Distance runners with sub-50 400m speed?

Your red herring is a red herring. You have to have the physiology to support the economy. The muscular changes are part of the supporting physiological package and can't be dismissed as an academic notion.

That said, I like the point you made.

Muscle Fiber Type of Elite Runners (1977)

Fink, WJ; Costill, DL; Pollock, ML. Submaximal and maximal working capacity of elite distance runners. Part II: Muscle fiber composition and enzyme activities. Ann N Y Acad Sci. 1977;301:323–327

Can't find modern research which actually looked at type iic fibers (also known in some circles as iix), but the distance runners had a large number of these fast twitch fibers.

Distance running has a negative effect on the type iia and iib fibers needed to produce the force and speed needed for a sub :50 400m. This is just common knowledge. If you run a lot you'l lose muscle mass in the type iia and iib fibers. Exercise in itself is a catabolic activity, when you take it to the lengths that distance runners do you are always in a catabolic state. Simply doing sprints to try and maintain your speed isn't enough. So you could have a :50 400m guy do nothing but distance and he would no longer be a :50 guy...more like a :55 guy...but if that same guy includes sprints and weight training with his distance running he can save some but not all of his speed, maybe dropping only to :53 for the 400m. Simply put, once a sprinter starts to try to be a distance runner he is no longer a sprinter.

You can't be a turtle and a hare at the same time.

Alan

can Galen Rupp go sub 50 in an open 400?

got a question wrote:

can Galen Rupp go sub 50 in an open 400?

he recently ran 1:49 indoors, that is 54xx pace...he could probably run 50xx...sub 50 is a stretch

So I have two guys on my team right now who split sub-50 in the 400 last year, and this year, we are really looking at the 800 and have been training for it throughout the winter.

We do a long run (60-70min) weekly, some rep work (6-8 x 150s or 200s @ 800 or 1600 effort) once a week, some hill reps or fartlek one day, and some tempo work another day with more hill reps after. We also do some speed maintenance (:08-:12 hill sprints or flying 60s) once a week. The rest of the days are steady or recovery runs, with 2 days of general strength work and some plyos.

These guys have taken to the training well, and as we move forward, we will actually start doing some race specific work for the middle distances. I am thinking that we are covering all our bases here, as I am trying to keep the speed there while adding the aerobic component to get these guys to run some fast 8s.

So I am actually trying it--taking sub-50 HS kids and training them for distance. So far, so good.

We ran a scrim a few days ago, and the results were favorable. We ran off-events, starting with the 1200. I asked them to run 68s for 2 laps then race. They were 2:19 and 2:20 at the 800, with the final times being 3:18 and 3:20 (last laps of 59 and 60). An hour and a half later, I asked them to run as even as they could for the 600. They ran side by side, going :28-:28-:28 for 1:24 for both of them. At the end of the day, the boys ran the 4 x 400, splitting 50-point each.

I offer this up to say that maybe these kids can do it--maybe they can be sub-50 400 runners in HS and be good in the distances. Granted, I have nothing more to go than what I listed above, nor can I estimate what would be possible over 3200m or 5000m, but this is kinda fun to tinker with and see what is possible.

More thoughts from you guys?

By the way, this is one of the better threads we have had on Letsrun in quite some time--keep it going.

wellnow wrote:

What Kenenisa Bekele has is speed endurance and better economy than American runners, not superior genetics. Alitude training has been shown to improve economy. .

Yeah, and superior genetics also will help you have better running economy.

