RE: do people accuse atheletes of doping because they are not good themsleves

But many runners are bitter and twisted about this subject and maybe he is right that you are one of them?

Athletes dope because other people brainwash them into believing they have to. This includes a lot of dodgy doctors and dealers making a lotta dough.

J.O.--

No, it's not all the evidence I use.

I presented some on another thread:

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=3655931

and most on another earlier thread, that I can't seem to find.

Hey moderators, where is my huge old post arguing why the men's 100m limit is low 9.8's to around 9.8? Even in that thread, I think I modified my thinking to conclude that the limit was high 9.7's, given PERFECT conditions, both external and internal to a runner.

I don't feel like posting it again.

Your assumption of continual lowering of WR's in the absence of PED's is ridiculous, and doesn't even warrant discussion.

Similarly, your assumption of 100m times decreasing in proportion to increasing stride length is equally ridiculous.

Is everyone here 12 years old? Why can't many posters develop an idea sufficiently well that it admits of meaningful discussion?

Sprint Geezer, you are a jealous, old fool. Strides will get longer in every running event. This does not require pharmacology.

Do you think Bolt was doping when he was 15?

No wonder I do 10.5's when bounding...

May have started as jealousy or something similar, but now it is mostly an LRC joke.

Ignoring the pejoratives, I have some serious questions for you:

Do you have any data regarding the progression of stride length throughout the 100m, how important a factor it is in different parts of the race, what measure of "stride length" you would use in a correlation to 100m times, and how important a factor that measure actually is?

Further, do you have comparative data on, say, Bolt, Lewis, Bailey, Obikwelu and Gatlin on the one hand, and super-short guys like Fasuba at 9.85 and Cason at 9.92?

To demonstrate that 100m times have a good positive correlation to some measure of stride length during the race would be a very difficult thing to prove. Most difficult would be choosing the measure of stride length to be used, in advance of doing any analysis, in order not to bias the results.

Anyway, if you have it, I'd love to see it.

Of course to a point, all other things being equal, an increase in "stride length" will bring down times. Times will fall even if negative effects are only just outweighed by positive effects of "stride length" increase.

Since speed = stride rate x stride length, and times are getting faster etc etc

When you do bounds, the stride is somewhat inneficient, but how else can you improve stride length?

Stride length is a funny thing.

Sprinting is all about 2 basic things:

1) maximizing rate of energy generation, and

2) maximally efficiently using that energy to generate forward motion of the center of mass of the body.

Stride length has to do with #2, and cannot be taken as an independent factor in the efficiency of energy usage--efficiency is a total package, with obvious trade-offs between many factors.

The question of how best to go about increasing efficiency by increasing stride length is a very difficult one to answer, and I suspect it differs with individual athletes, as it is intimately tied to individual running style.

Bounds? Running downhill? Stretching? Plyos? Knee lifts? Lowering the hips?

I honestly don't know. When I ran my best 100m, I just seemed to be covering ground, and it is my feeling that it was due to stride length more than to turnover or acceleration, but I don't know for sure.

Technically you are correct, over a specified time interval, speed = stride rate x stride length, both averaged over the time interval.

However, this doesn't say anything about how the two are related at any particular phase of the race, or how efficient total energy use is at any particular point in time, or over any time interval.

It's a tough issue.

Here's something for you to chew on: IMHO, longer-legged sprinters can have an ADVANTAGE during the start and drive phases of the 100m! Each foot can be on the ground longer, giving more time for force application to the ground. Of course, it MAY be the case that both legs are off the ground for longer as well, canceling out the effect--but even if that were the case, it seems to me that the time interval spent in the "sweet spot" of limb geometry for force development would be greater the longer the leg length. Sprinters practice smoothly transitioning from one leg to another during the drive phase, to ensure consistent application of force to maximize efficiency--IMHO, Powell does this particularly well.

Contrary to popular opinion, I know--but it does suggest that your basic premise, that increasing stride length is where the major benefits are to be found, applies even during the start and drive phases of the 100m.

I'm pretty sure that's what Gay is trying to improve in his starts. We used to see him windmill at the start--now he is driving more, and getting better starts. I would bet that his camp is counting strides over a particular distance, and trying to get to, say, 30 or 40m using one less stride than before, and comparing the count to Bolt's counts.

I suppose the question then becomes: why don't longer-legged sprinters have better starts/early phase?

Probably because longer legs generally come with greater body mass, the obvious trade-off.

But for the same BMI, for instance, their starts should be at least as good as those of shorter sprinters, with maybe some upper limit.

I thought that the shorter guys had better starts, because they can acclerate faster, Newton's second law and all that?

At some point though, the short and the tall guy must be equal in physical terms, and towards the end, the bigger guy has more momentum and slows down less?

Yes it's very difficult to apply the stride length analysis to sprinting, because half the race (and probably 80% of the energy) is directed to acceleration?

So perhaps stride length is the endurance consideration, and efficient short to long stride transition is the start/drive phases?

I always think that Gay looks like he is trying too hard. Of all the World's best sprinters, he relaxes the least.

Accusation is nothing without proof.

Vox: "Accusation is nothing without proof."

This is unfortunately incorrect. An accusation can, among other things, serve as the basis of an investigation and a search for evidence that tends to prove the truth of the accusation.

Furthermore, there is a real benefit from being the FIRST to the table in terms of argumentation and discourse. Witness the Pima County Sheriff's unsupported statements concerning the effects of political rhetoric.

Totally unsupported, with no proven relevance--however, everybody is now talking about the issue he raised.

Having to RESPOND to an initial impression created in the mind of the general public is MUCH more difficult than creating that impression in the first place.

Accusations, even without any evidence or proof, are in the real world, very powerful indeed.