shoes on cinder tracks? I think know that you're the one who's being disrespectful and ignorant. Runners are better today, even accounting for the technology. Accept it and move forward. I think it's cool, perhaps you should too?
I don't think the spikes were made out of leather, ma'am.
They sure were....and smooth leather soles. They even had kangaroo leather, the 60s version of "bouncy".
Anecdotally of course, but at a certain point (when you see dozens of similar anecdotes) a pattern begins to emerge.
I've been running for more than 15 years, and the runners I know that consistently have bad races tend to be the people that do very intense training but lower mileage. These people will have very good performances every so often, but they always seem to struggle to peak at the right times, and drastically underperform more often than not.
Whereas, runners who train less intensely, but with higher mileage tend to perform more consistently at the top of their ability.
Perhaps you can recite contrary anecdotes, but I did preface my initial comment with "in my experience".
Nothing to help you here. I've never been around the kinds of "drastically under-performing" runners that were in your circles. That's why I asked.
There's an abundance of them where I live.
It's one of the most develops countries in the world, but for some reason people still train like it's the 90s with no access to the information circulating in the wider running world.
Perhaps I’m biased toward the older days, but I can’t shake the feeling that if you could somehow make it a level playing field with tech and drugs and training practices, El G would be faster than the current 1500m guys
Or maybe the runners are that much better -- and more of them?
You speak like a hoe? If human morality is always slipping and sliding do you really think human cellular and mitochondrial morality as pertains to energy efficiency is not also slipping up and sliding down? Whatever is up there can only come down in a closed loop system and the earth-universe engine is this closed loop. Think hard before you say something. The only physically lawful and plausible explanation in a closed loop system is that the runners are that much better doping and more of them at that.
Note to Malmo here thank you. Neither Fisher or Hocker will ever be better than past East African greats like kenenisa bekele. I wonder what canova would say about the sudden influx of American dominance in the middle And long distance. Even the once innocent boyhood Mantz is now dirty in his 59:17
