Go back to 1967 and see what he thought about a 205 marathon.
Go back to 1967 and see what he thought about a 205 marathon.
Slow and Steady wrote:
Go back to 1967 and see what he thought about a 205 marathon.
Exactly. For as long as races have been timed, every time an astounding record gets broken, there are those who declare that we are hitting the limit of human ability, and those who declare that we are just beginning to see it. Seems the later group just keeps getting it right, doesn't it?
i thought dinsamo's 2.06.50 would never be broken!
when the marathon record keeps falling by like 30 - 40 seconds at a time you know we aren't close to the human limit. once the record starts only going down by a few seconds at a time and a WR is only set once every couple of decades it will not be approaching the theoretical "human limit". so we are far off that. and even when someone finally hits a time close to this limit no one will know for a while until a historical trend of very little improvement can be shown.
haile is super human and in the late 90's when he had the 5k/10k records you could say he was near the limit, but then guess what another super human ethiopian comes around before haile is even done and bekele breaks haile's records. this will continue to happen over and over for quite some time until we reach what is close to our current evolutionary limit on speed over the given distances that our society has chosen to compete in. the next great record smasher wont necessarily come as close on the heels of bekele as he did on haile, it may be a while, but it may not. maybe some 15 year old is out there right now who's gonna dominate bekele's records in 10 years.
[quote]yo wrote:
once the record starts only going down by a few seconds at a time and a WR is only set once every couple of decades THEN WE WILL be approaching the theoretical "human limit".quote]
now that makes sense
6 of the last 7 marathon WRs have been by greater than 20sec. How can you leap to the unfounded conclusion that we are anywhere close to the limits?
The more often an event is run, and the less conditions are a factor, the more legitimate chances there are for a record. There is a ton more variability in marathon conditions than the shorter track events, and guys only run 1-2 good ones per year, making real shots on goal relatively small. It'll take years before we see a leveling off to match the shorter events.
What would have happened if Geb has decided to switch to specializing in the marathon 3-4 years earlier, when he was in his prime? What if he'd learned the event a little more quickly? Some day, another runner as good as him will do this and we'll see more large time increments drop.
A simple linear regression on the past 9 records (times as a function of dates) gives a decent correlation (R-squared of 0.95). I threw out the two earliest records because the records were much more linear if you tossed them.
If you do the regression you get the following predictions:
2:03 will be broken in May, 2019 and
2:00 will be broken in July, 2041.
The trend will not remain linear. As the records get closer to some type of limiting point, the curve will flatten out. If you assume that to be true, you can consider these predictions to be conservative.
In other words, these would be aggressive target dates for those times to be reached---especially the 2 hour mark.
Now start training!
Thanks for predicting that I'll run a sub two hour marathon in 2041, at age 57. Now I can sit back, watch the MLB playoffs, have some beers, and wait until I'm 56.5 to start training again.
MarathonMind wrote:
Half-marathon means (next to) nothing re: marathon performance. I say that's a better rule of thumb.
And the past 25 years are littered with super HM guys who bombed at the marathon w/re to the WR.
That's why it is a 'rule of thumb'. There are no guarantees, and it does not work for everyone. However, the half-marathon is THE most relevant standard distance event for predicting marathon performance. I suggest you look at marathon and half-marathon PR's for a sample of elite runners and see for yourself.
Dave
i think 2:03 MAY be broken, maybe. some genetic FREAK could come along, who trains perfectly, has perfect mindset and perfect day could do it. Sub 2 will not, It's like taking two world ranked times in the half marathon and doing them back to back. It's like running a 16:10 4 mile.
sub 2 wrote:
i think 2:03 MAY be broken, maybe...Sub 2 will not...
Really? Never? So five minutes have come off the marathon record in the last forty years, but it will NEVER be lowered another four and a half minutes? For the rest of eternity? So some guy is going to come along and run a time just slower than 1:59:59, and that's going to be it for the rest of time immortal? No one will ever run faster than that guy?
I believe that the rate of reduction of the record will slow, but it will continue to be whittled down to a time that is hard for us to comprehend today. It will go down below 2 hours, very unlikely during my lifetime, but eventually.
