Distance runners with sub-50 400m speed?

Juha Vataiinen!!

Guppy wrote:

You're an idiot if you think Bekele can't run sub 50. He closed his WR 10k in 11.0 for the final 100m. He's run 3:33.

I'm pretty sure Bekele didn't run 11.0 for 100m at the end of that race...and that he couldn't do it from a standing start even when fresh. He is probably about a 12.0/23.5/49.5 guy, and if he trained for the sprints he wouldn't improve much.

I'm curious how many others out there that have run a 1500 under 3:33 cannot run a sub 50 400.

I still have a hard time believing that Bekele couldn't do it.

If you time his last 100 it really looks like he did close in about 11.0

I completely understand the question....and I quote:

"How many high school or college runners with sub-50 second 400m speed (sub 57 for ladies) have gone on to become elite distance runners? Examples?

My feeling is that U.S. runners would compete much more equally on the world stage if more athletes with basic speed in the 47-50(m) and 57-60(w) second 400m range were developed like distance runners rather than like sprinters."

HOW MANY HIGH SCHOOL....

So....by pointing out one or two people who have run sub 50 in high school and do go on to distance running success proves nothing. There are always outliers. Moreso in the 800m/1500m world which I don't count as pure distance running. The vast majority, 90%? 99%?, of high school kids spitting out sub 50 400m won't become distance runners of any sort.

And a distance runner's 400m time improves mostly via his endurance training not by any sort of speed training. Give a high school freshman distance runner. He runs say 13s in the 100m, 60s in the 400m and 4:40 in the 1600m. 4 years later he still runs 13s in the 100m but now :56 in the 400m and 4:27 in the 1600m. His speed, ie: time at 100m, hasn't change. It is his endurance training that improved his 400m time.

Even if Bekele ran 11.x in the last 100m of a 10k it was from a running start and only proves he can maintain top speed...ie: he has great endurance. Also, unless someone was on the track with a watch recording his 100m split we really can't say definetly what he ran. We can guess and say well it somewhere between 11-12s...which is a huge gap in a sprint distance.

A sprinter is born a sprinter. If someone can show me Bekele running sub 50 as a 16 year old I'll give them $100...just ain't happening.

The problem isn't that US runners lack speed....it's that they lack the ability to maintain top speed at the end of a race. It's the mentality that they have to "move up" cuz they are slow. Kennedy moved up to the 10k far too late in his career. Todd Williams moved up to the marathon far too late in his career. Success comes from guys like Ryan Hall who has 3:42/13:16 in him and had decided early on that he was going to run the marathon....not that he's running it by default.

Now when you get into the realm of most 800/1500m runners you need to be strong and fast...for the most part. We have a problem in this country with "the mile" so that every Tom, Dick, and Harry runner wants to stick it out when they are getting blasted instead of going up to the 5 or the 10.

There's just a fine line between the adequate speed needed to be a top 800m/1500m runner and the ability to hold speed needed in the distance events.

Alan

cmurph wrote:

If you time his last 100 it really looks like he did close in about 11.0

That line is not 100 meters from the finish, moron.

Alan, your argument is wearing thin. You asked for one example, and we gave you at least six: Mac Fleet, Nick Williams, Elliot Jantzer, Bryce Burgess, Alan Webb, Jeff See. If every kid that cracked 50 seconds didn't become a relay whore and a wide receiver, and went toward 800/1600/3200 instead, I contend we would see ten times the six examples stated above on a yearly basis. Yes, a ton of sub-50 400m runners are NOT good distance prospects. But some of them are. I'm not trying to say this is the right way to discover the good prospects, I'm just saying that you would find Alan Webb type runners much more frequently if there was a way to herd the sub-50 guys toward distances instead of sprints.

I don't know why you can't understand that, Alan. I know you're a smart guy!

I don't know a single runner who ever got faster (more than a full second, that is) at 400 meters after training for distance. If anyone can back this up, I'd appreciate hearing your story. I was a 57 second 400m runner when I started college, and four years and 12,000 miles later, I was a 57 second 400m runner. If a person gets faster at 400m from his freshman year in high school to his senior year, it will be because of maturation and strength, not endurance training.

just sayin wrote:

And the vast majority of them(HS kids who run distance that can break 50) never pursue running at any distance at the college level. And the vast majority of those who do, never pursue any distance above 1500m. Which leaves a very small group of people with very good speed who are putting in the aerobic work to become the best they can at longer distances.

