Actually, in TLOR Noakes points out that it was Frank Shorter's inability to run in the cold and damp of Montreal which prevented him from beating Cierpinski in '76. Shorter was better suited to running in the heat, because he was able to shed his own body heat efficiently. These very same qualities allowed him to win in '72.
Geez man, it's science- very hard to refute.
Yeah, it had nothing at all to do with Cierpinski's doping.
How sad. wrote:
Thank you Nomates for finally providing the answer that none of these jokers could. Do you know who coaches that group?
Gert Thys
Not Bobby McGee?
Gert Thys is the coach of the group, but he works closely with Noakes and also Andrew Bosch, a member of Noakes team at UCT who help to plan workouts, etc.
As a side note, Dr. Noakes was one of the the first to suggest that marathoners, especially slower marathoners might be over-hydrating, something which has recently become a more "mainstream" view.
I am not saying that we should accept everything he says without question, anybody can be wrong, but he does have sufficient of a reputation that we should at least consider what he says, and not just dismiss him out of hand.
I think his real point here is that a smaller runner has relatively more surface area (thus, a larger radiator) than a bigger runner. Noakes' comment simply regognized that fact. (The math behind it is that surface area increases with the square while volume increases with the cube.) So, in hot conditions, the smaller runner, assuming essentially equal ability will have a significant advantage.
This isn't a put-down of anyone, just a statement of fact from an M.D.
My experience with runners in varying kinds of warm/hot/dry/humid condidtions is that runners have a big variation in how they can cool in hot, dry heat compared to hot, humid heat. Some runners cool themselves more by having veins close to the skin and fewer sweat glands. They cool better in humid conditions by radiating heat. Other runners have more sweat glands and veins deeper in the muscles where you can't see them. They depend on sweat to carry the heat away by evaporation. For example Rodgers, Shorter where good hot, humid runners but Salazar was better at hot, dry. Salazar is of the more sweat glands per inch type. He is an example of the runners who depend on a sweat evaporating to cool rather than radiate. Of course there is a continuium of variations. I have been meaning to look to see if anyone has studied this variation. I bet you can tell a runner by looking at the leg veins if he or she would be better relative to the competition in different degrees of humidity.
So here is another factor in the calculus including size and surface area.
No doubt is is even more complicated than this.
Tom
Tom,
Thanks for your input on this, that's a take I hadn't seen expressed before. As "the expert" on Boston, could you comment on Jack Fultz's size (winner of the 1977? "run for the hoses"). Was he a big or a little guy?
Wayne
Wayne,
Fultz who won Boston in the heat of 1976 was an average sized guy. He won by virtue of wise pacing...the presence or lack of which is another confounding factor in assessing racing prowess.
Tom
Finish reading Lore of Running yet?
No, he's probably carefully culling through all the PubMed references.
When I become interested in over-"sciencing" everything about running, then I might!
MarathonMind wrote:
Actually, in TLOR Noakes points out that it was Frank Shorter's inability to run in the cold and damp of Montreal which prevented him from beating Cierpinski in '76. Shorter was better suited to running in the heat, because he was able to shed his own body heat efficiently. These very same qualities allowed him to win in '72.
Geez man, it's science- very hard to refute.
Waldemar Cierpinski's chemist was the only one who prevented Shorter from winning in Montreal.
As for Noakes, I have his book, have read it many times and I'm not sold on all of his theories. Especially the " you only have so many good marathons in you " one. Bill Rodgers ran his PR in his 27th marathon. Many other marathoners in the 70s and 80s ran several marathons a year had long careers. The main problem with running a lot of good marathons is that you have to have everything go just right in your training for a long time to string together more than 5-6 good marathons, especially if you're only running one or two a year. It has nothing to do with any physiological limit on the number of marathons you can run.
Sorry - I'm just screwing around. I actually tend to disagree with much of what Noakes has to say, particularly his central governor theory. My colleague and I went round and round with Tim last yr on the review of one of our manuscripts. We finally had to call in the editor and protest that Noakes was too biased to review our paper – fortunately he agreed.
Cheers.
What was this manuscript about, critiqueing Noakes's theory? I might be interested in reading THAT!
I have to agree with you on the '5-6 good marathons' thing. It is not a physiological limit so much as a practical one. I have been looking at exceptions to the Noakes "rule" and there are many of them. One, who intrigues me greatly is Abdelkader El Mouaziz- who has 13 sub 2:10s and 8 sub 2:09's to his credit.
Of his fastest 16 marathons, the slowest one is 2:10:28 in NYC.
The man is/was a marathon machine.
Tim did make that statement in his book(4th edition). I thought that his main point was that many elite marathoners overtrained and that is what caused them to have a limited number of good 'thons in them.
Tim also stated that elites had about 20 good years of running. A very different statement than the 5-6 good marathons in any given runner.
I was going on memory about the 27th marathon thing, I just consulted his autobiography and it was actually the 23rd so we're both wrong. Surely that doesn't alter the point I was trying to make, though. He had 13 2:12s or better ( within 3 mins of his PR ) up to the end of '79.
I just consulted his autobiography and it was actually the 23rd
Better go back and re-read that book. Bill Rodgers ran 2:09:27 at Boston 1979, his 22nd marathon.
He had 13 2:12s or better ( within 3 mins of his PR ) up to the end of '79
No he didn't. He had 8 races within 3 minutes of his eventual PB prior to Boston '79. Rodgers only had 12 races better than 2:12 his entire career. It's a huge leap to classify a race three minutes outside a runner's PB as a "good" race, even though any one of us would die to run a Rodger's "clunker."
Even if you could put a single correct fact out there, you still have no point, because Rodgers only improved up until 1979, after that Boston he never ran as fast again, proving Noakes' assertion. Don't forget he is talking about "good" races from the point of view of that particular runners standards, not yours or mine.
I hate to say it, but I think Noake's LOR is the most over-rated, badly written and organized running book on the planet. This is not to say that Noake's himself isn't incredibly accomplished.
The chapters repeat themselves, much info presented is laughably incorrect (especially some WR progression and comparison charts), sentences such as "ice before, during, and after running" for achilles injuries are all over the place, and it should have more accurately been called "The Lore Of Arthur Newton / Ultramarathoning".