I'm frankly surprised Budd went that fast given its a simple point system for the win and he was probably 45 seconds ahead of 2nd place. You can watch Herschel Walker win the 1988 competition on youtube, lumbering down the line in 245ish.
I'm frankly surprised Budd went that fast given its a simple point system for the win and he was probably 45 seconds ahead of 2nd place. You can watch Herschel Walker win the 1988 competition on youtube, lumbering down the line in 245ish.
800 Meters. Not a half mile.
And now Brian Oldfield scoots around in a wheelchair. Steroids-it's what for dinner...
Does not really suprise me as soccer players especially wingers or in midfield can be great runners. If they are playing 2 matches a week that's their interval workouts sorted and they do a lot of additional training which is relevant
Here is the times for the UK version but you need to remember a lot of the athletes here have retired quite often with injuries and past their best
I used to train with an ex (amateur) soccer player who started running at 35, Tony Macdonald. He won Bronze at the European Masters 800m(i) and was running 1:57 at 40. Of course he doing full running training by then
Ryan Giggs (Man U) in his prime I reckon could have easily broken 2 mins. He was not just fast (& light) but would repeatedly go down the wing until his marker was run ragged. A sub 1:45 800m runner if trained if ever I saw one
Was coaching my group of weekend warriors last week. Some are pretty handy. 6 x approx 550m on grass. Anyhow a footballer (go on soccer player) shows up. After a couple of reps near the front I mentioned to him what good runners footballer make. Next rep he took off and ran 10 secs faster than the 'course record' He's only training 2 or 3 times a week. Mind you he slowed up a bit on the next rep!
The timing of this thread is perfect as I actually was trying to find old superstars video the other day. The threads about Rudisha and Bolt running all distances had reminded me of watching Carl Lewis run the 800m back on the Superstars. Is there video from his year (mid to late 80's I think)? I was unable to find it.
Adam C wrote:
According to this website the Superstars Competition half-mile run record is 1:57.36 by professional soccer player Brian Budd in 1979. I find it difficult to imagine a professional soccer player running that fast without track training.
http://www.thesuperstars.org/records.html
According to the same site the 100 yard dash record for Superstars is held by Terrell Owens at 9.02. This is better than what Bob Hayes ran for his world record 100 yard dash.
May I suggest that all of the Superstars records are ummm questionable.
This doesn't surprise me all that much (the 1:57).
When living in North London in the early 90s, I used to train on the track at New River Stadium (where Seb Coe and Steve Crabb often trained). On one occasion, a bunch of Tottenham Hotspur players showed up just as I was finishing my session. They did an 800m time trial. I timed one of them in 2:05, and was very impressed.
Yeah, 1:57 shouldn't be surprising - soccer players do TONS of running. Of they don't do this running on the track, but neither does anybody from the country of Kenya.
I seem to remember an article from Sports Illustrated (or possibly another source) a few years back about former Utah State guard Jaycee Carroll running a 4:20 mile in conditioning. Am I completely insane or does anyone else remember this? Or maybe I have the wrong guy
Has to be said wrote:
Adam C wrote:According to this website the Superstars Competition half-mile run record is 1:57.36 by professional soccer player Brian Budd in 1979. I find it difficult to imagine a professional soccer player running that fast without track training.
http://www.thesuperstars.org/records.htmlAccording to the same site the 100 yard dash record for Superstars is held by Terrell Owens at 9.02. This is better than what Bob Hayes ran for his world record 100 yard dash.
May I suggest that all of the Superstars records are ummm questionable.
I remember reading Muscle and Fitness magazine some years ago,and they quoted Ferrigno as saying he was like a 4 minute miler based on his 2:21.25 half mile on Superstars.
>>James Lofton did have track training as an excellent sprinter and an even better long jumper.
>James Lofton was NCAA champion in the long jump at Stanford. He jumped 27 feet and ran 20.5. He said that he actually went into the NFL because of fear of a "pretty good" long jumper coming up named Carl Lewis.
---------------------------------------------------
Lofton is still running track--ran a 12.65 100m and 24.72 200m in May at the age of 54.
http://www.scausatf.org/events/masters_tf/2011scamasters.pdf
I know a soccer player who ran a 4:32 and 2:02 double when he was 14, all by himself in middle school. There are tons of non track athletes that could beat that 1:57.
Soccer is the perfect game to find talented mid distance (especially 800m runners) because a good soccer player needs a decent percentage of fast twitch muscles and anaerobic capability so that they can outrun opponents to balls, etc. and they also need aerobic endurance so that they can do this effectively for 90 minutes. The 800 meter run uses almost an exact 50/50 split between aerobic and anaerobic fuel sources, so an athlete who is built and trained well as a soccer player will almost always have a high capability in this event.
just the facts wrote:
My older brother, a baseball pitcher, ran 2:01 in HS PE class in Chuck Taylor's.
i've heard it all wrote:
-riiiiiiight.
just the facts wrote:
I was 1:53 in HS and much faster in college so there is some genetic talent. If I was going to lie don't you think I could do better than 2:01. No, he wasn't EPOing, at least as far as I knew.