If this group were larger, could we expect to see outliers like a Geb or Bekele at a greater frequency than we do now?

No.

Because.... you are talking about *US* HS kids who can break 50, and training them to run distance, correct? So yes, I agree that if we took more of them and trained them for distance running, we would produce more "top" 10k runners.

However.... then you say that maybe we could expect to "see" (ie, produce) "more" Gebs and Bekeles if we trained our guys this way. May I remind you that we've NEVER come CLOSE to producing a single Geb or Bekele in the 5 or 10k in our history. In fact, the fastest runner of european descent ever is almost a minute behind Geb and Bekele in the 10k. So...... no of course we would not produce any Gebs or Bekeles if we took your plan to fruition. Don't you think the entirety of the USA, Europe, Asia, Australia, and South America could have produce more than a single sub 27:10 runner (Barrios) in the history of the sport under the "old way" of picking distance runners if we we gonna have the capability of producing a few 26:20 runners under your "new" way??

Sorry man, the gap is too big that you are looking to close. And realize that the guys that have bridged the gap even a little in the 5k and 10k ( salazar in his day and who is still one of the fastest non-africans in history in the 10k, and Barrios, Kennedy and Mottram) were NOT guys that had 48 speed and became distance runners. No, salazar and Barrios were marathon types, Kennedy did not have much pure speed, and Mottram while yes having good speed came from an endurance background (triathlons).

It sounds good on paper, find a bunch of 48 guys and train them to become 5k/10k runners, and eventually one can produce a bunch of sub 27:00 guys, but since it hasn't even happened once in history before (outside of east/north africa), I don't see it happening a bunch of times in the future by simply taking on your idea (one that I am sure many have actually tried more than you realize. The guys didn't go on to distance runners because they had no talent for it). The best we can hope for is that more 48 guys will become milers, and can become great ones, and that has already happened before.

The Bekeles and Gebs are just freaks of nature, I don't see your way of selecting potential distance runners creating someone resembling them. It would have at least come close to happening before, and it hasn't. Not by a loooooong shot.

Nick Williams ran 11.24 and 23.13 outdoors his senior year.

A good current example is OTC runner Matt Scherer, a former U. Oregon 400m runner who has moved up to the 800. Matt was a 45 low guy consistently, but his 800 performances, while good, have not been that impressive. He hasn't dipped below 1:45 consistently, if at all, and I believe he's been hovering around 1:46 low.

THANK YOU. Finally, a rational rebuttal. Of course, even though no one wants to believe that the Ethiopians may have genetic freaks in their already genetic freakiness, you may be right.

I think your argument, in some ways, supports mine, though. It took roughly 40 years (from Abebe Bikila to Haile Gebreselassie) to find those individuals in a population of 80 million using a system that roughly equates to my proposition.

Using this same system, with a population four times as large, statistically, we should be more likely to see an occurrence of a similar individual. That is, if we use the same system, which we clearly don't. Many Anglo-European athletes track toward other sports due to social pressures and economic incentives. The same natural talents that create superior distance runners also create superior football (soccer) players, which take away huge numbers of potential athletes from the distance pool.

That said, your argument is a good one, and may be right. My only response is, we can't know if my way would work because we haven't tried it! I would be interested why you came to think this has been tried more than I realize. Examples?

In Noakes' book there is a section detailing how much faster the Kenyans are to those of European-with standard deviations and everything. Basically, the bell curve of population speed for Kenyans is shifted to a location way faster then Europeans. So the average Kenyan (and Ethiopian/Morrocan etc) is much faster then the average European, and the best East African is also faster then the best European. So, for example it would take a European decendent at around the %99.9999 percentile to run a 2:06 marathon but only the %99.9 percentile for East Africans. The shift is probably geneticaly caused but also cultural and environmental factors have an effect. The top East Africans are roughly 3-5 seconds faster then the top Europeans/Americans.

