ukathleticscoach wrote:
know-it-all joe wrote:EPO benefits the marathon a lot less than the 5k/10k/half. Perhaps not at all. Mo Trafeh and his 60:39 / 2:11 is your classic example.
Great study of 1
The Tour de France is hardly a sprint and it worked ok there
Clearly you don't know much about cycling. It's much more intense than a marathon.
Look up almost any known EPO cheat. They are always much better at 5k/10k/half than marathon.
Mohammed Mourhit another good one
They don't need support. They need to man and woman up and run in the morning for 10 miles before work, then after work run another 10-18 miles. 7 days a week Pretty standard stuff for a good 70s marathoner.Coaches and athletes are paranoid of mileage. It's infected the whole system. Not to mention sponsored athletes are spoiled and worried that if they don't do well at the marathon they will lose the bonuses they receive when they win or place high in shorter races.
edward teach wrote:
The biggest issue is support. You have to be fast as hell to get any money for running in the US. If we started treating runners like athletes and giving money all the way back to 2:30s (maybe a couple k a year), you'd see a lot more sub 2:10 guys, as runners would improve to move to the next tier. Now the gap between supported and getting nothing is tiny. A 2:15 marathoner might not even get a shoe contract.
Also this line made me lol:"If we started treating runners like athletes and giving money all the way back to 2:30s"Are you JOKING? That is treating them like social assistance leeches, not athletes. Rewarding even more sub-par performances will not help Americans run faster at the marathon.The bottom line is the mystery of the marathon has lost it's appeal for young people. They don't want to do it just out of love anymore, possibly due to the fact that everyone else in the office has also finished one, albeit in 5 hours.
edward teach wrote:
The biggest issue is support. You have to be fast as hell to get any money for running in the US. If we started treating runners like athletes and giving money all the way back to 2:30s (maybe a couple k a year), you'd see a lot more sub 2:10 guys, as runners would improve to move to the next tier. Now the gap between supported and getting nothing is tiny. A 2:15 marathoner might not even get a shoe contract.
know-it-all joe wrote:
ukathleticscoach wrote:Great study of 1
The Tour de France is hardly a sprint and it worked ok there
Clearly you don't know much about cycling. It's much more intense than a marathon.
Look up almost any known EPO cheat. They are always much better at 5k/10k/half than marathon.
Mohammed Mourhit another good one
The incentive to dope is always greatest on the highest status events. In the running world the marathon has eclipsed the 5k/10k so you'd expect the biggest dopers to be marathon runners now.
it's obviously not a "speed" issue as you point out. In the past there were a reasonable number of "slow" 5,000/10,000 guys who ran under 2:10. Ron Hill's best was 28:30 something, Clayton's 28:40 something, same for Dick Beardsley. Ian Thompson's 5,000/10,000 times were 14:05/30:10 when he ran under 2:10 though I believe he later got into the mid 29:00s. Neither Henrik Jorgensen nor Gerard Nijboer were ever under 28:00 for the 10,000. The Japanese crank out loads of guys who go under 2:10 without getting near 28:00 for the 10,000.
There is some correlation, obviously, between fast marathoning and fastish 10,000s. You're going to have a hard time running 2:10 if your best 10,000 is 31:00. But once you have enough 5/10 speed to go under 2:10, or whatever time you want, the advantages of getting faster at those distances diminish. It doesn't hurt, consider Steve Jones. But it only helps so much.
So what needs to change? All of the old time guys I mentioned had the marathon as their best event, but they were really distance runners who mixed the marathon in with serious racing at other distances. It seems to me that our guys now often wait until they've maxed out at track distances and then move to the marathon rather than mix the marathon into their racing in peak years. Lynn Jennings did that. Mark Nenow did it. Ryan Hall did it and only Hall really ran the marathon as fast as his potential indicated and then faded out. Shorter was serious about track, cross country and marathons all at the same time as was the case for Hill, etc.
The other thing I see with many of our current marathoners is that they don't stay with the event if they aren't successful pretty quickly. Sometimes you have a great performance in your first race or two but sometimes you're like Hill and need several years to go from 2:24 to 2:09. I think we'd get more sub 2:10s if our guys ran 2-3 marathons a year for several years even if they aren't all spectacular ones.
post hole digger wrote:
"There are 17 American men in history who have run under 2:10 in the marathon," Epstein says. "There were 32 Kalenjin who did it in October of 2011."
Quote from Sports Gene guy. I don't know why that's true, but it is interesting.
I have another stat of my own that is at least as telling:
In history, only 2 US born runners have run under 2:09 on a record eligible course.
A combined 50 Ken/Eth runners have run under 2:06. (with a couple Moroccans also running under 2:06. No other country has a sub-2:06)
If that isn't a gulf of a difference, then nothing is. That's the difference between single A minor league and the Big Show. Two different leagues entirely.
341 2:07:20 Kiprotich, Stephen UGA Enschede 1 4/17/11
498 2:07:50 Kiprotich, Stephen UGA Tokyo 3 2/26/12
Uganda IS in East Africa
know-it-all joe wrote:
EPO benefits the marathon a lot less than the 5k/10k/half. Perhaps not at all. Mo Trafeh and his 60:39 / 2:11 is your classic example.
I hope this is an intentional joke -- that events with a slightly more anaerobic component than the marathon are more affected than the marathon itself by a drug whose entire benefit is aerobic. You're using an example of one guy to try to argue against every marathoner and TdF cyclist? Are you frigging high or just dumb as a bucket of shit?
know-it-all joe wrote:
They need EPO.