Also, what has helped Bekele is a lot bigger than "training at altitude" (lots of western runners do that). It's having ancestors who have lived at altitude for aeons, who have evolved to adapt to the thin air like no other people studied on earth (including other highlanders like Tibetans and Peruvians), and who have then passed on these genes to him. At 12,000 ft, the Ethiopians studied had blood that was as fully oxygenated as westerner's blood is at sea-level, yes, despite the greatly reduced (35% less) partial pressure of the inspired oxygen (ie, 35% less O2 molecules to breathe in). This was thought to be impossible. Genetic difference? Absolutely (not even other people who live at altitude display this unique characteristic). Genetic advantage for distance running? I will let you be the judge on whether or not you think having extremely "unique adaptations of oxygen uptake or delivery" and a super "high conductance of O2 from lung to blood" is an advantage for distance running or not. I just know that that 1,2,3 by Bekele, Geb, and Sihine in Paris '03 (one of a hundred examples) was pretty impressive, eh? (no country has ever dominated a WC or Olympic distance race like the ethiopians did that day. Prove me wrong with an example)

(I don't have the link, I have the saved document. Search if you want:

"An Ethiopian pattern of human adaptation to

high-altitude hypoxia"

Cynthia M. Beall*†, Michael J. Decker‡, Gary M. Brittenham§, Irving Kushner¶, Amha Gebremedhin,

and Kingman P. Strohl** )

realistic guy wrote:

To be competitive at 1500 at the very top levels, you need to be able to run 3:30 and be able to kick in 51-52 in a slow race. To run 3:30, you need to run 1:43-1:44 for 800. To run 1:43-1:44 for 800, you need sub 49 400m speed. If you can't break 54 for 400m, you have 3 options:

1)train for speed more (weights, hills, sprints, pylos), the Ethiopians have the best kicks because they do short hill sprints, pylos, and finish many workouts with 50-60m sprints. If you don't train for speed you won't have any.

2a) bump up the volume and move to the marathon

2b)get a great publicist and run ultras

3)become a cross country specialist

because you will never win at the highest levels on the track.

I agree. I was a high 58 sec 400 in H.S. where I was a Mile - 2 Miler. We did plenty of longer distance types of reps. Suprisingly, I was tabbed as the 3rd long jumper at the Conference Relay meet my Sr. year because I had the best long jump in a team run through to fill out the team after the regular 2 long jumpers.

Then in college my reglar mileage climbed to between 70 and 80 miles a week and my events droped from the 2 Miles down to the 800 and 1500. I then missed going to Cross Nationals by one place. The coach would occassionally run a distance 4x400 and and I suddenly started running 50 flat legs as a third event at meets. I ended up running 1:17 for 600m indoors my senior year and was closing in on 1:47 for 800m outdoors. So I had the raw speed, but it took time to get it all sorted out.

800m is not really a distance race. I'd expect a sub :50 guy to do fairly well in the 800m. We had a sub :50 guy on my HS track team a decade or so ago and he ran on our 4x800m team with very little distance training. He ran 2:10 but it was the fastest 2:10 you'd ever see...like a 60/70 split.It would be fun to see what happens if you train them for the 1600/3200m. I bet with 6 months of that kind of training they are no longer sub :50 guys...;)Alan

El Guerrouj 1500 record races where accomplished with a strong early pace, a somewhat conservative 1st 400 and a sustained kick from 600-500m out. He was by no means a sprinter, and like Lagat, he never ran a competitive 800 because he probably could not. (This is good information for everyone who is dying to see Jeremy Warner run an 800; I am convinced JW is a true sprinter and does not run the 800 because he is probably only a 1:48 guy at best. I have never met an athlete who will not do an event if they think they can be great at it.)

I am sure ElG and Lagat would have no problem running a 1:45x 800 and sub-50 400m, but they both are distance runners with good speed. The 2004 Olympic 1500 is one of the few situations where he was in a foot race to the finish line, even then he did not show explosive speed like I have seen from Webb, Ivan, etc.

Raw sprint speed like a Webb, Ryun or Coe is not necessary to be a great miler, raw speed generally means muscular, which is a no-no for distance running. When kids have good speed, which is derived from efficiency that is what makes a great middle distance runner.

1st of all, why didn't you capitalize your username?

