16 year old girl runs 2:02 for 800 running in her 2nd race ever

If kids were training 6 hours every day from a young age at running, witjout even touching on the overtraining factor, Imagine how badly their education would suffer.

\o\\k

[quote]Rainy day wrote:

2nd race.....no genetic advantage there. Kenyans just work harder.[/quote

actually kenyans are known lazy asses, but they do have talent and when combined with epo they are unbeatable]

scxc wrote:

The high school age swim club where I swim trains roughly 1-1.5 hours each weekday. The best swimmers sometimes swim another hour in the morning, but definitely not every morning. They do train hard for sure. However, that is a far cry from 6 hours a day, every day. And the best girl, a 17 year old, just swam in the Olympic Trials.

Believe the six-hours-per-day training story for elite swimmers. The 15-year-old girl that won the 800 meter free last night at the swimming trials has not missed a day of training in 4 freakin' years. Probably doubles every day but for Sunday. That's a lot of training. That's not really relevant to this thread but I thought I'd mention it.

People always say its genetics or its lifestyle, but its not any of those things by themselves.

Kenyans and Ethiopians have all three things in place that successively cultivate each other: genetics cultivated by lifestyle which in turn is cultivated by a sporting culture.

Generations at altitude equals fine aerobic genetics, but genetics are cultivated with lifestyle. The natural pastoral lifestyle of chores and walking/running from a young age creates a young person with a lot of "talent" or potential.

But all of that is meaningless without a sporting culture to

encourage such "talents" to pursue their talent and compete. Hence, Kenyans and Ethiopians weren't a competitive presence on the world stage in distance running until relatively recently (starting in the 60s and 70s, I think? might be wrong). I'm sure people in Kenya and Ethiopia have had this lifestyle for generations.

But it was especially after a significant sporting culture developed in the 70s, 80s and 90s that we started to see East Africans on the world stage. The professional groups and the Olympic heroes and the resources are very important for cultivating talent into competitive prospects.

Just my two cents.

heh

Dennis the Menace wrote:

douglas burke wrote:

she ran in lane 2 the whole way.

http://www.sportsnewsarena.com/?African-Championships--Cherono-wins-distance-double-in-Benin.html

Who cares. The New York Jets have a quarterback controversy with Tim Tebow and Mark Sanchez. Track is boring, dude. Let's talk about the Jets.

Looking for the quintessential internet troll ? Here he is ! ...Goes to "Let's Run" to trash the entire sport in favor of ????...Yawn, which mediocre QB (both can be had for a middle round draft pick) gets the Jets' starting job...LMAO !!

I agree with you 100%. Even if it is not actual running, American kids would be much stronger if there was a system that groomed these athletes with high volumes of training. If you want large amounts of great runners, you need high aunts of training.

I recall the swim team in college covering more miles in the pool than we did on our feet!

London2012distance wrote:

She is quite similar to Caster Semenya. I'd put my tickets to London on it that if she makes it to the finals someone will bring it up.

http://www.rfi.fr/sports/20120702-athletisme-championnats-afrique-francine-niyonsaba-perle-burundaise-800-metres-jo2012

One look at her in the pic from the link you posted and it's clear this 'wonder' isn't 16, and might be closer to 26. Yes, there could be a question about gender as well. Here's another pic - all else aside, the one thing that is no surprise is that we have yet another 20-something African presented as a teen:

just someone else wrote:

If we trained our distances runners like we do our swimmers from an early age we would be the best in the world at it. Swimmers are training harder than most college runners by the time they are 10. They have 2-3 hr workouts in the morning and then another 2-3 hr workout in the afternoon 5 days a week. Then they will have a 3 hr workout Saturday morning and possibly Sunday off. I was swimming about 40 miles a week from a very young age, which required about 25 hrs of swimming a week plus all the supplemental.

I know swimming and running are two different sports and the training is different because of the stress on the body, but we do not have a distance running training system in place that even comes close to swimming in this country.

And how old were you when you quite swimming?

no the problem is that all of the good athletes dont run long distance...LD is for pussies

genetics denialists are so stupid i can't fathom it

fastfoodnation wrote:

it's the lifestyle..i bet she didn't spend the first 15 years of her life being bused to school and to the mall, and she probably had chores beyond picking up her underwear...probably stuff like herding animals, carrying water from the river uphill,etc. she probably has been eating 'real' food her whole life as well.

or it could just be genetic if that makes you feel better about the fact that you're raising your kids as spoilt little fat asses.

you know what .... I'll make the selfish choice and raise my kids in the USA and do the best I can to teach them about a healthy diet and lifestyle ... if you want to move your kids to kenya and have them grow up chasing goats and fetching water from the river a mile or two away more power to ya

I'd like to hear "her" voice. But I'm also sensing a Caster Semenya situation after seeing the pic.Not good for the sport

[quote]RYH wrote:

A number of people have mentioned turning young Western kids into machine runners by giving them heaps of training from a young age. This would be a mistake. You need to turn kids into good all-around athletes first, then pick the ones who could be good runners (not just the 'bosses' and 'beasts' who can quadruple at your endless, silly track meets). And then, don't give them an endless diet of tempo runs and ridiculous anaerobic workouts which will just f@*k them up.

If your Kenyans lead such vigorous lives as children why do they stink, and I mean stink, at every sport except distance running?

I'm thinking this is another gender problem rather than the standard 'east africans are better no they're not' argument

Jeannette Niyonsaba isn't a teenager and here's solid proof.

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=4666982

Could be a common name in Burundi though.