... Maybe women CAN maintain a greater proportion of their top speeds moving into a larger distance...I believe they can too.
... Maybe women CAN maintain a greater proportion of their top speeds moving into a larger distance...I believe they can too.
mhammer wrote:
Tergat says its impossible so there you have it, from one of the greatest if not the greatest distance athlete of all time.
Do you think in the next 20 or 30 years, somebody will break two hours for a marathon?
PT: Take it from me; it's impossible. I remember I ran 61 (minutes) the last part (half) of Berlin. I could hardly walk after that. So to run 60/60 is impossible. Sixty-one is what we are running, all of us. To combine the two half-marathons together is hard. It would be a pipedream.
Comments?
In Tergat's lifetime we'll see 2:02 something. Then we'll be talking sub 2hrs.
All distances have a limit. We don't know what they are until WR times become extremely rare. Tergat took over 40sec off the old standard?
I believe we'll have sub 2 by 2100. As well as low 3:30s in the Mile, like Bannister predicted.
I am a complete idiot and no very little about anything, but:
50 yrs ago the human population of the world was 1/3 of today's. So, for one, there is 3x higher chances of a weirdo to come around who has the right mutation in EPO-R, the right expression profile of collagens in tendons, the right proportion of muscle fibers and a 2:2x marathoner mama and 2:08 marathoner dad who's shadow will make him spend his first 3 decades to pursue marathon perfection. (say, isn't currently pregnant Paula's husband a 2:30ish guy?) Combine this with the fast mega-thons willing to devout extraordinary resources to be able to say that 2h was broken first here, and it might very well happen.
Of course it is also possible that there will be a major climate shift, peppered and salted with 9 billion people on earth, much of the human population will start starving and fighting each other for survival and nobody will think of marathons for the following 10 000 yrs or ever....
Bekele
Tergat is one of the greatest distance runners ever. Seems unlikely someone is going to run a marathon 295 seconds faster than Tergat did in Berlin. That's over a mile ahead of Tergat. 30-90 seconds faster, maybe.
It'll happen, wait and see, it'll happen
Man, just imagine how fast these guys could run if the were on something!
captin obvius wrote:
I still think a 3:30 minute is comparable to a 2:00 marathon. The 4 minute thing is old, and relates to lack of knowledge regarding the sport 50 years ago. But last time I gave my 2 cents, I got change back.....
no its not. its a valid point. 50 years from now the knowledge we have now is going to be considered a "lack of" compared to the knowledge gained from 50 years from now.
I am interested in this post....
So you think knowledge is the key to running faster in
the distance events --- yes ??
Are you talking knowledge in terms of technology --- i.e.,
running surfaces, rebound shoe soles, bionic limbs,
other Performance Enhancing substances, genetic tinkering, etc. ???
Or knowledge of training and racing within what we currently would recognize at the Human Species ???
When you use the word "knowledge", are you talking about
experiential or theoretical or research based or what
combination of these ???
Just wondering :)
no wrote:
captin obvius wrote:I still think a 3:30 minute is comparable to a 2:00 marathon. The 4 minute thing is old, and relates to lack of knowledge regarding the sport 50 years ago. But last time I gave my 2 cents, I got change back.....
no its not. its a valid point. 50 years from now the knowledge we have now is going to be considered a "lack of" compared to the knowledge gained from 50 years from now.
How much more knowledge can be gained on distance running? The world has already had decades and decades of time to experiment with what works and what doesn't, and it seems as if the principals learned in the 1970's hold fundamentally true today. There won't be any major breakthoughs in distance running knowledge at this point - it is afterall a pretty simple sport. You run an incredible amount of miles, run on hills, run on flats, run at marathon pace, run at 5K pace, run at mile pace, run easy, etc. We just aren't getting much "smarter" about distance running than we were 10 or 20 years ago.
remember when people thought it was impossible to run a sub 4 min. mile? evolution in the mind and body will make sub 2 hours possible someday.
This idea that a 4% increase in an endurance race is impossible is rediculous. Did 205 seem impossible to the people who were around 210? Im sure it did. The people setting world records have always been the absolute best, or very close to it. They can't possibly fathom being beaten by a mile. Yet it always happens.
2 hours will be broken. I'm absolutly sure of it. Will anyone who is a current elite runner do it, i seriously doubt it. People also said 4 couldnt be broken, or 27 in the 10k or a 5k in under 13. They've all happened. This will happen as well.
fatty at the gym wrote:
Your village called, they want their idiot back....
Oh yeah? Well, the jerk store called, and they're running outta you.
classic.
Probably will see a 2:03 & change one day.
My physio was asking me yesterday if I thought a 2 hr. marathon or better was possible. I replied they would have to have the ability to run under 25:30 for the 10 km, to string together 3 sub 4 min. miles for a 5 km etc.
A 28:26 10 km repeated back to back 4.2 times!
Twenty-six plus 4:35 miles back to back?
remember when herb elliot said that 3.55 was likely the ultimate for the mile? remember when they said that 4 minutes could not be broken? remember when they said that mt. everest was not able to be climbed? there are no barriers.
With the right athletes running the event, 2:01:06.8 will be the best marathon by a runner when the WR mile is run in 3:38.9. I would guess another 20 years would be the time frame.
the big swede wrote:
remember when herb elliot said that 3.55 was likely the ultimate for the mile? remember when they said that 4 minutes could not be broken? remember when they said that mt. everest was not able to be climbed? there are no barriers.
No, I don't remember any of those statements.
Several comments. First the analogy with the 4-minute mile are off the mark. There were already two European runners knocking on that door and their competitions were cut short for being 'professional' (getting paid some). It was only important in the English-speaking world anyway.
The marathon distance presents a challenge both unique in and common/central to the world of track and field. The distance encounters the constraint that glycogen stores get depleted and other metabolic pathways come into play. Running faster (going from 4:46 to 4:35/mile) burns up the limited storage more quickly (more than in proportion to the speed).
I said unique because this limitation does not affect track and filed events other than the marathon (the 50K walk last longer but the constraint on the rate of speed changes the equation).
I said "common/central" because there is a similar shift in metabolic systems as you go through the sprints into middle distance. This change is one reason that there is not much doubling in the 400/800 even though it is not uncommon to see 100/200, 200/400, 800/1500, and 1500/3000 and 5000. This is one reason why the half-marathon is not necessarily a good predictor of the marathon--the Half is not restricted by the shift in metabolism.
We occasionally see marathon finishes were times of 4:35 (on the flat, faster on declines). However, these surges cannot me maintained for long periods of time.
BTW, I would not use Clayton's 2:08 mark, as it was on a course that was suspect and the roads were altered soon thereafter so no checking was possible.
I do think we are in for more lowerings of the record because it has been broken with some regularity as of late and by athletes not thought of as the best ever (KK is very good and probably has the right tools for the marathon, but he is not on the Geb/Tergat level, and Korir was almost a journeyman until that race and his role made it less-than-ideal for a best time). However, I think it will slowly come down to 2:04 and 2:03:xx; I would not be surprised to see (or not see) a 2:02 in my lifetime, but I would be surprised to see a 1:59:xx. It will require Half Marathon times around or under 57-flat, and those times must be doable by someone whose optimal distance is the marathon (e.g., KK) and not someone like Geb (who is better at the Half--after 35k he has trouble.
Comments are welcome; I realize some of this is speculative.
It's also possible that the greatest potential marathoner possible had already expired before any of us were born. Maybe he didn't even run marathons.