EPO benefits the marathon a lot less than the 5k/10k/half. Perhaps not at all. Mo Trafeh and his 60:39 / 2:11 is your classic example.[/quote]
Actually it is just the opposite, the longer the race, the more EPO help you which explains the explosion of sub 205 times.
they are weak!
the african guy from Eritrea, that runs for the USA ???? Yes, I have.
not really.....so many guys breaking 2'07 these days!!
asdfasdfdsfsf wrote:
5. Americans are still stuck in a 1970s training mentality when it comes to marathon training. They aren't training the same way that the Kenyans are, particularly when it comes to workouts.
1975-1985 produced a lot of fast marathons, most of them by guys who weren't necessarily fast at 5-10k.
illana wrote:
EPO benefits the marathon a lot less than the 5k/10k/half. Perhaps not at all. Mo Trafeh and his 60:39 / 2:11 is your classic example.
Actually it is just the opposite, the longer the race, the more EPO help you which explains the explosion of sub 205 times.
And do you have a source for this wild conjecture?
Do any of you realize that most of those busted for EPO have historically been SPRINTERS, followed by mid-distance and then 5k/10k runners?
HRE wrote:
it's obviously not a "speed" issue as you point out. In the past there were a reasonable number of "slow" 5,000/10,000 guys who ran under 2:10. Ron Hill's best was 28:30 something, Clayton's 28:40 something, same for Dick Beardsley. Ian Thompson's 5,000/10,000 times were 14:05/30:10 when he ran under 2:10 though I believe he later got into the mid 29:00s. Neither Henrik Jorgensen nor Gerard Nijboer were ever under 28:00 for the 10,000. The Japanese crank out loads of guys who go under 2:10 without getting near 28:00 for the 10,000.
There is some correlation, obviously, between fast marathoning and fastish 10,000s. You're going to have a hard time running 2:10 if your best 10,000 is 31:00. But once you have enough 5/10 speed to go under 2:10, or whatever time you want, the advantages of getting faster at those distances diminish. It doesn't hurt, consider Steve Jones. But it only helps so much.
So what needs to change? All of the old time guys I mentioned had the marathon as their best event, but they were really distance runners who mixed the marathon in with serious racing at other distances. It seems to me that our guys now often wait until they've maxed out at track distances and then move to the marathon rather than mix the marathon into their racing in peak years. Lynn Jennings did that. Mark Nenow did it. Ryan Hall did it and only Hall really ran the marathon as fast as his potential indicated and then faded out. Shorter was serious about track, cross country and marathons all at the same time as was the case for Hill, etc.
The other thing I see with many of our current marathoners is that they don't stay with the event if they aren't successful pretty quickly. Sometimes you have a great performance in your first race or two but sometimes you're like Hill and need several years to go from 2:24 to 2:09. I think we'd get more sub 2:10s if our guys ran 2-3 marathons a year for several years even if they aren't all spectacular ones.
I definitely think racing more would help. I was shocked to hear Bobby Curtis isn't going to run another marathon until the trails in 15 months, and Llano only wants to do one more. Look at where Jeffrey Eggleston got running several marathons per year.
Precious Roy wrote:
2. US runners do not need to break 2:10. There is no big incentive to break 2:10. 2:15 is the Olympic A standard for the trials and for Rio. Odds are that running @2:10 will get you a spot on the team. Running 2:09 or 2:08 will not get you any closer to a podium in a major marathon in the US.
I agree making the US Olympic team is a large focus for the best US marathoners, and that a 2:08 or 2:09 will not put you in the top three in Chicago, and most years not in Boston or NY.
However, running a 2:08 can be very rewarding if achieving that time in many large international marathons. That time has grabbed first spot in Lisbon, Madrid, Shanghai, Dusseldorf, Prague, Toronto, Seville, Madrid, Milan, and Rome this year. Some of these marathons are $50,000+ for first place, so it could be a great incentive for a US runner money-wise, as well as having that 1st place (in a significant marathon) on their resume.
Chicken-feed compared to talking your book before running slowly at Chicago/NY/Boston.
Double Stuf Oreos
McDonald's
Wal Mart
NFL
NBA
Runner's World
Team in Training
Minimum Wage
Public education
Work
Effort
Title IX
Another factor, and it's been referred to by others here, is that the tangible rewards for US marathoners realistically peak out at making Olympic teams and getting shoe contracts. You can do that as an American without going under 2:10. Once you get to that level there are not very many more realistic seeming goals to set for yourself. I'm not sure any of us really can conceive of a native born American running much faster than 2:07-2:08 without some sort of aid. (I'm not necessarily talking about drugs, a good tailwind at Boston on a cool day could do it too but I'm certainly not excluding drugs either.) So I don't think there are US runners thinking of getting below 2:07 as a rule. Hall seems to have been the last one.
And the thing is, if you make the US team and have a great day at the Olympics, you can medal. There are only a handful of East Africans there, not the horde that turn up at Berlin, Tokyo, etc. In a no rabbits race you may grab a medal even if you don't have a top fifty time.
If there were significantly better incentives for US marathon runners to get under 2:10 you might see more of them do it. But I don't think there are many of those.
Folks, Renato Canova has mentioned this a few times on this forum. One obvious problem that americans distance runners have is the pace of the long runs. The long runs are too slow. Again, the long runs are too slow.... search the forum and learn from this amazing coach. The training must change!