OK, but a guy training for the half who runs 1:53 doesn't run a 2:01 in Chuck Taylors on baseball pitcher training. He either didn't really do it, or he was doing a good bit of training beyond what the typical baseball pitcher does.
Get itRight wrote:
800 Meters. Not a half mile.
No, I think that was a 440 yard track, so two laps would be half a mile. Notice the sprint was the 100 yard dash.
Back when I was in the Army, at the end of Basic training during our unit's (240 soldiers) final PT test, I was bested in the 2 mile by a soccer player who claimed to have never done a track or cross country workout in his life. He ran 9:55 to my 10:20 - the third person to cross the line ran 12:50.
dukerdog wrote:
OK, but a guy training for the half who runs 1:53 doesn't run a 2:01 in Chuck Taylors on baseball pitcher training. He either didn't really do it, or he was doing a good bit of training beyond what the typical baseball pitcher does.
It is really not that astonishing if you think about it. He did really do it. That is undisputed. He also did no more training than the other pitchers which included a 2-3 mile easy run every day and some circuit training. He hung on the track guy's shoulder. I truly don't know what shoes he was wearing. I wrote Chuck Taylor's to make the point that it was casual sneakers, not spikes.
Stats fanatic wrote:
Couple of things:
First a pro soccer player running 1:58 is not really a big deal. Pro soccer players run a several miles every day for conditioning and then their practices and games are full of sprint training. Combine the two and you get someone who can run a decent 800. Not world class but pretty decent. Remember this guy was a pro soccer player because he was pretty fast and good at running (among other skills of course).
Secondly, Evander Holyfield revolutionized the sport of boxing by regularly running interval workouts with the intervals being the length of his rounds in boxing. Until that point boxers mainly just did easy running for cardio, but Evander and his trainer took it to a new level and several times a week did repeats. His recovery between repeats was the same as he would get between rounds in boxing. So you take a guy who was a good high school quarter miler, is a crazy talented athlete, and have him do easy mileage 3 days per week and intervals 3 days per week and a 1:58-2:00 half isn't all the crazy of a time.
The 1:55-2:00 high school 800 runners need to get over themselves and thinking their time is better than it really is.
True, soccer players are usually good runners and can usually run in the low 2s without training, but don't kid yourself, there are very few soccer players who could run 1:57 without training. I use to run a conditioning and speed program for non-runners and I was always surprised at how fast some of the athletes were relatively speaking, but they were still only average for a track guy. I have worked with former D1 athletes preparing for tryouts with NFL teams and/or the combine. I have seen athletes looking for a job in the backfield and the only ones who could break 11 flat in 100m were former track athletes...this is in spite of supposedly having 4.4 40m speed. I worked with a D1 all-American wide out who never ran faster than 10.9 and that was hand timed, which would probably be about 11.1; granted he was 6'3" and a slow starter. Natural ability is one thing, but knowing how to run an event makes a big difference. Non track athletes don't know to put to put 2 hard laps back to back, in the 800 they usually go out way too fast and end up practically walking across the finish line or jog the first lap and sprint the last couple hundred meters.
With that said, I am convinced that the best potential track and field athletes are actually doing other sports. A little known secret, a girl who is a good dancer, specifically ballet, can be taught to hurdle and do all 3 jumps at a high school championship level in one season. Dancers are extremely fit, flexible, coordinated and explosive… but good luck getting them to focus on track. I worked with a class of 18 and under wantabe professional dancers and during one of our workouts at a local high school were the high jump setup wasn’t put away, I had the girls playing around with the high jump and just about the entire class could get over 5’ in some form or another. One of those athletes who was 15 at the time, who did become high jumper, she won the state championship in her second year of jumping and again the following year, multiple NCAA titles. I don’t know her current status, but she was jumping on and off professionally until couple of years ago. (She said she wasn’t even the best jumper in her dance class.)
Unless you have a good middle school or age group feeder program, the sad truth is, half of the average H.S. track team is composed of kids who just want a varsity letter and/or an activity to put on their college application. There biggest potential talent is in field events; you have kids sitting the bench on a H.S. basketball who can jump 20’ with no training and baseball pitchers who are never going make the starting rotation who could throw a javelin 180’ with minimal training.
This is possible, but stop for a second and think about what kind of talent your brother must have been in order to achieve this. 2:01 with no training in casual shoes! The shoes alone make him a 2-flat guy in spikes.
You give him to a high school coached completely untrained in December and he'll be running 1:55 by the indoor state meet in February, probably 1:53 by the outdoor state meet in June. Then give him a fall of XC, another indoor season, and another outdoor season and you've got a possible sub-1:50 guy on just 1.5 years of training. I don't know, that's a stretch. There might only be 3 or 4 guys in the country any year with that kind of talent. It's possible, but the odds are low.
Could be a case of big brother workship. Or maybe big brother exaggerating for effect...
just the facts wrote:
He did really do it. That is undisputed.
I'm disputing it. It is no longer undisputed.