Superstars Competition half-mile run record is 1:57.36?

Good point ukathleticscoach. A friend of mine from my church is a wonderful dancer. I was watching a performance of hers and I noticed how explosive she is when she jumped in the air. It all seems so easy for her. I asked her if she ever competed in track in high school (she's 28 now). She said no. So I as asked is she would like to have some fun and do some local all-comers meets to find out how good an athlete she is. Not that this proves much but physically she is has a very body with rather well developed glutes. She looks like a sprinter/jumper type.

I'll let it die.

I simply don't agree that it is really all that fast. My experience is not out of line with that of many other posts.

My brother is 5 years older than me and I really didn't like him much so it is not worship or exaggeration. The track guy who edged him had his name on the PE record board until it was broken by me, then several after me. That is undisputed to me.

It doesn't surprise me that the Superstars record is 1:57+ by a professional soccer player.

Gebrucilassie wrote:

I once saw James Lofton ( a former wide receiver with the Packers) run 1:59 without track training, so I would think that is legit.

I call bullshit. I went to college with Lofton and he couldn't run 2:10 without falling down on the grass and dying.

I remember watching Holyfield also- it may have been 2:02 but I think it was 2:09. http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=1750421

We had 3 baseball players who went to state. One in the 4x1 (no surprize) 4x4 (sub 50) [some surprize] 880 1:55ish, ran one work-out before districts and a 300 & 600 time trials with the team. These kids are not the norm they were just very talented.

the guy who wrote that most track teams consist of lower tier athletes looking for a varsity letter is spot-on as exists at my high school. our coach is terrible and the baseball, soccer, lacrosse, football, basketball teams are very good and send a few every year to division 1 schools. Lots of the guys on those teams would do great if they ran track or a field event.

I saw James Lofton run 800 meters in the Superstars competition and I believe he did run under 2:00. I remember thinking that I had busted my fanny training all through high school and never did break 2:00, and he did it with no difficulty carrying NFL muscle.

Saying that soccer players wouldn't be good runners because they only run 5 miles in 90 minutes is absurd. Unless you are a soccer player, you have absolutely no clue what is involved in training. They don't do as much aerobic running as a runner does, but they still run anywhere from 20-40 mpw, plus intense lifting, core, sprinting, and agility drills. The average European soccer player spends 3-4 hours of his day just doing these things. Then add the actual team practice. These guys are in killer friggin' shape.

just the facts ma'am wrote: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! [blah blah blah] ...and you've got a possible sub-1:50 guy on just 1.5 years of training.

Guy runs 2:01 on minimal training: easy to believe.

Guy who runs 2:01 on minimal training must automatically be capable of running sub-1:50: not so much.

My personal experience: I ran 2:01 in my first season of running, at age 15, running maybe 15 miles per week tops for a few months. (And the splits were 63.x/57.x, so I think I could have gone faster!)

I trained hard for the next 13 years, but I never got faster than 1:51, and that was as a senior in university.

Interestingly, the summer I was 19 I spent eight weeks working up north in a lumber camp, where I did no running whatsoever. When I got back to the city, I hopped in a workout with my buddies and was surprised that I felt pretty good. So I hopped into an allcomers meet after 1.5 weeks of running and two workouts, and ran 2:01.

Moral of my long-winded story: I found that I had enough natural ability to always run in the 2:00-2:02 range no matter how much training I'd been doing (as long as I was reasonably active and not 30 pounds overweight). That didn't mean I had unworldly talent -- like I said, I never got faster than 1:51 despite a lot of trying -- it's just what my baseline was. So I don't have any trouble believing that the brother of a 1:53 high-school runner would be able to gut out a 2:01 on minimal training.

Oh, and just so my post is vaguely relevant to the OP: in college, we needed an extra man to fill out our 4x800 team indoors. We heard there was a varsity soccer player who had run in high school, so we got him to come out. He ran 1:58 indoors after a month of training.

I wish the powers that be would bring back the superstars in the way it was. I fondly remember as a kid watching it on saturday afternoons. I think they tried in some night time version last yr where TO was in it and looked like a fool.

Memories that stick in my mind are:

Renaldo Nehemiah winning the military press competition easily over big football guys while he has the hurdle champ,

Dwight Stones being a real player particularly in the obstacle course where he would hurdle the high bar that the others would have to flop over. He wasnt bad in the 800m either.

I believe OJ torched the 800 in the low 2's also. He also has the superstars 100 yd record of something below 10 sec.

What a great show.

yeah, so Terrell Owens ran 9.02 100y while the officially timed world record by asafa powell is 9.07 on the way to 9.83 100m??

That's great and all, but you didn't run 2:00 your first race with zero training. Can I ask how fast you ran your first 800 that first season when you got down to 2:01?

just the facts wrote:

He also did no more training than the other pitchers which included a 2-3 mile easy run every day and some circuit training.

I wasn't aware that running 2-3 miles every day was typical training for high school pitchers. I am quite sure that every pitcher on my high school team ran 0 miles every day. And I think there are a lot of major league pitchers who follow a similar regimen.

Sure, if he was running 2-3 miles every day I can believe a 2:01. Heck, I knew 800 guys who didn't run much more than that.

mainstream sports are just running with props

There was this high school soccer player named Andy Wheating, you may have heard of him. In just his second year of serious track training he ran a 1:45.03 800.

It can be done.

There was once this Brit who played (soccer) a footballer, a guy who loved his soccer and played every weekend for a local team in the wilds of East Anglia. He was 25 years old, with a full time job and a young family when a friend egged him on to enter a local 10k road race....

His name Paul Evans. He eventually became a 2:08 marathoner and two time Olympian in the 10,000m.

Its funny how, on this message board, US athletes running 1:45 to 1:50 or so (or the performance equivalents for other longer distances) are so quickly criticized or downplayed by several posters because such performances are not impressive or medal worthy....Yet, someone running 1:57, 1:59, 2:02, 4:24, etc. seem to be quickly admired and considered impressive. I bet if these super stars who ran these fast ~2:00 800 meter races trained full time for track racing, they would run about 1:45 to 1:50, maybe slower...so, in reality they suck and cant medal.

Well...i saw at least 10 argentinian footballers run under 2:00 the 800 during offseason

At the time Claudio Caniggia could run 100m in 10.7 in trainers.

Also i saw many footballers ran under 14:50 in 5k. Also impressive.

Even Lionel Messi was able to run 11.1 in 100m and sub 10 in 3k. (He did that in a test called "cooper´s test" 4 years ago). That's the most impressive achievement because with that speed, endurance and skills combo he's almost unstoppable.

This is the problem of USA'S soccer men team. They have the speed and endurance...but they haven't the skills with the ball in movement

i do remember reading an interview with dimitar berbatov (not considered a fast player which proves the point more) where he said that we was running 10k 2x per day so 80+ mpw in the club offseason while watching the world cup matches from home.

these guys are very fit and fast and many could run under 2:00 for 800m. they do distance running and interval work almost daily in addition to work on the ball and scrimmaging / games which are still running.