To actually become competitive with eastern Africans, we need to change

It starts when the school

System recognizes that Xc and track are not after thoughts behind football bball etc

And starts investing in good quality coaches and runners

Recognizing that running is a bigger sport on participation level than contact sports

Who plays tackle football in their 40’s

Thinking long term development of athletes

Not over rely on intervals and do bigger base training focus

Until schools recognize the importance of it it’s kind of futile

Seen too many inept coaches at hs level college levels in USA

Yes, we indeed need to change. We need to change to East Africans. That is the real answer.

600yd/600m man wrote:

Japan is not a large nation. Every dollar spent on developing Japanese male 5000m runners is a dollar not spent on recruiting and developing 100m talent in Japan. Japan is having success with 100m and 4 x 100m relay.

A country with 126 million people and the 3rd largest GDP is "not a large" nation? By your standard, only USA and China are large nations.

Ryuji Miura finished 7th in 3000mSC at age 19. He is far more successful than any Japanese sprinter. They have more than enough money to spend on both sprinters and distance runners. They just need to stop losing more talent to baseball and soccer.

Jon Arne Glomsrud wrote:

I claim you need to change your system and training philosophy to stop ruining talented kids. I base this on first-hand stories of Norwegian runners going overseas to US to college scholarships and meeting training regimes that made them worse, injured, burnt out, short term focused and so on. You need a healthy long-term training regime to succeed.

I like this answer. While I was not world class talent and no global medals were lost to the US as a result, I experienced exactly this as an American in the US collegiate system. The problem is college distance coaches are rewarded for what they can get out of an athlete during their time in college, not beyond. Thus, the collegiate system is not designed to maximize an athlete's potential over their lifetime, but only during their time in college.

mofarah494 wrote:

To become competitive in world distance running, we need to change the way we live. And by that I mean our children. Everyone knows the stories of various successful Kenyans running to and from school, not eating processed foods, not playing video games all day.

NAZ, Hanson's and everyone else are doing their best. But, let's face it, the Kenyans have a 9 or 10 year head start.

Is there any real answer?

Dumb thread. We already have Galen Rupp. He beat the greatest distance runner of all time - the man who could run a 50 second last lap and is the 10k world record holder - Kenenisa Bekele.

It was shortsighted of the US to import slaves only from Western Africa. They should've imported slaves from East Africa as well so as to have a mix of elite sprinting and distance talent.

When I was 16, and my entire universe revolved around track and running, I used to think in terms of the government should enforce my values on others at the point of a gun by doing things like having a government search for running talent and government training program for runners, which of course I envisioned being in charge of. Only at 24 did I realize that these are actually dangerous communist thoughts, things characteristic of dictatorships that kill millions of people.

I love it when people use the Royal "We", as if they can assume "we" all agree with their cultural perspective and are cut from the same cloth.

the Ingebrigtsen's have it figured out. What it takes is dedicated training from and early age, consistency over time, during the developmental years.

I'm surprised by all the poor theories here since you all have such a magnificent grasp of biology and anthropology. Oh wait....

One thing I haven't seen addressed--E. Africans seem to have very nutrient poor diets. The fact that they don't eat processed foods does not make their diet perfect. They do not seem to have good food diversity. They seem to be disadvantaged in diet compared to the American runners [with generally well-off parents].

(+1 Ghost1 comments :))

BoKnows wrote:

the Ingebrigtsen's have it figured out. What it takes is dedicated training from and early age, consistency over time, during the developmental years.

Ha! I remember when we were saying that Salazar had figured it and it had to do with training like a sprinter or some bs like that. Turns out it was good old fashion winning at all cost.

Want to improve? Want to be competitive? Start measuring lactate. Start learning from the Ingebrigtsen model. BTC style of going by feel and trowing 20 eggs against the wall isnt good enough. Mo ahmed alone isnt good enough. US 1500m times have been abysmal for YEARS. Why would you not use lactate meters as a pro?

Training like in the 80s, come on, no other serious sports do that. Improve.

Bullet_Proof wrote:

mofarah494 wrote:

To become competitive in world distance running, we need to change the way we live. And by that I mean our children. Everyone knows the stories of various successful Kenyans running to and from school, not eating processed foods, not playing video games all day.

NAZ, Hanson's and everyone else are doing their best. But, let's face it, the Kenyans have a 9 or 10 year head start.

Is there any real answer?

Dumb thread. We already have Galen Rupp. He beat the greatest distance runner of all time - the man who could run a 50 second last lap and is the 10k world record holder - Kenenisa Bekele.

You mean the guy who can't break 2:06, a pedestrian time in international elite marathoning, to save his life? The guy who can't even finish within a mile of Bekele and Kipchoge's marathon PR? That guy who is slower that 2 previous Americans from decades ago? That guy?

I teach high school- you are correct BUT another reason we need to change is for general health.

I'm 62 and I'm one of the fittest people in the school. The kids want to sit there on their phones.

Seriously, behavior, rowdiness, kids talking too much in class aren't an issue anyway because all they want to do is be on their phones- snap chat, TikTok ...

They're not active, they're up all night on their phones and tired all day.

runn wrote:

I teach high school- you are correct BUT another reason we need to change is for general health.

I'm 62 and I'm one of the fittest people in the school. The kids want to sit there on their phones.

Seriously, behavior, rowdiness, kids talking too much in class aren't an issue anyway because all they want to do is be on their phones- snap chat, TikTok ...

They're not active, they're up all night on their phones and tired all day.

Kudos to you Sir, for lasting a full career in teaching high school because I suspect that you had to put up with a certain amount of stress or a lot of stress at different times during your career but you will get a great pay off with a great pension, so good for you.

I taught elementary school and high school in Canada in both Ontario and Quebec, (ESL and FSL/French) and bailed because of stress and became a university teacher overseas, especially in China, which was much less stressful, but with far fewer benefits and no pension. So overall, you win and I lose. Well done. I suspect you had very good class management skills to last so long in the profession.

Lastly, if you think kids in the US are inactive, I believe it is much worse in China with most kids and especially boys, being simply addicted to their phones and playing games 24/7 (if they have a chance to do so) but they just put a new law in place, by the president of the country, limiting online games to just one hour a day but I think that will be tough to implement.

getwiththetimes wrote:

Want to improve? Want to be competitive? Start measuring lactate. Start learning from the Ingebrigtsen model. BTC style of going by feel and trowing 20 eggs against the wall isnt good enough. Mo ahmed alone isnt good enough. US 1500m times have been abysmal for YEARS. Why would you not use lactate meters as a pro?

Training like in the 80s, come on, no other serious sports do that. Improve.

I've said this before. Americans overtrain quite a bit, and while it gets them to a certain competitive level it also holds them back at best, and often burns them out early unless they're genetic freaks and/or they're heavily doping. Even then, they're time bombs. The way Americans train is not sustainable.

People on here hate Rupp, but once he's gone we're immediately back to having no American competitive on the world stage.

We cannot compete vs the east africans for number of reason, all of which have been hashed over on this website a thousand times.

Top 5

1. not a priority to most in the US.

2. we need more US black athletes to consider distance running as a sport worth pursuing.

3. more support for post collegiate training.

4. no doubt there is rampant PED use by many east african athletes

5. more distance runners need to move away from the collegiate system earlier, if they are planning on a pro career. (but this ties back to #3.. they have to have somewhere to go.)