Event

800 Coe 1 second/mile slower

1500 Cacho 3 seconds slower

mile Cram 3 seconds slower

3000 Vicosia 4.5 seconds/mile slower

5000 Baumann 6 seconds/mile slower

10000 Barrios 8 seconds/mile slower

1/2 mar Dos Santos 4.5 seconds/mile slower

marathon daCosta 4.5 seconds/mile slower

So maybe speed isn't the problem-the best ever European decendents are able to run almost as good of an 800, but a noticeably slower 1500/mile, an even slower 3000, a much worse 5000 then a somewhat pathetic 10000. Then 1/2 marathon and marathon are somewhat better but not as good as the east africans still. If you looked at 100,200 and 400 times of East Africans vs Europeans/Americans, I would think that the 400 would be about equal, but Europeans would be slightly faster in the 100 and 200. West Africans dominate the sprints however, so I am ignoring them.

Speed doesn't seem to be the problem...endurance doesn't seem is not the problem...

Combining the two (speed endurance/specific endurance)seems to be the problem. Whether it is training related or genetically related I don't know. It's probably a combination of both.

just sayin wrote:

Alan, your argument is wearing thin. You asked for one example, and we gave you at least six: Mac Fleet, Nick Williams, Elliot Jantzer, Bryce Burgess, Alan Webb, Jeff See.

Mac Fleet is your example?

growed some wrote:

Mac Fleet is your example?

He's one of six. So? Have you run a sub 50 400m and a sub 4:10 mile? We'll put your name in the hat, too.

Robby Andrews should go on the list, too.

fUrCeOsNhN wrote:

In Noakes' book...

Combining the two (speed endurance/specific endurance)seems to be the problem. Whether it is training related or genetically related I don't know. It's probably a combination of both.

Well done. This is good. I wonder if East Africans have been shown to have a higher percentage of Type II-X muscle fibers, the kind that are fast twitch with significantly higher endurance? This would be interesting to determine. I hate the thought of genetics being at the root of it all. All training and effort being equal, poor genes are a hard barrier to overcome.

Check this out:

This is why gene doping will destroy the sport as we know it.

Try again wrote:

You can train certain fast twitch fibers to behave more like slow twitch fibers, but you cannot change them from fast twitch to slow twitch. I challenge you to produce any research to the contrary.

Quote:

Adult skeletal muscle shows plasticity and can undergo conversion between different fiber types in response to exercise training or modulation of motoneuron activity (Booth and Thomason 1991, Jarvis et al. 1996; Pette 1998; Olson and Williams 2000; Hood 2001). This conversion of muscle fiber from type IIb to type IIa and type I is likely to be mediated by a calcium signaling pathway that involves calcineurin, calmodulin-dependent kinase, and the transcriptional cofactor Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-gamma coactivator 1α (PGC-1α) (Naya et al. 2000; Olson and Williams 2000; Lin et al. 2002; Wu et al. 2002). However, the targeted transcriptional factors directly responsible for reprogramming the fiber-specific contractile and metabolic genes remain to be identified.

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Interesting.

Ritz ran a 48 something on a 4X400 relay leg in HS.

There's a difference between a relay leg and an open 400m.

I ran :59 as a hs freshman, :56 as a senior, while training as a distance runner.

There are always going to be examples of a handful of guys capable of sub :50 and great distance running performance....but the majority of those guys are 800m/1500m specialists.

I really don't feel like going into a discussion about fiber type and bioenergetics so I'l let you kids pick up an ex. phys. book.

So here's my question....let's say you have a "sprinter" who goes sub :50 and you train him to be a distance runner. Why wouldn't that work in reverse then? Take a marathon runner, who has great endurance and train him for the 400m? Clearly all he needs is increased speed and with his endurance he'll slow down less in the 400 right?

You can't have it both ways. Either you are a good distance runner or a good sprinter. Training for one will diminish the quality of the other. That is why you typically will not get faster in the 400 and why you'll typically get slower in the 50m or 10m. Distance running kills your ability to sprint. Starting off as a HS freshman you'll get faster in the 400m simply because of neuromuscular coordination...ie: you've been running a while...and because of increases in endurance.

These types of questions frustrate me because we go round and round in a circle...Could Bolt run a WR 400M? Could Wariner be a good 800m runner? Etc.

Alan

The fastest I have seen Bekele run is 8 meters per second during the Paris World Championship 10000m 8M/sec is 50 second 400 pace, he held that for a few seconds, i.e. 240 2 meter long strides per minute, and he looked like he was flat out.

Regarding the future of the 800m I think that eventually we wil see 44 and 43 second 400m runners moving up to 800, guys who can't win major races at 400 because they are 1 second or so behind the best. They have the potential to go well under 1.40 for 800.