2nd of all, what about a guy like Seb Coe who dropped down in distance as he matured and supposedly became faster and faster in terms of all-out sprint speed?

What would have been happening physiologiacally during that process?

I'm curious to know.

just sayin wrote:

Your red herring is a red herring. You have to have the physiology to support the economy. The muscular changes are part of the supporting physiological package and can't be dismissed as an academic notion.

That said, I like the point you made.

I think you missed the point.

We can't really know what changes in myosin expression occur when we train to improve our race times.

Alan, your weight training + sprintin obsession is making you more out of touch with what you need to do to improve speed and endurance at the same time, namely improve running skills.

You are always lecturing people on things you don't understand, I think there are several people on this thread who understand the training requirements much better than you do.

***********************************************

I am aware of the research. But Bekele does not have that genetic trait. I have told you this before a few times, but just like Runningart you have these obsessions that you just can't see past.

Do you even know what the term "running economy" means?

Also, name me one 5000/10000m white runner who trains as seriously as Bekele at 7000 - 10000ft altitude and does the same races as he does? There aren't any, but that doesn't mean he can't be beaten by a white runner.

I'll bite:

You're saying that Bekele is not Ethiopian?

I'm saying that not all Ethiopians have the gene related to in the study that sir wanks a lot keeps telling us about.

That's not what you wrote.

You wrote that "Bekele does not have that trait" meaning that you've sequenced Bekele's DNA and have compared his genes to those of the subjects in the study and have not only successfully identified the gene responsible for this fantastic ability to absorb oxygen, but have concluded that Bekele lacks it.

How is that?

Bekele has reportedly had a hematocrit of 49

Now if that is true then either he does not have that genetic trait discussed in the journal, or he was using some illegal methods to boost his blood count.

I suggest that the 49 figure may have been recorded on return to altitude and is therefore not suspicious.

The alternative would be that there is a conspiracy to hide illegal practices by Ethiopian doctors, but where is the real evidence? not the sort of evidence that conspiracy theorists put about, but real evidence that a sane, intelligent person can review.

The study says that the Ethiopians studies "had hemoglobin

concentrations that differed little from sea level

values. The similar findings of erythropoietin

concentration and oxygen saturation in the normal sea

level range were consistent. The findings would not be

remarkable if this were a sea level sample, but it is

a sample of people exposed to chronic, lifelong

hypobaric hypoxia. Ethiopians must have unique

adaptations of oxygen uptake or delivery that result

in the absence of an hypoxemic stimulus to increase

red blood cell production and hemoglobin concentration

despite their high-altitude residence."

They have sea-level concentrations of hemoglobin yet they've been at altitude for 40,000 years. The way I read this, their hemoglobin carry more oxygen than non-Ethiopians.

"The results of this study suggest that Ethiopian

high-altitude natives respond to hypobaric hypoxia

differently than Andean or Tibetan highlanders. This

Ethiopian sample resembles samples from the Tibetan

Plateau in exhibiting little or no elevation of

hemoglobin concentration in this altitude range, but

differs from Tibetans who have very low oxygen

saturation. It differs from Andean high-altitude

natives who exhibited both substantial elevation of

hemoglobin concentration and low oxygen saturation.

These findings suggest there are three patterns of

adaptation to high-altitude hypoxia among indigenous

populations (Table 1). Learning why the three

populations differ will require two lines of future

investigation. One is understanding the biological

mechanisms and the underlying genetics that allow

successful high-altitude adaptation with

quantitatively different suites of traits for oxygen

sensing, response, and delivery. The other is

understanding the evolutionary processes that produced

these patterns to explain how and why several

successful human adaptations to high altitude evolved."

You are missing the point. Some Ethipian Highlanders, (the ones in that study) have this genetic trait, but that does not mean that all Ethiopians have it too.

You don't really believe that all Ethiopians are genetically identical do you? of course you don't, You would have to be as much of a pseudo-intellectual as sir wanks a lot to be that ignorant of genetics.