I think what many people miss is that when a runner does not believe he can run a time than he can't, so no one is going to go out and run 1:59:59 tomorrow, it just seems outlandish. (And there may not be anyone physically capable of it running that fast at this time.) However, when a runner sees a guy run new WR, then beating that record now seems possible. So slowly the record steps down. I'm not saying anything is possible, only that it is sometimes hard to imagine what is possible.
No one will ever run the marathon in less than one minute. Certainly that's true, right?
No one will ever run the marathon in less than one hour. Also, certainly true.
No one will ever run the marathon in less than 1:30:00. Probably true.
No one will ever run the marathon in less than 2:00:00. Not so certain now?
There is, in actuality, a time which will never be broken for the running of 42195 meters. Of course you and I can't say what it is. But as some have mentioned, if you take the race off the roads, like using rubberized tracks instead of cinders, the times will drop. New shoe technology, new training methods/drugs, Geb and Paula having a kid together, etc will continue to improve the times of the WR. But maybe before the 2 hour barrier is broken, the rules will change, the distance will change, the technology will have changed enough to make the records of today really obsolete.
Josh wrote:
...No one will ever run the marathon in less than 1:30:00. Probably true.
No one will ever run the marathon in less than 2:00:00. Not so certain now?
There is, in actuality, a time which will never be broken for the running of 42195 meters...But maybe before the 2 hour barrier is broken, the rules will change...
No, I'm certain that 2 hours will be broken before the world ends or there is a change in the rules of the marathon. Getting to 1:30:00 would be a drop of more than 25%, getting below 2:00:00 is a drop of less than 4%.
And of course there are diminishing returns and the rate at which the record will fall will slow, but I think people get hung up on the round number of two hours. In other words, some people thought the four minute mile would never be broken, and now like minded people think the two hour marathon will never be broken. It's just ridiculous to think that we are near the end of the Marathon WR record falling when it's been going down at such a steady rate.
2 hours will definitely be broken. although i do think the record will slow down exponentally and pretty much come to a stop some time in the 1:5x's. cuz when you think about it is anyone ever gonna run a sub-55min half?? honestly i doubt it but it could happen. but is anyone ever gonna run two sub 55 halves in a row. hell no. at least not without finding out what set of genes would make the perfect long distance runner and we start doing some genetic engineering and have them live their lives with the only purpose being breaking WR's.
I don't know why this is even being discussed. Gerry Lingren has dips under 2 hours for the martathon not once but twice!
Josh wrote:
No one will ever run the marathon in less than 1:30:00. Probably true.
Just to put some perspective on this, a 1:30 marathon comes out to 3:26 per mile.
I remember hearing that someone had broken 2:06 for the marathon and thinking that it would never be broken. Then came a guy name Khalid Khannouchi, who had never broken 13 min for 5k or 27 min for 10k and runs 2:05:42. I remeber thinking that this will never be broken, until he did it again. I said well...I guarantee 2:05 never gets broken in my lifetime...It happened twice in the same day by two different people!!
To say that no will go under 2:03 is not only inaccurate, it's not even logical anymore. It will get broken and I think it'll happen within the next 10 years, IF NOT earlier. 2:00 will get broken shortly thereafter.
There is no limit to where the human body can go. Someone once said that we would never see the moon...now, they had a freakin woman run a marathon up there this past April!! Freakin insane!!!
tigranya wrote:
I remember hearing that someone had broken 2:06 for the marathon and thinking that it would never be broken. Then came a guy name Khalid Khannouchi, who had never broken 13 min for 5k or 27 min for 10k and runs 2:05:42. I remeber thinking that this will never be broken, until he did it again. I said well...I guarantee 2:05 never gets broken in my lifetime...It happened twice in the same day by two different people!!
To say that no will go under 2:03 is not only inaccurate, it's not even logical anymore. It will get broken and I think it'll happen within the next 10 years, IF NOT earlier. 2:00 will get broken shortly thereafter.
There is no limit to where the human body can go. Someone once said that we would never see the moon...now, they had a freakin woman run a marathon up there this past April!! Freakin insane!!!
I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that we would never see the moon. Hell, as long as it's not too cloudy, I see it every night. I'm pretty certain it's been that way since the beginning of the earth and moon.
*^%hole
tigranya wrote:
*^%hole
Touche!